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Well, it's different in Germany.
They teach people how to pick asparagus using wooden asparagus spears, this is a good apprenticeship for the knocking shop.
Did you ever see Salon Kitty?
On the plus side its easier for 'alternative' lifestyle people to live public lives than it is in some other countries.
I think the journalist is overplaying the story, somewhat. All a job candidate has to do is explain that they have religious sensibilities and the joc centre will back off fast.
Actually, I imagine that an advertiser in Görlitz would be swarmed with applicants, there isn't a ,lot of work there. On the negative side, German customers can be pretty swinish.
There isn't much equality between the sexes in Germany, once you get past the window dressing, particularly i8n areas like Bavaria, where they still have part time schooling so that the mothers cant take full time jobs.
Interestingly, a disproportionate number of 'working girls' have been head girls at their single sex primary school, one of those odd statistics.
Vorp
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Well I must confess to a permanent bemusement at the way in which German legislators in particular and European legislators more generally approach life: it often feels that the entire continental mainland is locked in some kind of autistic obsession with statutes that - despite the recent British adoption of the same outlook - is still a complete mystery to my traditionally Anglo-Saxon laissez faire morality.
I guess I'm just a reactionary creature of The Right but not only do I find the idea that legislation is a good thing somewhat suspect, I also have severe doubts about welfare models created by technocrats without any reference to human dignity. And no, I'm not saying that being a prostitute is undignified if that's something an individual freely chooses to do for a living, but to many people who consider sexual intercourse a private and non-mercenary affair the mere suggestion that treating the sex industry on an identical footing to other entertainment industries is going to be highly repugnant. I guess that's a form of bigotry and that someone somewhere will make it their personal mission to legislate against it, and much good it will do them!
Thinking about it though, the real problem for me with this particular bit of old news (after all, it does date from January 2005 so hopefully some amendments will have been made to the regulations in question) is that it's indicative of a belief that individuals are nothing more than interchangeable economic units and that the purpose of a welfare system is not to help those genuinely in need to rebuild their lives with the basic human dignity that should be the inalienable right of each and every one of us, but to grudgingly pay back a small pittance of the taxes raised from the community at large (including those receiving that assistance) whilst paying lip-service to the notion of caring.
The State by its very nature only cares about one thing: expanding its control into every messy area of human existence, imposing as much order and tidiness as it can possibly conceive (what we call in physics entropy) and then ensuring that it retains that control through whatever means are necessary. Unfortunately this is rarely what the people who govern intend, but that's how it appears to work in practice.
So whilst it's great that people may feel they can be more open about 'alternative' lifestyles in Germany (I'll believe there's real substance to that claim when they have a Chancellor who's transgendered and married to a critically acclaimed porn star/sex worker) and a number of other countries that have removed the moral/social stigma attached to the sex industry in all its many forms through legislation and state imposition, that comes at a steep price.
I don't think it's a price I'd personally be willing to pay, but I'm much more concerned about the anonymous violence of The State than I ever have been by the very personal and unpleasant bigotry of the individuals living within it: at least I can engage with individuals and attempt to overcome their prejudices...
On the issue of equality of the sexes, one of the things I noted during my numerous business trips to Cologne is that the women I worked with put up with far more crap from their husbands and male colleagues than their British counterparts. That may be something specific to the technical side of their television industry, but it appears to be the women that hold everything together whilst the men all slack off at the first possible opportunity. I found it a most irritating city to get anything done in, but I resolutely refuse to tar the whole country with the same brush. Still, as I'm going to be in Berlin in a couple of weeks' time it will be interesting to see if the same holds true there.
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I think you are beginning to understand Germany.
It's the appearance of things that counts rather than the substance.
German women are badly treated, those who have had non-German boyfriends rarely go back to German men.
Köln is one of the more liberatred and enlightened German cities, but still boring. I do have some amusing subbie lesbian friends there, if you wish to lead girls astray.
Poor you working in German television, abdsolutely dire, though you in a dirndl has possibilities.....
I know you want to see a TS German chancellor, well not just yet, but the German military has always been keen on cross dressing, they don't get nearly as hung up on these things as the average or even odd anglophone. I do think that their entirely animalistic approach to sex causes them to miss out on a lot however.
I don't believe that the individual is valued in Germany, its a corporatist society. As far as life's refinements go, when they threw out their history, they threw out a lot of culture and manners. However, I am relieved it didn't involve dumping the opera or classical music.
I do recall one German friend who dated a black American girl without noticing she was black, this drove her crazy, she liked being black.
Running projects in Germany I soon learned that you had to ask p0eople you had given tasks to if they were planning on any holidays or sick leave, they wouldn't volunteer this information.
Vorp
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