Notices by Jon Worth (jon@gruene.social), page 24

Did my bit at the anti-AfD demo in Berlin today

After having lost my EU citizenship rights through Brexit, then regained them by becoming German, I don’t want my adopted country going the right wing populist route the one of my birth did!

German supermarket chain Tegut started some mini supermarkets without staff

Now these have fallen foul of opening hours rules and have to close Sundays

Of course if they were at ⛽️ petrol stations they’d be ok to stay open 🤷♂️

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/hessen/hr-vgh-verbietet-mini-supermaerkten-von-tegut-oeffnung-an-sonn-und-feiertagen-100.html

And a new version of the #CrossBorderRail board game is ready!

Version 1.2.0 brings some adaptions to game to avoid players getting stuck in the remote corners of Europe - and this needs some changes to the board as well, which has been redesigned in some places

Files to download and explanations: https://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/boardgame/

OK, let’s have a look into the 🔮 and see what might happen in German politics in 2024

It’s going to be a long 🧵, but I hope it’s useful

A few precursors to start:
- This is what I think what will happen, not what I want to happen
- Any errors or biases in this are mine and mine alone
- I am writing this in English for an international audience

There are 4 elections in Germany in 2024 that are relevant
9 June - European election
1 Sept - Land elections in Sachsen and Thüringen
22 Sept - Land election in Brandenburg

I’ll come to each of those in turn

But first the political situation overall, with the three party (SPD, Greens, FDP) traffic light coalition (Ampel in German) at federal level perceived to be struggling, fractious etc.

The first question: will the coalition survive 2024? My answer, with a 80% chance is yes, it will. Not because of any particular strength of the coalition, but because each of the three parties within it fears they’d fare worse by leaving

Scholz is obviously a weak and poor Chancellor. Feted as the successor to Merkel by the international press, he manages to combine his predecessor’s ideological vagueness with an ability to not take decisions nor corral his coalition partners.

SPD has no one but Scholz, and even though SPD is 11% down (26% to 15%) in the polls compared to the 2021 Bundestag election, the party will sit it out, hoping somehow better days are ahead.

Greens - 14% in polls, just 1% down - have been in eye of every political storm in past 12 months, unlikely to change. While the leadership’s tougher line on immigration, and weaker line on climate commitments, has angered the membership, the voters have largely stayed. The Greens will see this through.

The FDP (polling 5%, Bundestagswahl 12%) has just asked its members about whether they should stay in the coalition, and a rump of about a fifth of the members want out. Lindner, the finance minister and party leader, wants to stay - and hopes to find some recipe to get some voters back. Expect loads of grumbles from the FDP, but jumping is too risky.

Merz’s CDU (CDU-CSU polling 32%, Bundestag 2021 24%) is doing well enough to keep the criticism off him, but that score is only what Merkel achieved in 2017 - at the time was considered a failure for the Christian Democrats. However if Merz keeps the CDU ahead of the AfD in the polls, he’ll be safe.

Right wing populist AfD (polling 22%, Bundestag 2021 10%) is steadily on the rise, helped by an ever more shrill argument about immigration (to which CDU has also contributed) and perceived tiredness with mainstream parties. The rest of the political spectrum doesn’t know what to do about this rise.

The unknown is how the new party - BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht) fares - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCndnis_Sahra_Wagenknecht
It will likely draw some voters from both Linke and AfD, and Wagenknecht’s media reach will help it - but I cannot see it growing to beyond c. 5% in the course of 2024.

DB: “What do we do about all our international trains being too full in summertime?”

Passengers: ”Run more of them, or more carriages?”

DB: “Ah no. We’ve not got any extra, and half of what we have are broken anyway. So let's make them compulsory reservation - and keep passengers away. Genius!”

(oh and half of them are going to break down and be filled to the roof *anyway*)

FFS 🤬 https://zug.network/@smveerman/111567488369885390

Why the *hell* are people I know who make ethical choices about everything - from the food they eat to how they travel to the clothes they buy - so INCAPABLE of doing that for the tech choices they make?

For goodness sake: Threads is owned by Meta. That ALONE is reason enough to not use it. And there ARE alternatives!

This was important enough to merit a sort of Brexit diagram. Simple though. #Threads

OK, it's mapped as well as I can for now

#CrossBorderRail SE Europe will happen in 2024, likely in May

Dark blue pins: borders I aim to visit
Light blue pins: borders I might add
Purple and orange lines: trains (change, one day purples, next day oranges)
Green lines: buses and cars
Grey lines: bike legs

Zoomable map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-south-east-europe_991708#7/43.766/19.474

Some friends of mine are having a laugh about what might happen on my #CrossBorderRail SE Europe trip... and put some prompts into an AI image generator

And this is what came out! 😂

I am not about to start smoking, but this is really fun

And for the record I don't intend to flee border guards on the Birdy!

@emilygorcenski Yep, it has been cancelled for some years. But I will still go to Kosovo - but by bus.

The @EU_Commission is once more ridiculously over-selling its cross border rail pilot projects. But when you get past the communications, the way these projects came into being makes a lot of sense. Explained in a new #CrossBorderRail blog post 👇
https://jonworth.eu/why-the-european-commissions-cross-border-pilot-projects-are-a-good-idea-but-not-the-way-the-commission-communicates-it/

Ich gebe nicht auf. Ich werde weiter versuchen. Ich weiß nicht, ob bessere praktische Maßnahmen auch nur annähernd ausreichen werden. Aber sie werden das Leben der Menschen irgendwie verbessern, also weitermachen.