Germany practices the heating check

Corridors, halls, foyers and technical rooms in public facilities and office buildings should not be heated, this time more home office should not protect against Corona, but against the heating bill in the offices. Property owners, on the other hand, are subject to a “heating check” and pools can no longer be heated with gas. Most would like to go along with Augustine of Hippo: “Give me chastity and abstinence – but not just yet.” Habeck, who absolutely wants to achieve the 15 percent reduction in gas consumption specified by the EU Commission, explains: “We have to step up our preparedness for the winter.”

It’s not about introducing a “heat police”, says the Vice Chancellor. But there was also praise for everyone for motivation in the ZDF interview: “We are a strong country with strong interaction within society […] Putin will see how strong we are.”

Now that the turning point is not only being talked about, but also being illustrated, the question arises as to whether Germany – like the USA – could press gas out of rocks through “fracking”. In the Handelsblatt dispute, the NRW Economics Minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP) calls for a review of the ban that is still in force. Sascha Müller-Kraenner from the German Environmental Aid (DUH) disagrees.

The DUH federal director points out that many years of preparation are necessary and that several factors make fracking “particularly environmentally harmful”, ranging from the risk of earthquakes to groundwater pollution. One should no longer invest in fossil infrastructure. The FDP politician, on the other hand, considers the risk of methane emissions to be low: “Even if emissions occur, the global climate doesn’t care where they occur.”

With fracking, we could cover around 20 percent of our needs in three to five years: “That would help us to make the energy transition more flexible.”

A small miracle is happening on the Bosphorus this Friday. Activist regional power Turkey has announced that Ukraine and Russia want to sign an agreement to export grain and other agricultural goods. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UN Secretary-General António Guterres are expected to be present at the signing ceremony in Istanbul.

The deal affects both Ukrainian and Russian grain exports. The export of goods blocked in Ukraine via secured corridors in the Black Sea should be made possible by local ceasefires. Between 20 and 25 million tons of grain are currently blocked in Ukraine.

When a high-ranking institution changes its behavior – some say its dogma – after eleven years, everyone speaks of a “historic event”. But what exactly is “historic” about the European Central Bank’s (ECB) decision to raise interest rates from minus 0.5 percent to zero percent? It ends…

• the recent increasingly difficult to understand preference given to debtors over creditors, namely savers, who have recently also been hit by high inflation;
• the phase of an increasingly worrying misallocation, because interest as the price of money no longer had any steering function and showed nothing about the riskiness of investments, whereupon the money flowed into completely overvalued real estate, stock values ​​or spas;
• the boom in a “modern monetary theory” that recommended taking on debt without hesitation, because – like the Germans – one even got additional money if credit was taken out, and on the other hand there was also a backlog of public investments.
  “In a world where capital is available for free, all kinds of fast-moving nonsense is financed,” writes editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes in his editorial. Nevertheless, this turnaround in interest rates is dangerous because it comes so late, does nothing to change externally rising energy prices, makes investments more expensive and could accelerate the downturn.

“Now the crash is imminent,” we write in our large weekend title analysis. And chief economist Bert Rürup judges: “Germany is heading for a recession.” Somehow symbolic that on the day of the change of the ECB its former whatever-it-takes President Mario Draghi failed as Prime Minister in Italy and new elections are coming in the autumn.

My cultural tip for the weekend: “Monsieur Claude and his big party”. The third part of Philippe de Chauveron’s French family saga revolves around the Verneuils’ wedding anniversary, organized by their four daughters. It’s turbulent in Chinon on the Loire, in a beautiful area whose charm contrasts with all the peculiarities of a bourgeoisie family, whose mistakes and will-o’-the-wisps make this film a lovable cinema spectacle. Multiculturalism is the challenge this time. If society is already showing serious cracks, one at least wants to have cultivated entertainment.

Conclusion: There’s nothing to laugh about, we’ll do it anyway.

He was a German symbol, embodying the diligence and discipline of the development generation, and when the 1.70 meter tall fighter put the ball into the soccer goal with an overhead kick or a head, the crowds cheered the man who was “Us Uwe”. One who did not go to Italy to collect, who always stayed with Hamburger SV (as a player from 1946 to 1972), celebrated an exemplary 63-year marriage with his wife Ilka, who was in the World Cup final at Wembley in 1966 and four years later in Mexico, where he landed a goal with the back of his head that ultimately propelled Germany into the semis.

A legend, then, a hero of normality, who deserves the most emotional obituaries. His Hanseatic compatriot Olaf Scholz, 64, once Hamburg’s first mayor, remembers that he was allowed to give the after-dinner speech for the 80th of “Uns Uwe”: We all really want to be like him, “self-confident and modest”. Uwe Seeler, the man who won 72 international matches, died on Thursday at the age of 85 surrounded by his family. At the women’s European Championship game, Germany versus Austria (2-0), everyone observed a minute’s silence.

And then there is Mallorca, the favorite island of German skittle brothers, revelers and party makers, which has many qualities that lie beyond the preference scheme of the clientele mentioned. The Balearic government is applying the “excess law” for the first time this season – eight pubs, restaurants or kiosks are temporarily closed. Police controls in the fight against drunkenness are also being stepped up. For example, “flat rate drinking” and happy hour offers are prohibited. A total of four closures have been ordered at the “Ballermann”, Teutonic gravitational point on Playa de Palma.

Juan Ferrer, head of a private initiative for quality tourism, has complained that quality tourism has been the talk of the town for decades. But the public spending on this was not enough: “The pavement on the promenade has not been renewed for 25 years, and we have been promised new lamps for seven years. But there is nothing but talk and patronage politics.”

The US writer Gilbert Keith (GK) Chesterton is unforgettable in this context: “The traveler sees what he sees; the tourist sees what he visits.”

I wish you and your family the best in what you see – and a relaxing weekend.

It greets you cordially

Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor

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