Europe, media, music

I want to read The Sun tomorrow!

The annual Eurovision Song Contest is over. And Turkey is taking the cup to Ankara. As usual, however hyped, there’s no reason to watch the entire event if you are able to catch the replays intended to remind the voting public of earlier entrants. These ten minutes are usually not only sufficient but at times as much as is possible to bear. The real reason to watch is not the music, it’s the voting procedure that is happening afterwards – and this time, the European Broadcasting Union even offered an animated scoreboard. If your country doesn’t get points from other European television viewers (or Juries, for those countries without a stable telephone infrastructure (Russia, Bosnia-Hercegovina), you can follow its label on the screen moving downwards…

That is if the label has been up somewhere at some point. In light of the UK’s results tonight, the BBC News Online’s Caroline Westbrook was a little bit more than prophetic when she said –

“This year Jemini have taken the UK’s hopes to Riga, and while their song Cry Baby is perfectly pleasant it’s not thought to be strong enough to see off the likes of Spain, Iceland, Turkey or the much-hyped Russian entry from Tatu. … It’s fair to say that if we do want to win again, we should come up with a better song…”

Well, I the song is probably a part of the explanation for the fact that the UK did not get even a single point from any of the twenty-six nations involved. But it was not worse than most of the other songs, nor was, in my opinion, the performance – as far as I can judge from the replays…

Looking at the results it is pretty evident that voters all over Europe rewarded musical diversity. And a huge part of the songs performed in Riga tonight simply were hard to mentally separate from each other, in fact, watching the replays was like watching one ten minute medley. The British song was no exception to that rule. Like the song, the British performance was as dull as any other medley-song performance. So Caroline Westbrook had probably a reason to predict they would not win – but being just like the others is clearly not helping to explain why Britain did not get a single point this year.

And I don’t understand it either. I don’t think it was about the British stance in the war on Iraq – despite the fact that it was a telephone vote in most countries. So it might just have bad luck. The BBCi is reporting the result remarkedly calm so far –

“The UK’s entry Jemini – duo Chris Crosbey, 21, and Jemma Abbey, 20 – had the ignominy of being the only entry to score no points. It is the worst performance in the UK’s Eurovision history. The UK’s previous lowest performance was in 2000, when it was placed 16th.”

Maybe it’s too early for comments. Maybe they just don’t care. But I can’t wait to read The Sun tomorrow.

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Allgemein

Feudalism, a.d. 2003 Dorothee Meer

Feudalism, a.d. 2003 Dorothee Meer describes the way German students and their professors interact in Spiegel Online today. She’s right to assert that their relationship is rarely a healthy one for the students who almost never get the feeling to talk to someone who respects them as a fellow, albeit less advanced, scholar. Although such generalisations are not fair to many professors – some of which I had the pleasure to learn from – I also had similar experiences in Germany – but not even once at my French Ecole or at the LSE. I believe that this tendency of professoral condescendence is mainly a consequence of lack of pre-selection at German universities and of the fact that professors do not have to be nice to students for the simple fact that they don’t pay for their education – the ministery of education does. Professors do not always treat students condescendingly, but as opposed to students in other countries who – due to the difficulty of getting into a specific university – get the intellectual benefit of the doubt and are direct clients of the teacher, students at German universities don’t and aren’t.

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cinema

Matrix Overloaded.

Don’t get me wrong. “The Matrix Reloaded” is very good film. Actually, it is quite remarkable for a sequel that is also the second part of a trilogy. But that said, it is not, as opposed to its predecessor, a great film.

Why is that? Well, where the first film was able to intelligently translate the existential questions which we carry around with us – whether we are able and/or willing to actually articulate them (like these scholars do) is an entirely different issue – to the digital age and combine that with a stunning visualisation, the second part sometimes gave me the impression of having been written around the visual effects, with additional elements from a motley collection of mytholgies diluting the initial brilliance of the story – I’m probably not ruining anything for those who haven’t yet seen it with these examples – the “ghosts” and “vampires” (remnant’s from an earlier, seemingly “medieval” version of the Matrix), the reanimation scene.

Of course, in the Matrix, everything imaginable is possible. But it does come at a price: the Matrix overloads a little.

But then again, maybe my criticism is a little overloaded, too. Maybe I am a victim of overloaded expectations. Maybe some lack of clarity is intended, and indeed necessary for a second part of a trilogy. And maybe the Wachowski brothers will be able to satisfactorily dissolve the overloaded web they spun in this part in “The Matrix Revolutions.”

All I know for sure is I have to wait another six months to find out. And that is not making me happy.

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Allgemein

Politicians lie! No one would

Politicians lie! No one would have believed it if it weren’t for a scientific study. But Reuters tells us that it’s official – \”In a study described in the Observer newspaper, Glen Newey, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde, concluded that lying is an important part of politics in the modern democracy.\”

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Allgemein

Try German Volksmusik! that would

Try German Volksmusik! that would surely improve results even further – \”U.S. military units have been breaking Saddam supporters with long sessions in which they’re forced to listen to heavy-metal and children’s songs. ‘Trust me, it works,” says one U.S. operative.’\” (via
MSNBC.com)

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compulsory reading, Economics, German Politics, Germany

Zeitenwende. End Of An Era.

It took some time and more of their money to make Germans understand.

It took more than ten years of subsidizing consumption and unemployment in a previously bankrupt former communist economy and virtual non-growth to make us see that it is not only necessary to think about the problematic long-term consequences of the current incentive structure in the German version of the continental model of the Welfare State but to actually change them.

It was no joke when, earlier this year, two people working in a zoo, who were fired for grilling the animals they should feed, successfully sued their former employer for a golden handshake. An extreme case, of course, but one indicating rather lucidly what’s keeping Germany from growing (possibly apart from too high interest rates, but that’s another story – albeit a connected one).

For ages, Germany’s consensus democracy was unable to get reforms going because, well, there was no consensus to speak of – whichever party was in opposition made a bet that it would pay off to block government reforms as far as possible because the electorate would not believe change was necessary. Sure, such a perception is partly a consequence of failed leadership. But only to a small part. Because they were right – the electorate did not want to see.

Then Schroeder won the 1998 election, largely because of the implicit promise that he would become the German Blair – that he could transform the German Social Democrats into some sort of NewLabour without the need for a Thatcher or a “Winter of Discontent”. But when he had just won his first power struggle and made the loony left’s star propagandist Oskar Lafontaine quit the finance ministry in March 1999, he realized that the internet bubble induced growth (weak, in Germany, but real economic growth nonetheless) would allow him to put off fundamental reforms and to mend relations with the loony left with even more rigid labour market reforms.

Unfortunately, after the bubble burst, it was too late for reforms that would have paid off for the government in last year’s election. A fiscal expansion was impossible and, moreover, unwise given strained public budgets. So Schroeder had to play the hand he was dealt – rectal rapprochement to the trade-unions, exploiting the flood-disaster in East-Germany, and betting on the public’s opposition to the American stance on Iraq.

Having narrowly won last year’s election, Schroeder knew that he would have to deliver on his 1998 promise, even thought the economic climate was far worse than it was back then. And even if though delivering would probably lead to the most serious conflict the SPD ever had with trade unions which, for no obvious reason given the steady decline in their membership, still claim to be speaking for “ordinary Germans” when it comes to “social justice”. The readjustment of the social security system, as well as the “intellectual” separation of the Social Democrats from the unions – developments that will undoubtedly be beneficial to both the SPD and Germany as a whole – will be a lot harder now than they would have been back in 1994, under Kohl, or in 1998.

The difference is that now, for the first time, a growing majority of Germans seems to be willing to give up something for a risky future benefit – or put differently, a lot more people are scared by what they think could happen to them, their children, and this country, if the social security system is not dealt with right now. Let’s hope it remains this way for sometime. The tough reforms are still out there in the think-tanks waiting to be pasted into bills.

Of course, the loony left is barking and whining about its loss of discourse hegemony on “social justice”. But don’t we all know that dogs that bark don’t bite?

If only because they have lost their teeth.

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