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 And persons who were vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson had basic rights withdrawn overnight.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]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kristin Brinker, January 27, 2022, Berlin – Part IV

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/5, pp. 229-230.

Let us come to the present, most serious imposition with which the Senate burdens the Berliners – these are the erratic and arbitrary compulsory preventive measures in the Corona crisis. A small example: In the Berlin restaurant trade for the past two weeks, the 2G plus rule applies to guests. The non-vaccinated are no longer allowed to go into a restaurant unless they work there, since for co-workers 3G continues to apply. The result is absurd: A non-vaccinated waiter may in fact continue to serve the vaccinated guests, yet he himself may not after ceasing work eat in the restaurant, since he could infect other people. What is this nonsense? And your Corona policy in terms of education policy is a catastrophe. At the beginning of the week, the presence obligation was set aside, without consultation with the experts committee. The Reinickdorf public doctor Larscheid called that, verbatim, a terrible stupidity, since the effect upon the pandemic events is almost the same as nil, yet children from uneducated families will continue to be dependent.

There are several additional examples of the inconsistencies of the present Corona policy, like the lack of clarity resulting from shortening the cured status from six to three months. In Berlin, no one actually knows exactly to what, when, to whom that applies: When is one cured for six  months, when for three? Oddly, this does not apply to the Bundestag. Or the false promises of the effectiveness of the vaccine. Or the not to be overlooked chaos with the testing obligation and quarantine rules. Or the present unhappy debate over the vaccination obligation. Or, and this is quite dramatic, the extreme increase in children’s psychiatric illnesses up to and including suicide. The consequences of your policy are horrifying. Finally stop dividing society and asserting the opposite! There must be an end to this chaos. We require a clear line, a perspective of openness for a return to normality. Colleague Saleh is not present in the hall,

            Torsten Schneider (SPD): She did not stay!

however: Stop defaming as Nazis people who, on account of your Corona preventive measures policy, today go into the street and continue to be worried, for whatever reason, about their bodily inviolability. That does not go. It does not work thus, and precisely that is the point where you do not comply with what is in the government program, wherein you want to promote society’s cohesion. You do exactly the opposite.

The government program is ultimately a medley of little measures which contributes nothing much to the further development of Berlin. You do not lay hold of the real problems. What becomes of the ICC, of the former Tempelhof airport buildings? Instead of finally developing a usage perspective, there is no idea, no plan for that but a gigantic reconstruction backlog in the sum of billions. How shall the airport disaster continue? Scarcely opened, the BER already again is in need of reconstruction and requires 2.4 billion euros to survive. To which building projects do you want to give priority? Where is the overall supervision of the reconstruction backlog in all public buildings in Berlin? Where is your list of priorities? What are you doing exactly for the citizens of this city so that they do not meet with a months-long wait for an appointment with civic officials? When will building permits be issued in an acceptable period of time, when will the building regulations be straightened out, collated, as well as the procurement regulations? What are your solutions for these existential problems?

Berlin is a wonderful city

            Anne Helm (Linke): Ach, yet now!

with a great history. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Friedrich the Great, Hardenberg, Bismarck, of geniuses like Hegel, Virchow, Einstein or Planck. Legendary businesses like Siemens, Borsig or Rathenau have founded world concerns in Berlin. Furtwängler, Karajan, Abbado have lead the Berlin Philharmonic. Long before Hollywood, Fritz Lang created the first dream factory in the Weißensee film studios. We are not allowed to squander this great heritage.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kristin Brinker, January 27, 2022, Berlin - Part III

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/5, pp. 228-229.

The sixth imposition is the shameless rip-off of automobile drivers in this city.

            Carsten Schatz (Linke): Harmless!

Frau Giffey writes: “The goal of the State government is a climate neutral Berlin.” – Here, automobile drivers are naturally disturbing and are only of interest as a possible source of money. Frau Giffey therefore wants to significantly raise the parking fees. Resident parking fees shall be multiplied by a factor of twelve, from a hitherto 20 euros to 240 euros. In the mid-term, only electric autos will still be allowed to drive within the S-Bahn ring. The Senate wants to ban combustion engines. For Frau Giffey and her colleagues, that is clearly no problem; they will be chauffeured. Yet what are the many Berlin families, seniors and tradesmen who are not able to procure a new automobile then to do? For these people, this driving ban and increase of expenses is catastrophic.

Such measures create an inner city which only the rich are still able to afford, thanks to left-left-green policy. It becomes yet more absurd. Frau Giffey writes: “The Senate is striving for the connection of the BER by means of the bicycle transport network.” – Ladies and gentlemen, that is just looney. Who rides a bicycle to the airport? Thus are the Senate’s priorities.

The new airport does not function. The transport connection for automobile drivers, taxis and with the ÖPNV [public transportation] is sub-optimal, to say nothing of a subway connection. Here, the SPD is still pondering how it actually stands in this regard. But the bicycle is then good for reaching the BER.  That is, with permission, provincial.

For this Senate, the bicycle anyhow appears to be the transport means of the future. Therefore the Friedrichstraße shall continue to remain closed to automobile traffic, against the resistance of store owners who need to bear considerable losses. 150 business managers a few days ago publicly requested to finally lift the traffic closure. Yet our Green Environment Senator remains cold. She even wants to extend the closure to the Gendarmenmarkt.

By means of your anti-auto policy, you drive the business in Friedrichstraße to ruin, and not only there. Retail trade is dying and you promote the business of billionaires like Jeff Bezos of Amazon. And that is no social policy. Our position is clear: Driving an automobile in Berlin ought to be no privilege of the rich.

The seventh imposition in the government program is the one-sided remembrance policy of this Senate. Frau Giffey declares, verbatim:

The coalition will continue to remember…the colonial past, national socialism and a divided Berlin.

The remembrance of the colonial past is important and right. And especially today, on the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, it becomes clear how important and necessary are thoughts of the many victims of the darkest time here in Germany.

            Anne Helm (Linke): Without blushing – unbelievable!

It is ever again inconceivable to me what men have done to other men and can do. Nevertheless: The leftist Senate obviously does not want to remember divided Berlin. Here, I need ask you, Frau Giffey: – You have rightly said, you were still a child as you grew up in the DDR. I am a few years older and experienced it as a youth, as a young woman. – Who then divided Berlin? I say to you: It was the colleagues of the Linke. These people, with whom you sit at table,

            Anne Helm (Linke): Ja, personally!

drew a wall through this city so that people in the east of the city could no longer escape. Those who nevertheless attempted that were imprisoned, confined and shot. Thus it appears.

I therefore propose to you: We should not only remember divided Berlin. We should remember the SED dictatorship. The Stasi terror needs to continue to be cleared up, and indeed without regard for individual parties or persons.

You however do not want to clear up this dark chapter because you do not want to alienate your leftist coalition partners. Instead, the Berliners should now be ashamed of episodes in Geramn colonial history. This will not correct the historical reality. We want a remembrance culture which is not one-sidedly aligned.

            Lars Düsterhöft (SPD): “Vogelschiss”, wa?

With permission of the President, I cite a well-known personality:

            Silke Gebel (Greens): You mean Björn Höcke?

…German history consists not only of a record of crimes. That is the error of a self-important person [Wichtigtuer].

Those are the words of the former SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. I have always been amazed by the self-consciousness [Selbstbewusstsein] of Helmut Schmidt.

Torsten Schneider (SPD): That worked once with Willi Brandt. This time, not, Frau colleague!

We need to also place in the foreground the positive sides of our history so that people can better identify themselves with this city and this country.

 

[to be continued; trans: tem]