When the Chancellor remained silent

Hebestreit argues in defense of the boss, who “briefly snapped at him” and explained “that I did it a bit quickly and that he would have liked to have said something else”. The speechless Scholz then found his voice on Twitter and in “image” again. However, he did not convince the President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster: “I think it is scandalous that a relativization of the Holocaust, especially in Germany, at a press conference in the Federal Chancellery, goes unchallenged.”

We learn from the Abbas scandal that communication is probably the greatest problem of the incumbent, little-loved chancellor. Freely adapted from the cabaret artist Werner Finck: “A press conference is a meeting where many people go in and little comes out.”

Whenever there was talk of the new German “progress coalition” under Olaf Scholz, one could also have hope for the “Aktienrente”, an addition to the overburdened pension pay-as-you-go system. But nothing more was heard of the plan for a long time. Now the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ministry of Finance is unpacking it in a report – and recommends building up a funded pension. The paper says: “The Advisory Board encourages politicians to take the upcoming talks on reforming old-age provision as an opportunity to set the course for the long term in Germany.”

Department head Christian Lindner can use the support of the 32 economists on the advisory board, the FDP had campaigned heavily for stock pensions. The liberal Secretary of State for Finance, Florian Toncar, also noted that the results of the Advisory Council study corresponded “excellently with the project of the coalition agreement”.

Put it another way: After many defensive issues, Lindner now has an offensive issue.

So far, most of the talk has been about our dependency on gas, oil and coal from Russia. That’s all sad enough. In the nuclear industry, however, things are almost worse for uranium and processed fuel rods. The US wants to get rid of the Russian devil’s stuff for its reactors, but the special uranium rods that the new generation of nuclear reactors need are made exclusively in Vladimir Putin’s evil empire.

Putin is blackmailing the world with his state monopolies, with the Kremlin happily noting that Rosatom now controls almost half of global uranium enrichment capacity. The USA now wants to develop its own uranium strategy – it comes 20 years too late.

Occasionally, ARD’s plan to let talent mature for the big serve in the first in their third programs worked. It was the same with Frank Plasberg, creature of the WDR in Cologne, with the self-proclaimed “Mister Hard Talk” of German television. After 22 years and almost 750 programs, the 65-year-old soon made room for the much younger customer and successor, Louis Klamroth, 32, on his talk show “Hart aber fair” after 22 years one also that it is evolving. And now is the right time for that,” explains Plasberg.

Talk legacy Klamroth has so far been on n-tv in the talk format “Klamroths Konter” and on Pro Sieben: there he interviewed the three chancellor candidates together with Linda Zervakis in the last federal election – but Plasberg has already experienced that, in the year 2009. Three years earlier, he had diagnosed himself with a deficiency that was always the program: “I lack a gene for mildness.”

If you take a quiet look at the media group Bertelsmann and its most important business RTL these days, you will discover: The boss of the boss of the boss is a person. The three-time CEO is Thomas Rabe, 57, Ober-Bertelsmann for eleven years and chairman of the listed RTL Group since 2019, who now also directly manages the German television business as chairman of the board. Co-CEO Thomas Schäfer, once identified as Rabe’s hiking friend, has to leave after less than a year.

• The advertising-financed TV broadcaster RTL, once Germany’s superstar, was only number three behind ZDF and ARD for the total audience in 2021. An economically weakening advertising climate and the entry of Netflix (with Microsoft) into the advertising business cloud the prospects.
• The complicated integration of the Bertelsmann magazine publisher Gruner+ Jahr (G+J), also a superstar at times, into RTL Germany takes all your strength. Television offers from the G+J brands “Gala” and “Chefkoch” didn’t really pull.
• The placement of RTL plus in the streaming business against the overpowering US giants Netflix, Amazon and Disney has so far only brought success on the back burner. What was initially announced as a super app with lots of media offerings became a music app.

Conclusion: Quite a lot of challenges at once, which require high financial expenditure. The aim of the one-man show by former chief financial officer Rabe should therefore be to pay more attention to costs despite all the frenzy about the future.

And then there’s British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, 69, a fervent Brexiteer who’s good for all sorts of deals on the island. The latest spin: He probably wants to join the traditional football club Manchester United, which could apparently activate nostalgia in its balance sheet, but can no longer achieve anything in terms of sport and leads the ex-world footballer Cristiano Ronaldo as a moaning substitute kicker. “If the club is for sale, Jim would definitely be a potential buyer,” says a spokesman for his chemical company Ineos. The American owner family Glazer, which is discredited by fans, is apparently actually considering selling off a smaller stake.

Ratcliffe can hold on to compatriot Winston Churchill: “It’s pointless to say: We’re doing our best. You must succeed in doing what is required.”

I wish you a successful day on which, of course, what is necessary does not remain unfulfilled.

It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor