>>100117

Also there was a dramatic brain drain after the wall came down. Anyone with an ounce of ambition went west at the earliest opportunity. Bluntly, a lot of Ossies are nostalgic for the days when talent and hard work counted for nothing.

>>100118

>Also there was a dramatic brain drain after the wall came down. Anyone with an ounce of ambition went west at the earliest opportunity.

That was 30 to 35 years ago though. Surely there are enough highly skilled jobs in formerly East German cities today that nobody has to leave and go to the West.

>>100122

The federal government has invested an unbelievable amount of money in trying to achieve that, but it has mostly failed. The east is still dramatically poorer than the west. The high-paying jobs don't exist in enough numbers, but that's only half the problem - you need good housing, good schools, good neighbourhoods, good nightlife and culture. You can fix some of those problems with money, but not all of them.

How much would you have to offer a young professional to convince them to move from London or Manchester to Doncaster? How much would the government have to spend to make Doncaster a nice place to live?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_GRDP_per_capita

>>100110

>And you're still r/atheist from the mid-00s.

It's still amazing how we've slid backwards on this, as though organised religion has started offering anything beneficial to society and stopped being regressive and harmful in nearly all respects in the last decade. Rather, what really happened is that one fat wanker shoved a banana up his arse, and then all the cool progressive liberal people decided religion is good actually just so they could distance themselves from the fedora tipping chuddies, without any hint of self awareness.

Humans are pathetic tribal apes and we will never rise above it, sadly.

>>100123

>How much would the government have to spend to make Doncaster a nice place to live?

Never really occurred to me that Doncaster is such a shithole, but boy that place looks bleak.

>>100129
I wouldn't want to walk down a street like that without knowing it, but I can't really see anything wrong.
I grew u on a small estate similar to that, the only major visual difference being an additional meter of public grass on each side of the road, a slightly larger road and quite a few more trees.

As is, the only thing that'd make me anxious around here is how common it looks, though digging into it a bit shows there's a builder type who's gonna be physically capable and easy enough to get on with, and I presume plenty of stay at home benefit moms to keep an eye on the street.
You've got satellite dishes on every house, so the sofas will be populated most nights.
Providing the back gardens are genuine grass™, should be an okay place to call home.

>>100130

>You've got satellite dishes on every house, so the sofas will be populated most nights.

Which means nobody will have an eye out on the street. You could get mugged or stabbed while they're all watching Strictly with the volume up.

>>100125
I think it has more to do with a bunch of the "New Atheists" being arseholes, rather than any webcam videos featuring micro-celebs. However, I don't disagree with your opinions on religion.

>>100132
>You could get mugged or stabbed while they're all watching Strictly with the volume up.
Is that were muggin's and stabbin's happen? I'd presumed they were in towns and dark alleys. With a road that close I'd expect a few doors to open if a scuffle or scream was heard.

>>100130

Doncaster isn't the worst place on earth, it's just one of many northern towns that are stuck in a slow cycle of decline.

The problem as I see it isn't that the bad bits are particularly awful, but that there aren't any good bits. There are many more reasons to leave than there are reasons to stay. If you've gone off to Liverpool or Birmingham for university and loved the nightlife, going back home to Doncaster is going to feel like a huge downgrade. If you're starting out in your career, a place like Doncaster doesn't have a lot of thriving companies with lots of opportunity for growth. If you're settling down to have kids and you're thinking about giving them the best chance, a place like Doncaster doesn't really have a nice neighbourhood with a good school.

The people of Doncaster are mostly respectable people with normal jobs and normal lives, but there's only so long that a community can survive if the brightest and most ambitious people keep leaving. The average keeps getting dragged lower, the social problems keep getting more concentrated. Once that pattern has set in, there's no obvious answer for how to reverse it.

>>100134
I live on a worse street than that, in Manchester, and it's probably culturally quite similar but looks worse. One thing here that makes me slightly uncomfortable is the regular screaming I hear. It's just children and teenagers playing, but not every scream is immediately identifiable as a positive and happy scream. That could just be me, though; everyone came out and clapped when the police arrested a scumbag right outside my garden gate, and I wasn't the only person to open my bathroom window when a drunk woman was shouting about being raped in the middle of the night. She wasn't actually being raped; she was just arguing with some man she was with.

>>100136

This goes back to the sort of discussion we were having a bit ago about the rough areas and nice areas of a city, but I'd be pretty confident that a big city like Manchester is all around more dangerous of a place to live compared to a shit but relatively small town like Doncaster or wherever. Just the fact there's more people of all levels of the social spectrum means you're more likely to bump into the belligerent elements.

The area I live in seems rather grim on the surface but I've been here a couple of years now and I am starting to rather like it. If you stick to the roads you'll see a lot of drab, rusty looking warehouses and garages owned by the sort of companies that don't even have websites and only get business by a land-line phone number, but you don't have to veer far off the main through-routes and there's a lot of accessible, walkable green space and parks and the like. The whole place looks scruffy, but I can't say I have ever felt unsafe.

Really I guess like anything else money is all it comes down to. People talk about all the window dressing but in reality all anyone cares about is if you can get a decent steady job and support yourself living somewhere. If you could get paid London wages living in Grimsby nobody would be moaning about what a shithole it is. For a lot of these places, somebody who has managed to claw their way into one of the half decent jobs will be able to live very comfortably, it's just a matter of actually being able to do that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/06/german-government-on-brink-of-collapse-after-olaf-scholz-sacks-finance-minister

>The German government is on the brink of collapse after the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, unexpectedly sacked his finance minister, throwing Europe’s largest economy into political disarray.

>Christian Linder was thrown out of the three-way coalition during a meeting of high-level government members on Wednesday evening, after months of bitter infighting that has contributed to the administration’s growing unpopularity.


ITZ ES IST!!!

>>100520
Fair enough really. The German economy has been in deep trouble for years now where Scholz and Grüne don't seem to be fountains of new ideas and Lindner has fast become a useful idiot for Putin that blocks aid and even the delivery of weapons.

>>100521

It was always an alliance at the lowest common denominator. Born out of the sheer necessity of a simple-majority government coalition in an increasingly frayed political party landscape.

Germany has a much bigger tradition of coalition governments than the UK, and you have to go all the way back to the 1950s for the last time that there was a one-party government at the federal level.

In fact, that tradition goes all the way back to the Weimar Republic. Where it sadly contributed to its downfall, because years of short-lived, ever-changing coalitions caused a great deal of parliamentary instability and political inefficacy.

>>100523
I wonder what it is in German society that gives them such an odd party system. The Swedes use more or less the same voting system but became a weird voluntary social democrat perma-regime from like 1930 to 1990. They've had some awkwardness with the Sweden Democrats, but the Left-vs-Bourgeois bloc dynamic is still fairly clear. NZ's voting system is similar too, but is immediately familiar to the UK voter: Labour or Tories, supported by Greens on the left, Libertarians on the right, and occasionally, for spice, a one-man-band populist org in the middle who breaks ties. Meanwhile Germany throws out SPD-CDU grand coalitions, the FDP is a regular feature of Social Democrat lead coalitions despite being privatising neoliberals, and the system keeps reverting to an endgame of coalescing all the normal parties in a disagreeable alliance to keep some anti-constitutional nutters out.

>>100526

Italy is even more mental, where you've got as many as nine different significant parties in parliament. And on top of that, another eight small parties. Governments usually consist of alliances of anywhere between three and five parties. Italian politics has been notoriously unstable pretty much since the end of WWII, with over 70 different incumbent governments, sometimes in very short succession.

Germany has a five-percent threshold of general election votes that a party must overcome in order to gain seats. This was done specifically to avoid the kind of political fragmentation that the Weimar Republic parliament was notorious for. But what it doesn't prevent is a fragmentation of parties that are above those five percent. Which has happened in recent years, and which has greatly complicated the formation of government coalitions after an election.

>>100520
It's never fun when you're thrown out of a 3-way.

>>100531

It especially wasn't smart on the part of the FDP, Germany's Lib Dems, because they are below the 5% threshold in the polls, so they are jeopardising their entire existence in the Bundestag in the next four-year term.

You almost want to respect them for standing by their principles even in the face of complete self annihilation. But then again, not all principles are equally worth standing by.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/28/elon-musk-germany-afd-party

>Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party

>Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justified his wading into German politics


Feudalism redux, eh? Politics is too important to be left to the plebs.

>>100736
I don't think it would fix anything, but we're rather beyond that now.

>>100736
I mean he's just giving his celebrity opinion isn't he? I have 10% of my portfolio in the DAX and would like to state that the AfD is a useful idiot for Russian and Chinese interests. The CDU will turn things around next year in a coalition with the SDP.

Although I'll admit that I won't go shouting that in German newspapers because I'm not as the Americans say, a 'jackass' nor a celebrity.

>>100737
He's currently having an autistic meltdown on twitter over visas with Trump's base so I expect it's a problem that will soon solve itself and he'll storm off in a huff.

>>100738

Trump appears to be siding with Musk on this one. It's looking like either Trump will do his Jedi mind tricks, or it'll turn into a much deeper rift within the MAGA right.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/elon-musk-vows-war-over-h-1b-visa-program-amid-rift-with-some-trump-supporters-2024-12-28/

>>100736

I was thinking I see it as somewhat inevitable that democracy as we know it will recede, eventually, in the West. For a long time "democracy" has both been the ultimate virtue of our political systems, but at the same time our biggest weakness. In the face of aggressian from Russia and China, who are not democratic in anything but name and can thus enact long term planning and strategy with a much greater coherency, democracy leaves us floundering, rocking back and forth dependent on public opinion, and worse, our governments hijacked by the cordyceps like influence of the media or corporate lobbying.

I've long argued that the US isn't a democracy at all, hasn't been for a long time, and arguably on a national level, never really was. The US uses "democracy" as a sort of imperialist dogwhistle, when it strong arms foreign nations into adopting "democratic" system of government what it really means is a system of government where American money and American soft power is free to influence policy. But it never realised it has exactly the same vulnerability, and it never imagined that American money might not even necessarily align with American interests.

The trouble is for America itself (and arguably therefore, the rest of us in the Free World), it's not not a democracy in the same way as Russia or China. Those countries are autocracies where the government calls the shots. America isn't- America is a puppet of a democracy where guys like Elon call the shots.

So what's the solution? I really don't know. But I don't think the sham will hold up for much longer, and I don't think it will really do the West in general any good to simply be a weathervane spinning in the wind when China becomes ascendant. It's really incredible how right Orwell got it all those years ago. That's exactly where we are going.

>>100738
>>100739

If what passes for the left nowadays wasn't crewed by completely fucking mindbroken conservativeolds they could seize on this and gain a real foothold. I think a pretty big part of the reason Stürmer did well in this years election was because a significant portion of British middle of the road average right wingers finally had that "You mean the right actually wants load of immigrants and they've been lying to us all these years?!" *shocked pikachu face* epiphany. He hasn't capitalised on it, just like he hasn't capitalised on any of the other easy wins he could have, but nevertheless.

>>100738
How do people follow this stuff, as close to source as possible? I've no idea any of this was going on.

>>100742

I just wait for lads here to post about it.

>>100742
I heard it through the meme vine.

https://www.gbnews.com/news/world/elon-musk-afd-support-urges-people-not-liken-party-leader-hitler

>Elon Musk doubles down on AfD support and urges people not to liken party's leader to Hitler

Ok, so it's GB News. Take all the grains of salt you want. I couldn't find another source that's similarly to the point at the moment. But he is in fact doubling down on his musings.

What a fucking cunt.

>>100746
My brain is pea soup so I forget whether I mentioned this in passing here or in real life recently. However, there is a story with two possible realities, both of which confirmed Elon Musk to be a cunt years ago.

Hyperloop, remember that? In 2019 when it was all but dead in the water Musk claimed his ethusiasm for the project had only ever been a ploy to stifle the construction of new, state-wide, rail infrastructure in California. Apparently the insufferable Boer doesn't like public transit, so didn't want to see it's expansion in the state that was then his base of operations. This claim is either evidence of a deeply malignant, corrupting, narrowminded, spoilsport, or someone who is so insecure that he made up the stuff about not liking trains because his stupid, pie-in-the-sky, non-tech was a bad idea that never amounted to anything.

There is a deep inadequacy within Musk that could well make him uniquely dangerous. Egomania seems to be a by-product of being that wealthy, but unlike the Gates's and Bezos's of the world, Musk doesn't seem to enjoy anything. And I reckon, if you don't enjoy anything for long enough, you start to fill that void with cruelty. Combine that with the money and the ego, and his alleged fondness for ket, and I can scarcely imagine what kind of a shitstorm is brewing on the horizon of Musk's mind.

They'd have loved that "insufferable Boer" gag on Radio 4.

>>100747
I hate to defend Musk but this is a clickbait story. Hyperloop was thrown out as a proposal but it wasn't the cause for the US being utterly useless at building its rail network and plasters over why California in particular has such a disjointed rail network.
https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460

If you'd like an update on Elon Musk, he was caught using a burner account with a voice changer but then got so angry he forgot to use the voice changer and now he's banning people for making fun of him.

This isn't the first time he's been caught using an alt. He's really become an old-school forum moderator.

>>100749

A lot of people imagine what they'd do if they were a billionaire. I find it vaguely comforting that for a lot of actual billionaires, the answer seems to be "spend half the day shitposting".

>>100748
I was ready to eat humble pie once I clicked that link, but it doesn't exactly expunge my theory. Especially when this Vance chap is saying shit like:
>“In all this time we’ve been talking about high-speed rail, there’s still almost none that’s built.... In that time, Elon built a worldwide electric car charging network and shifted the entire world onto electric cars.”

Which is complete bunk-cum-hagiography.

>>100750
That's only really true for Musk. I do think it's funny that, amongst what I'll call "public facing billionaires", none of them do any self-improvement. I know Zuckerberg has gotten a stylist and Bezos takes roids or whatever, but that bollocks hardly counts.

>>100751
>none of them do any self-improvement

Does anyone?

>but it doesn't exactly expunge my theory

Let's look at it another way: it's a flimsy conspiracy theory at best with a lot of holes in it. It should have something more than 'a guy trying to sell a book suggested it' but a lot of people lap it up because they like the narrative. There are lots of reason to call Musk a sad cunt, you don't need to grasp at straws on that count.

>>100751

https://supercharge.info/map

I can't stand the hate towards Elon... the guy is solving the biggest problems the planet is facing, Climate change via solar, energy storage, congestion, he's trying to solve paralysis and blindness, He's basically dedicated his fortune to building a self sustaining colony on Mars so when the inevitable asteroid blows one of the planets to shit the only known source of consciousness in the universe will continue. He's developing the only AI thats training data isnt based around lying for the sake of inclusivity... something that will be super important once it surpasses human intelligence. He is building the most advanced humanoid robot ever made so we can live in a world of abundance where work is optional and we can live as we please. He brings things like population collapse and the harm of hormone therapy in children into the public sphere. he's created a worldwide internet constellation that he gives out for free wherever there's a natural disaster, the guy is a living legend for all of these things. plus he was the number 1 ranked player in diablo 3 which is unreal lol oh and buying twitter, creating the now facebook adopted and open source community notes has done wonders for freedom of speech in the countries that allow it... we all lived through covid and it is shameful how the entirity of social media handled that. Blocking voices that were speaking reason... masks that didnt do anything, 2 meter rules, every other seat blocked, a vaccine that was utter bollocks for the healthy and under 50s and if you questioned it you were shut down. Thank fuck for Elon Musk

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>100854

Why would you waste all your bait in one post?

>>100857

I didnt mention teslas cars.. the model y received a 98% safety assist score in euro NCAP tests, the best ever recorded.

Which of the points I raise do you dispute? there's plenty to choose from.

>>100859

'Murrica!

>>100854

>He is building the most advanced humanoid robot ever made so we can live in a world of abundance where work is optional and we can live as we please.

Not that it matters now that Murrikinlad is banned, but doesn't that go entirely against U.S. capitalist mantra? The idea that work is optional and you'll live in abundance whether or not you work? Isn't that more socialism's end goal?

As I understand it, in America, if you don't want to work, many people will think you don't deserve the air that you breathe. Especially with grind culture nowadays, which has people indoctrinated to think that every waking moment not spent working is a sin against the gods of capitalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/29/german-immigration-motion-passes-breaking-taboo-on-cooperation-with-afd

>The German parliament has narrowly passed a motion urging tough restrictions on immigration that was highly controversial because it was backed by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party.

>The motion was brought by the conservative opposition CDU-CSU and backed by, among others, the AfD, breaking a longstanding taboo on cooperation with the anti-immigration party.


This will cost Merz the election.

You've read it here first.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/31/german-parliament-rejects-immigration-bill-backed-far-right-afd

>The German parliament has rejected a bill to tighten immigration controls brought by the frontrunner to be the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, with the backing of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.

>It came after a similar but non-binding motion was passed by parliament on Wednesday with the votes of the AfD, prompting a wave of protest from those who said it was a breach in Germany’s longstanding “firewall” between the far right and the mainstream.


I guess it's a classic case of a political gamble blowing up in somebody's face. The fact that the German Parliament has rejected the bill, which it probably couldn't have done without a number of Conservative MPs also voting against it behind Merz's back, is now going to hurt him more than if they'd passed it. The outcome itself is going to placate the Left, for the time being, but it will probably annihilate any perception of leadership that Conservative-leaning voters had of him. And for the remainder of the election run-up, the Left will rightly be able to point fingers at the CDU for collaborating with right-wing fascists.

Polymarket now has Merz with a 95-percent chance of becoming chancellor this weekend.

The odds for a Conservative/Social Democrat coalition government are seen at around 52 percent.

Merz is more of a right wing Conservative, and not known for being a big fan of the left wing Social Democrats. So it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out, as they're far from being Merz's obvious choice as a coalition partner. The Social Democrats will probably agree to whatever demands Merz will have for them to stay in power, even if it's a shit way of being in power when you've just come down from being the chancellor's party.

Das exit polls
Things are looking good for Merz.

>>101190

It's still early. If the German Lib Dems FDP end up getting five percent after all, it's going to make the formation of a coalition government once again a bit complicated. The most likely result in that case will be a CDU/SPD/FDP coalition, and not a CDU/SPD/Greens one, because the Conservatives have said that the Greens are far from their preferred coalition partner.

I quite like the idea of parties having to form coalitions. Our last coalition adventure with Cameron and Clegg may have been a bit of a disappointment, but the general idea of no one party having too much power has its charms. The Germans have done it that way pretty much since after WWII.

>>101191
>Our last coalition adventure with Cameron and Clegg may have been a bit of a disappointment

I confess that I voted no on the AV referendum in 2011 because I thought that it would preclude us from having stable governments and invite loons into government. Time really does make fools of us all.

Anyway I'm hesitant in trusting exit-polls in this case, I think FDP will face a shortfall from their supporters deciding that they can't support them. I've got money on it.

>>101192

>because I thought that it would preclude us from having stable governments and invite loons into government

And instead, now we're got ARE Keir. Which is so much better.

It's settled. The Conservatives can form a coalition government with just the Social Democrats. Giving Germany the fifth Grand Coalition since WWII.

This man is going to be the next German Chancellor ... if everyone that's supposed to be backing him remembers to vote for him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgp22zlrgko

>Germany's conservative leader has unexpectedly fallen short of a majority in a parliament vote to become chancellor.

>Friedrich Merz needed 316 votes in the 630-seat Bundestag but only secured 310, in a significant blow to the Christian Democrat leader, two and a half months after winning Germany's federal elections.