She's off to visit Chemnitz, that'll be fun.

Merkel to visit Chemnitz after murder, growing unrest

I bet she' will only get to meet carefully vetted and selected individuals who will sing "Die Partei hat immer Recht" and "die Internationale" and provide her with a standing ovation of 10 minutes. Just like in the good old times.

Perhaps they'll bus in some more #WirSindMehr protesters

Frankly I am really disappointed at the general state of affairs. The Chinese are not only creating jobs in Africa, they're also investing in top fields and are a real competition because they have a vision. Europe is looking for simple solutions for complicated matters and it's going for old methods in pretty much all areas - pension funds deficits, labour shortage etc. I expected EU to prioritise investments in research and development, improve education systems which are anyway behind the industry, expand collaboration in top fields. They'll not solve the problems of ageing population and declining demographics the way they're currently trying to do now. But of course, everything is a matter of perspective...
China has a vision, Europe....not anymore. Europe seems to be run by specialists in marketing and political "sciences".

I think this may well be a case of the grass always being greener on the other side.

I have a Chinese work colleague who bemoans the narrowness of vision of his own government, and how there is still too much interventionist planning and not enough room for personal initiative or allowing things to follow their own dynamics.

At the end of the day, I beleiove only Africa can solve Africa's problems. Of course the West (and China) can help by not getting in the way and by supporting strategic partnerships and investments. But the vision and roadmap behind that are not something that can be dictated from outside.

Maybe, when talking from the average person's point of view... but you have to give them the credit for raising above expectations in top fields and commerce, and I'm sure they'll amaze us even more in the future.

Meanwhile, Germany has found the biggest enemies of the European project. Read, laugh or cry, or both at the same time.

https://www.politico.eu/article/gunt...nside-and-out/

To be noticed that the guy was careful to use "parts of the government of Italy" (is risky to hurt Italians' feelings) while using the full names of the other countries...of course, the rest are a monolithic block from where he stands and doesn't get any news nor knowledge on quite complex matters. The lack of self reflection is tragically amusing, if not irritating to the point of becoming nauseating.

So they'll solve the little problem with the budget, and conveniently so. As always. As expected.

Maybe that part has been edited out. Now it says.

I also see the article has been edited earlier today, with no explanation offered.

Maybe I missed something, but I'm not sure what Romania did of late to incur his wrath so.

Anyway, Oettinger is not among Europe's bigest problems. He's just a clown without very much capability for original thought, and I don't think that anything he says matters much either way. Even his own party doesn't take him seriously.

And again caught lying about a July 2017 draft for a German budget for 2018 :

Well, all of the countries he mentioned have some issues they should solve, but why mention only in one case it's the government not the country itself. I think he's preparing the terrain for cutting off funds for a specific group of countries or just trying to redirect the attention. I mean, it's just the usual thing.
Nothing important, you're right. I pay a lot of attention to details and the nuances were so obvious..

These guys have an incredible capacity for talking utter nonsense.

I remember during the run up to the recent Hunagrain election, one of the senior German politicians (I think she was a Greenie) was saying something along the lines of, we absolutely reject Orban, but we don't reject Hungary. We need to support and stand in solidarity with the Hungarian opposition. At that time, and indeed still today, the only viable opposition party in Hungary was Jobbik. Strangely the journalist didn't take her to task on that or ask her to explain, or even raise an eyebrow in surprise.

Sometimes these people pretend to be idiots, but sometimes they really are idiots without seeing what idiots they are.

So sometimes there is nuance, and sometimes there is just stupidity that we mistake for nuance.

Apparently the concert against criticism of mass immigration was a roaring success.

You could always try reading to the end of the paragraph

"This includes €6.6bn for measures to fight the root causes of refugee flows" This is not an expense related to the refugees already in Germany which happens to be the topic in question
And if successful will likely never be repeated

Nonsense - the entire reason why that cost arose has been Merkel's stupidity -you know the topic of this thread

Thanks to free coaches being laid on to cart in people from all over Germany.

Who paid for the "free" coaches ??

You keep on reminding us how this influx of refugees has created jobs, brought down crime rates, saved pension fuinds, and done lots of other pleasant things.

So if all that is true, why shouldn't it be repeated?

In Magic Merkelland we don't ask questions like that

When did I post any of that?

Hopefully in the future these things will come to pass but they have not happened yet

You do know there is a difference between "past tense" and "future tense?

Did Hitler pay for the coaches to bring people to the huge Nazi gatherings ??

It's a complete subversion of democracy...

Sour grapes, you have no proof of this.
The concert was a great success