You Must Be From Away

>Don’t ask me… (about Church Tax)

Posted on 29 December, 2008 by jb

Or brain farts, for that matter.

Some dope of a politician – miffed at not getting a seat in church on high days and holidays – reckons that only people who pay church tax should be allowed into church at Christmas or Easter.

You pay church tax in Germany – 9% on top of your income tax.

Unless you opt out, which means that you don’t get to marry in church and stuff like that.

Or never opt in.

Which is my status.

It happpened like this.

When I first came to Germany, the guys in the office helped me fill out the piles of documents that you need if you want to live here – applications for health insurance, registering with the local authority, sourcing health certificates, stuff like that.

The health certificate wasn’t a worry. Someone typed one out on the office typewriter on company letterhead, someone else magically became a doctor and signed it and someone else had a quck sex-change and witnessed it as a nurse.

And then someone said “Look – this church tax business. It’s cheaper if you put “Nein” in this box”

So I put “Nein” in that box, which means

a) I’ve saved a chuck of money over the years
and
b) if this Politician Johnny gets his way, I won’t be able to toddle along with Ms. jb at Chreaster.

Now, I have no idea if this Politician Johnny’s given much thought to the PROCESS.

Do you flash your tax return at the door on Chistmas Eve or do you get a certificate from the priest when you book your seat?

On second thoughts, he’s probably given it ZERO thought.

If you’re a kiddy (or even a student), you don’t pay tax. And no church tax. Sorry…….

If you’re a pensioner, it’s pretty likely you’re not paying tax either. And no church tax. Sorry……

So the people who DO pay church tax are in the 30 – 60 age group band.

Bugger all of whom you see in church.

So Politician Johnny will pretty much have the place to himself….

Posted in Brain farts, Don't ask me | 3 Comments

>Pause, assess, act

Posted on 28 December, 2008 by jb

Sir Peter de la Billiere (who looks hauntingly like my Dad – I’ve unfortunately got the Ramsden genes, both in physical appearance and character) was Commanding Officer of Britain’s Special Air Service.

In “Looking for trouble“, an autobiography that should be read by anyone with responsibility for managing people, military or otherwise, he describes an SAS maxim to be applied

“….in any time of crisis – when a man is wounded, for instance and the natural impulse is to rush off and take immediate action – the best course is to sit down for a few minutes and think before reacting, as such a pause for reflective planning may save hours later“

I recalled this while reading “The German problem” a post on Paul Krugman’s blog in the New York Times

He writes

“At a time when expansionary policies are desperately needed, the leaders of Europe’s largest economy seem to have their heads in the sand“

By the comments to the post, I don’t appear to be alone in believing that – after a decade of managing productivity improvement, displaying fiscal responsibility, pushing for stronger regulation of hedge funds and warning the rest of the world against financial gluttony – Angela Merkel is doing just that

Pause

Assess

Act

Which is the exact opposite of “Shoot first, ask questions later”.

Not looking at anyone in particular…..

Posted in Don't ask me | 1 Comment

>Value judgements

Posted on 13 December, 2008 by jb

Now, I’m not sure if I’d agree with that.

I’ve had an Accord, a Quintett, a Civic and currently – among others (“others” being 2 Saabs and a tractor) – a CRV down on the farm and none of them were ~~crap~~ krapp.

Maybe he was just unlucky.

Must have been a traumatic experience, though.

I mean – why else would he paint his van like that….

Posted in Don't ask me | Leave a comment

>I have this mate…

Posted on 11 December, 2008 by jb

who’s a really good guy, but he’s a bit…weird.

He showed me his home-made burglar alarm the other day.

It’s a motion detector in the hallway that triggers a webcam that’s on his WLAN which takes a picture of the intruders and runs a script that sends it to his cellphone.

Now, deep down I’m a techie, but this is silly.

I asked him about the alarm.

“Well” he said “I’m going to record a message in French and German – seeing that we’re close to the Luxembourg border – saying that they’ve been nabbed.”

I ventured that a 150dB siren might do the trick, but he wasn’t convinced.

And why the photograph to the cellphone?

“Well, in case we get murdered in our beds. Then they’ll know who did it” he said. In all seriousness.

His father-in-law told me this one.

Even if they don’t get murdered in their beds, there’s a constant risk of conflagration, so he organises a fire drill.

Puts a ladder up to the 2nd floor and everyone has to go to bed and pretend to be asleep.

In the middle of the day.

Then in runs Dad, yelling “Fire! Fire! This way” and leads them down the ladder to safety.

Mum, 6 year old Lucy and 3 year old Kalle.

Who said – when his Dad got the ladder out of the garage a couple of days later to do some pruning – “Oh no. Not AGAIN…..?!”

I assume that he’s expecting the local fire brigade to provide the ladder in an emergency, because leaving it propped up against the house just in case would REALLY be an invitation to get murdered in your beds.

And there’d be no photo, either…..

Tagged I have this mate.... | Leave a comment

>So much for that, then….

Posted on 11 December, 2008 by jb

I thought it’d be a pretty cool idea to digitise my old C90 mixtapes for people to listen to online – explain the rationale for the selections and sequences, drone on a bit about why to this day I expect “Adam raised a Cain” to immediately follow “Tunnel of Love”

Which is what mixtapes are all about, right?

Or take a track that stopped me in my tracks and give it some context. (I still smell the coal fire of my uncle’s house in Horsforth when I hear Free’s “Alright now” – I first saw it on “Top of the Pops in his living room

Or simply put together a random list what I’ve listened to for the last day of so.

Put them on the server for a week and if folks like a track, maybe they’ll toddle off and buy some stuff.

Which is how it works for me.

I wouldn’t have discovered Willie Wisely or the Weepies or Fountains of Wayne or Ollabelle or The Trampolines or or or had it not been for Jefito’s Friday Mixtape (and others of his ilk) and the record industry wouldn’t have benefited from my buying their stuff and my life wouldn’t have been brightened just a little bit by listening to some really cool stuff.

But the music industry doesn’t see it like that.

A whole bunch of us got DMCA Takedown Notifications the other day, telling us that Blogger has removed “allegedly infringing posts”, this in order to retain their “safe harbor” status.

Basically, the music industry – represented by the IFPI – trawls through posts, finds something they THINK might infringe someone’s copyright and requires the ISP (Blogger, in my case) to remove it.

Except that there’s no infringement.

No matter that the link doesn’t go anywhere – one of my mixtapes from July 2007 just went down the drain, dead links and all… – or that an artist AGREES (ASKS, even) that you do a bit of promo on your blog or that the link goes directly to the Amazon website so you can buy the album (as in the case of a Delamitri post from January 2008).

The IFPI sees a link, alleges that your blog infringes copyright and has it taken down.

Without even seeing where the link goes.

You CAN appeal by filling out a form (on which you sign your life away) and snailmailing to Blogger, but I really can’t be bothered.

And it’s not as if I haven’t done a fair bit of due diligence on this.

I mailed IFPI, listing the sort of things I do – write about music now and again, listen to (and sometimes rip) LastFM, stream and record radio programmes, download historical radio broadcasts from John Peel and the like – and asking them what was OK and what wasn’t.

Not a flicker.

The German equivalent was marginally more helpful – instead of publishing guidelines, they recommended that I retain legal counsel to advise me in the matter to find out what I could and couldn’t do…

So that’s pretty much it.

Back to making mixtapes and giving them to my mates.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, why don’t you pop in…..

Posted in Music | 1 Comment

>"Oh, man – a MUStang…!"

Posted on 10 December, 2008 by jb

>…said the guy in the parking lot at Stonewall Kitchens in York, ME.

“You can have it” I said. “All yours. Interested in swapping?”

This was THE cult car when I was growing up in New Zealand in the 1960s.

Probably only saw a couple down there – rich farmers used to import stuff like that (Ferrari 250LM, Jaguar E, Reliant Scimitar) and race them at Pukekohe racetrack against packs of Mini Cooper S’s and hotted up Anglias that got left in their wake on the back straight and then scrabbled around and crawled all over them in the corners.

The cow-cockies being decidedly careful with their trophy toys..

My Uncle John had one in Saint Louis when he was on the RAF’s Chinook procurement team in the late 60s and I even toyed with the idea of buying one about 20 years back when the dollar was as advantageous as it is these days.

That ended up being a Mercury Capri, which is a different story altogether

But I never drove one until last week and it shattered more than a few illusions.

OK, I KNOW it’s Avis and I KNOW it’s not going to be a top-of-the-line-loaded-with-extras model, but it has to have BASIC stuff.

Doesn’t it?

Like a seat that locks back in position when you’ve finished loading stuff on the back seat.

Like a boot (trunk?) release?

Like an indicator to show you which drive you’ve selected?

Like some way of telling what the outside temperature is?

Really useful – essential…? – in a New England winter..

But it’s got a cool remote locking widget. With a panic alarm. That works from the 4th floor of the hotel.

So here I am in the hotel room, cursing the idiot whose car has sitting down in the parking lot making whoops and hollers up and down the scale like a banshee for the last 5 minutes, when I look out of the window and….

Like I said – a REALLY cool remote locking widget.

With a panic alarm. On a hair trigger.

Posted in Don't ask me | Leave a comment

We’ll write

Posted on 6 December, 2008 by jb

My young friend Lena from across the way is studying law in Konstanz, one of Germany’s elite universities.

Nominally.

She’s currently doing a couple of semesters in Istanbul, which sounds a bit unusual to me, giving that Turkish isn’t a language that she appears to master to any significant degree.

But then again – what do I know?

Having explored Bulgaria – of all places – for a weekend (and written about it in great – bordering on the lurid – detail, almost giving her aging grey-haired mother a heart attack in the process), she’s popped over to Teheran for a week or so.

In other news today……

The Wall Street Journal reports on a crackdown in Iran on “fashionable head attire” and hair salons “giving decadent Western-style haircuts”.

Draconian sentences have been handed down.

Mrs jb asked how long Lena’s going to be in Iran.

“About 30 years, by the look of it” I said.

We’ll write, though….