Showing posts with label Christian Loose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Loose. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2022

Christian Loose, January 28, 2022, Corona Rules and Retail Trade

Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/159, pp. 33-34.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

For years, local politicians complain that retail trade in the cities is suffering. Obstructed streets as well as too few parking places – with all that, customers are no longer attracted to the inner cities. Instead, people drive to the large shopping centers or buy on-line.

Amidst this development, Herr Wüst and Herr Stamp divide business into virus-infected and virus-free and force upon it utterly incomprehensible control measures. One almost imagines to be in a prohibited zone.  Vaccination identification, personal identification need be continually displayed, otherwise one may not get through.

For the additional 2G measures there is today no scientific basis. There is no evidence that retail trade is a relevant vector of the pandemic. Due to the government’s preventive measures, however, the customers stay away, which primarily affects the co-workers and owners of small business.

Last week, 23% of the customers had no 2G status. Yet meantime there are many more, since many of the recovered were interdicted by the weekend action of Lauterbach and the RKI [Robert Koch Institute]. And persons who were vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson had basic rights withdrawn overnight.

The danger for our retail trade is not the virus but the State government which poses as a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical concerns. With your preventive measures, you drive the people into the arms of the large internet concerns.

Public regulations should be effective, understandable and appropriate. Your regulations, however, are not. Do you know which status you require if you want to be in the cinema, for the massage, or simply in the hardware store?

            (The speaker holds up a newspaper.)

A week ago, the Kölner Stadt-Anzieger sought to clarify it with pictures. Perhaps you know the pages. These Corona rules apply to you.

Vice-president Carina Gödecke: Herr colleague Loose, you know exactly that holding up pictures, presentations, etc., is forbidden. I had said this already yesterday to your colleague and ask you to take that down; otherwise, there are consequences.

On the left page of the just held up graphic of the Kölner Stadt-Anzieger, you find the businesses to which you may go, on the right page you would have seen now nine various combinations of vaccination and recovery status. At the barber may be people other than in the cinema, and again at the tavern other than at the swimming pool. People simply no longer look through it.

This list is meanwhile also obsolete. Last week you still had rights if you were recovered for five months. This week you are thereby practically outlawed. You can thus with confidence toss this newspaper in the trash.

            (The speaker crumples the newspaper.)

            Gabriele Walger-Demolsky (AfD): Och, I still wanted that!

How it further goes with Johnson & Johnson, no one knows. Is it at all still worthwhile to be vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson, or then only when one is recovered, or then not? Simply no man still understands that. Because people no longer understand it, they buy on the internet or at the large department stores. In reality, any may buy a pair of jeans or a television, but alas they want to buy these jeans at the H&M or the television at the Media Markt. That they may only do if they belong to the people with valid basic rights and the correct G status. Yet who possesses these valid basic rights, no one actually knows exactly.

            Helmut Seifen (AfD): No one knows that!

The virus is also not everywhere equally bad. In Osnabrück, thus in Niedersachsen, the visit to the hardware store is free, yet not in Munster – as if in 30 km such a virus can change.

Specific courts are stopping those in government, twice in this week alone. In Saarland and in Baden-Württemberg, the courts overturned the 2G rule in retail trade. These decisions show that freedom is still possible. Thus, the managing director of the German Retail Federation appealed this week – I cite:

“I expect from the politics the courage to acknowledge the value of experience as well as facts, and rescind a bad regulation.”

That goes for you, too, Herr Laumann. Yet I now appeal to you, dear members: Stop driving the customers further into the arms of the large on-line concerns. Let us in common strengthen commerce in the inner cities and compensate the merchants for previous costs of the inappropriate control measures. Vote for the freedom and self-responsibility of the citizens and the retailers [Drucksache 17/16274].

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]