German words in the news

The English ruling class, George Orwell wrote in 1941, during the Blitz, “will rob, mismanage, sabotage, lead us into the muck”, but in a crisis it is “morally fairly sound”. I doubt if it was true then. It is even less true now.

Angst within the ministerial ranks after yet another farcical week

Angst over Amazon provokes Black Friday backlash in France

Since the summer, and as big announcements on Covid-19 were being made without No 10 choosing to consult MPs, senior Tories had asked Johnson to rein in Cummings and his allies and stop what they called “government by diktat”.

The winning proposal by John Kennedy set out a robust and adaptable masterplan for the wider site, breaking the hinterland up into defined zones, each taking advantage of an existing under-utilised attribute.

Social dramas and political thrillers reflect both the current zeitgeist and historical parallels of similarly troubled times.

A lunch in the Kyzylkum Desert, which straddles Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, sparked the idea for Caroline Eden’s book, Red Sands – Reportage and Recipes Through Central Asia from Hinterland to Heartland.

I was saved by horsehair and catgut: classical music offered me huge new soundscapes of great beauty, artistry and intense feeling – while concerts were exercises in compelling schadenfreude, since often I was the only person in the audience whose natural hair colour wasn’t grey, white or silver.

Freiraum is a space for Freedom; a space for one to feel safe, angry, critical, accepted, included, respected and empowered. A space where Freedom, Democracy, Community and other shared, collectively determined ideals become actionable verbs, through the practice of which citizenship and belonging happen. As a space of creative confrontation and political imagination, Freiraum wishes to be an agent for positive change, through inclusive collectivity, solidarity, exchange, and negotiation. ​

Autobahn angst, Eurostar flop & Berlin’s airport saga

Outdoor discos to kitsch schnitzel ads: Twitter account relives the Soviet era

Exorcists called in to investigate destructive poltergeist discover family just owns a cat

… from the Pinewood Residents’ Association echoes the feelings of residents in the locality which covers a wide hinterland of housing including Cannonwood and Ballygambon …

Referring to the recently organised Bird Festival, the Chief Minister said hinterland tourism and bird tourism on the line of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) would be promoted in a big scale. ‘Goa has a good connectivity and more so, all the good birding sites are far from coastal areas. The Forest Department will provide a platform for naturalists, experts, bird photographers to meet and share their insights, which will open new Vista for ecotourism in hinterland,’ he said.

With the Union, most of its hinterland stayed in Scotland. … The northward bulge of the border between the Cheviots and the sea remains a defensive throwback. This modern anomaly of Berwick and the disparity between its residents and those in its hinterland could be resolved by a plebiscite among the 26,000 residents …

Whenever I manage to remember that this is just the way things are – that the cosmic debt I seem to imagine I must pay off is in fact inherently impossible to pay off – I find I’m far better able to relax in the midst of having too much to do, as opposed to making relaxation dependent on first getting on top of it all (which I never will). Crucially, I’m also far better placed to actually do things – the productive and good-citizen things that were the focus of all this angst in the first place. Look: there they are, on the done list! Not many of them, perhaps, at least by comparison to the immeasurable galaxy of “things that need doing.”

Oldham’s problems dealing with Covid are being made harder by Whitehall diktat

Thousands of customers without power in Newbridge & hinterland.

Wagner is often called “the Sorcerer”, his sorcery residing in his gesamtkunstwerk, the melding of all the arts into a total work of art that overwhelms each of the senses simultaneously, overcoming rationality while tapping into myth, dream and the unconscious.

Whether it is Marx’s Capital, Acemoglu’s Institution, Hegel’s Zeitgeist, Diamond’s Gun, Germs and Steel, Ferguson’s Killer Apps, Onyeani’s Spider Web, Mills’ Leadership Choice or if you wish, the Makakalan Worldview theory, these have been staple food for historians and philosophers for centuries.

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Fandom Was Never Frivolous – The kitschy celebrations of the justice have always insisted, in their way, that the personal is judicial.

At a perilous time, the Toronto International Film Festival captured the zeitgeist

Film captures zeitgeist of Turkey as it undergoes social and political change.

The last schmalz (article title, unfortunately only in the print version, not the online version)

While Germany commemorated VE Day as a day of liberation, Brexiter Britain used the second world war, or rather an invented memory of it, to obscure the realities of a failing public health system, doubtless unaware that more have died from Covid-19 than in the blitz.

Much needed repairs on generator sets that power towns in the hinterland are among the immediate public infrastructure priorities of the new People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government.

Schools Minister Nick Gibb is also out and about in broadcast studios as part of today’s media blitz.

Coronavirus has confirmed teenage angst and abolished its joy

Team abseils Peterborough Cathedral to make ‘digital twin’

Biden rides high, but faces angst-filled party

When This Is Over certainly catches the zeitgeist with references to social distancing and finally getting a haircut, and its chorus of “Yeah we’re really going to the pub … to the pu-u-ub” will be ringing out from Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor to the Swordfish in Newlyn.

Ben and Jerry’s social media team taking on the home secretary over the issue of asylum seekers crossing the Channel is as zeitgeist as it comes – a multi-national corporation owned business still trying to cleave to its socially conscious roots earning praise for picking the humanitarian side in a seemingly thorny debate, using a Twitter thread to challenge the government.

China launched a propaganda blitz after media reports exposed mass detention and repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, according to a new report.

… It is one that can be used as a fig leaf for writers actually trying to avoid flak for their own opinions, but self-service in the media is hardly an original sin.

Why Londoners in the blitz accepted face masks to prevent infection – unlike today’s objectors

The first time I remember being conscious of frothy coffee as a ‘thing’ that was becoming entwined with notions of zeitgeisty British ‘productivity’ was towards the end of that matte black decade the 1980s.

… Ted Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, praised the series, saying : “73 million households around the world have made The Crown part of the global cultural zeitgeist. …

Unfortunately for those hoping for a bit of schadenfreude, the short answer is: No, not really.

Ja Ja Ding Dong is a quintessential example of schlager, one of the most maligned genres of European pop music.

Terms like “permissionless innovation” and “blitzscaling” entered the tech lexicon, and companies used lofty mission statements to paper over their more craven aspirations for dominance and profit.

A Government diktat that NHS hospitals should move hundreds of elderly patients to care homes has been branded “reckless” and blamed for the homes’ soaring coronavirus death rates.

… angst escalates online between Egyptians and Ethiopians

Britain’s universities increasingly look like the late Soviet economy, running down their social capital behind a glitzy screen of Potemkin imagery and glasnost-era statistics. Bits of it are locking up, alternately insulted and goaded by the gap between central government diktat and the reality on the ground.

With confirmed cases again on the rise – this time like never before –Americans can feel justified in their coronavirus angst. But who should be the target of their ire?

Just another day in the hinterland: From mythology to classic literature, women who have expressed desire or broken patriarchal rules have been banished, killed, mutilated, burnt at the stake as witches, driven to suicide or punished in some other way.

… this proposal is bad for residents in the Kington hinterland, bad for residents who will see increased traffic, bad for business and bad for the environment

If a classic American film is deemed to have fallen afoul of the current zeitgeist, then bye-bye. And since the zeitgeist is always in flux, sooner or later, your favorite films will be quietly cancelled.

Throughout the meal [with Conrad Black] we argued about everything, such was the divergence in our opinions, our beliefs, and our very weltanschauung.

At the time this claim was made, the government’s “official” published count of Covid-19 deaths was slightly under the number of deaths during the Blitz, although the numbers are very similar. The true number of deaths related to Covid-19 is likely to be higher than the toll during the Blitz.

Before the second world war, remembering history served only to glorify nations, to stir up revanchism or to sanctify heroes. Then Germany invented Vergangenheitsbewältigung …
… In Germany, those who follow the crowd are called Mitläufer…

Gillian Tett, Editor-at-large and Chair of the Editorial Board at the Financial Times, also joined the meeting, remarking on the sea change underway in the business community. “Today we are seeing absolutely every single C-suite focused on stakeholders, in the sense they have to talk to not just their shareholders,” she said. “There is a zeitgeist shift going on.”

SF’s Zeitgeist reopens Friday with ‘Zeit booths’

The North Sydney pool saga continues … The subject of their angst … is the submission of a new plan for the proposed $60 million North Sydney Olympic Pool redevelopment.

We know that it has been an historical figure that has caused the black community quite a lot of angst over the last couple of years.

He seems unmoved by, though not ignorant of, the huge Historikerstreit bedevilling his subject, the longest running of any excepting that on the causes of the First World War.

Angered by Dominic Cummings, and exasperated by diktats on school openings, councils are asserting themselves after being bypassed and ignored.

We know travel plans are impacted right now. But to fulfill your wanderlust, we’ll continue to share stories that can inspire your next adventure.

The concept, devised by the consultants Quickborner, was called Burolandschaft – office landscaping.

Bürolandschaft: how the way we work has shaped the office

If a Cummings doppelgänger ended up as being England’s most important export northwards, then a newly-independent Scotland wouldn’t end up looking very different after all.

“The EFL’s latest guidance comes as no surprise – but has rightfully caused angst among some clubs.

‘A Kafkaesque nightmare’: the survival guide helping condemned estates beat the bulldozers

Bundesliga: Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund impress ahead of Klassiker

… the über-message to the public to “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”.

Spitfires flew overhead to mark his 100th birthday. Mentions of Winston Churchill and the blitz are two a penny.

Anthea Turner has been forced to postpone her wedding in Italy this autumn due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but surprisingly admits she’s ‘not in any angst’ about the change of plans.

The latest results from Empathy’s Covid-19 Tracking Research highlights the angst shoppers are experiencing when grocery shopping during COVID-19

“My father confiscated my laptop:” junior bankers’ WFH angst

More often than not, I search for romance books that are low on the angst. Angsty circumstances sometimes make me nervous.

Now, with virus deaths topping 5,000, state leaders and health experts are urging restraint amid growing angst among businesses owners and residents over when and how the economic restrictions will be lifted.

… dubious comparisons with Spitfire production or the Blitz have undoubtedly adversely affected Britain’s response to the pandemic.

The outcome of the negotiations will therefore be a matter of realpolitik, not of a quasi-theological notion of ‘sovereign equals’ nor of a fantasy that some system of rules and rights governs what kinds of deals the EU does or does not do.

How does Sheen do that thing where he looks nothing whatsoever like the person he’s meant to be playing even as he becomes their doppelgänger?

Each of the three hubs has a hinterland extending into neighbouring regions in Latin America, East Central Europe, Africa and across Asia.

There is an old Westminster story about Ed Miliband that tells us a little of the second coming of Labour’s one-time wunderkind.

Quarantine rivalries: forget blitz spirit, everyone has started petty lockdown feuds

Why did those books seem so urgent, so indispensable at the time? Was it because they coincided fleetingly with the zeitgeist, or do they embody something more robust and enduring? How will history judge them?

We should be more like Germany, say tabloids who were still making Achtung Panzer jokes three weeks ago …

… Simon Williams, a senior editor for the Daily Express who has never put Germany on a front-page without a shitty pun about the Blitz, was one of many to lambast Boris Johnson for not emulating those “sensible forward-planners across the Rhine”. He went on, “I drive an Audi, so I know all about Vorsprung durch Technik. …

The arrival of Philip Lee, the former Conservative MP for Bracknell, however, was for some Lib Dem activists a bridge too far. Lee abstained on the 2013 equal marriage act and his voting record is a source of angst among Lib Dems, although Lee has convinced the leadership of his bona fides and settled nerves by agreeing to meet LGBT activists at the conference in Bournemouth.

It [neoliberalism] has failed on its own terms, and in many other ways. Far from creating general prosperity, as it promised, growth has been significantly slower in the neoliberal era than it was in preceding decades, and most of its fruits have been gathered by the rich. Far from stimulating an enterprise economy, it has created a gilded age for rent-seekers. Far from eliminating bureaucracy, it has created a Kafkaesque system of mad diktats and stifling control. It has fomented ecological, social, political, economic and financial crises, culminating in the 2008 crash. Yet, perhaps because its opponents have failed to produce a new, compelling story of their own, it still dominates our lives.

Zebra shot dead after jaunt on German autobahn

In his controversial article “What if we stopped pretending?” published by The New Yorker magazine recently, acclaimed novelist Jonathan Franzen referred to the looming climate “apocalypse”, asserting that, to prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it. Naturally, it caused quite a stir among the climate-change vanguard. Some accused Franzen of scaremongering, saying it would drive people to anxiety or paralysis, thereby hindering action. Others felt it essential to people understanding just how bad the crisis is – and that this justified the tone of the story. The irony is that disagreement about the merits of the article seemed to cause more angst than its subject matter. Actually, while it’s easy to pick fault with some of the facts and suggested actions (as many people have) the article is fairly balanced.

Zoom out from both stories and ask yourself a question: would a government that had a serious plan to circumvent the Benn Act and avoid a Brexit extension be briefing that it is so hard that even the Queen will tremble before its knowledge of the British constitution, that Merkel has insisted that the UK will never leave the EU unless Northern Ireland says in a customs union, and that Boris Johnson admits in writing that Kraftwerk are better than the Beatles? Aren’t these the actions of an administration whose eyes have moved from the question of doing Brexit on 31 October to avoid blame for when it doesn’t happen?

INEOS, which is owned by Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest man, appeared to spare no expense when it came to either the groundbreaking science or the marketing blitz leading up to the event.

OMG, M8: check out BMW’s luxury ringmeister

Dominic Cummings is using political blitzkrieg to tear down UK institutions.

This is part of a Kafkaesque financial shell game that has played out since the 2008 financial crisis.

The original publication of The War of the Worlds was like a bombshell to an angst-ridden Britain suspicious of its neighbours. Now, why might the BBC consider a new adaptation so timely?

Doppelganger domains are clones of legitimate domains but with a very slight difference…

… you can’t take a train all the way to the Amazon, but reporting on the front line of climate change is just as important as covering the institutional stuff. Jon Watts literally took days to get to “Forest COP” on the Iriri river deep in the Brazilian hinterland.

Charles Dickens is credited with pretty much inventing Christmas as it’s celebrated in contemporary Britain. In the 1850s, using his journal of nascent gemütlichkeit, Household Words, Dickens pushed good cheer, holly and mistletoe, plum puddings with silver sixpences in them, jolly japes, wrap culture – and all the rest of this confected festival of the familial.

‘The Michelangelo of kitsch’: the restoration of outsider architect Bruce Goff

“It is still unclear,” the New Statesman politics team’s very own cherubic wunderkind writes, “just what the Prime Minister is willing to compromise on in order to fulfil his pledge to have a trade deal signed, sealed and delivered by December.”

But there was no denying the mood of angst that prevailed in the conference hall, and the sense that new centres of disruptive decision making were emerging to which the west, and especially Europe, were too slow to adapt.

The most innovative and zeitgeisty dictionary additions are highlighted in quarterly press releases about dictionary revisions, perhaps in hope of viral attention.

Man who spent years telling ‘Remoaners’ that Britain survived the Blitz just panic-bought 400 toilet rolls

During the Cold War, the Stasi perfected techniques of psychological warfare known as Zersetzung, sometimes translated as ‘disintegration’.

Her final biography, published last year, was of Walter Gropius, Bauhaus founder, which returned MacCarthy to her original metier.

Did Meghan know that who she is did not ever matter? That she would never be allowed to impose her own “style” – that is, herself – on the monarchy, with its spin of fake humility and an eternal Blitz spirit? Today’s manifestation was the Mail on Sunday headline: “Queen: I Won’t Let Virus Stop Me Doing My Duty”.

10 references at London Review of Books

When ‘Britain’ existed as a part of a larger whole, these confected everyday dramas of country folk had a pleasing unreality – but now it stands alone, the sunny uplands of Borsetshire have become everyone’s hinterland, while you no longer need a radio of any sort to hear the cheesy ‘Doo-d’dooo-d’doo-d’doo, doo-d’dooo-d’doo-d’dooooo!’ of British nationalism.

The ‘Blitz Spirit’ won’t protect Britain from the Coronavirus

The cultural producer’s dilemma – even with the West End theatres’ lights dimmed, and Amazon and Netflix’s streaming reduced to a mere piddle – is whether to retool for the zeitgeist, or double-down on the idea that art is timeless and universal.

This time there was no daily Downing Street press conference. Not even an ersatz People’s PMQs with spoon fed set ups from Classic “Let the old and the vulnerable die” Dom.

The European elections of 2019 produced a surge of support for Green politics across the Union, with Germany’s The Greens capturing the zeitgeist with a doubling of their vote share.

That Zeitgeist of gloomy resignation is precisely why a new volume by Patrick Milton, Michael Axworthy, and Brendan Simms [Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East] is such a refreshing contribution to the literature on conflict resolution in the Middle East.

The page was cached a week before Zimmer did his original side-by-side post having apparently discovered his doppelgänger.

Autobahn speed limit requires further review, insurers say

Forecasters have attributed the unseasonably warm weather to a meteorological pattern called the Foehn Effect

Germany draws flak after record arms sales defy limit on exports

With much of Europe still stuffed full of turkey, stollen and panettone, here’s a taste of the tense political climate in another part of the world.

V Fest mission statement: To encourage and motivate people to love and respect our planet; to take better care of both our planet and ourselves; and to adhere to a vegan and eco-friendly lifestyle as much as possible.

Fighting fatbergs: ‘This is now a huge environmental issue’

It is not necessary to know how to spell Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to recognise the Fascist predisposition engendered by today’s turbocharged capitalism.

I began to realise that a V10 is better than a bicycle and that having fun at 180 mph is more important than having angst about plankton.

Al-Fayed installed a kitsch golden memorial to his son, Dodi Fayed, who died in a car crash with Princess Diana at the close of the last century, at the base of the shop’s Egyptian Escalators.

Today is – thanks be to God and all that is holy – the last day of the worst general election in recorded human history, and indeed perhaps the worst thing of any kind to have happened in the UK since the Blitz.

It could be that Corbyn-the-leveller sees his monotone as a sort of tonal equivalent to the society he seeks to create – but really, if he wants to out-bloke Johnson (and behind him, the blokemeister general, Nigel ‘two pints of bitter and a packet of fags’ Farage), he needs to pay close attention to the way people really speak.

Oh-so-sweet schadenfreude

Fork out to pork out: Germany’s ‘schnitzel alert’ echoes around Europe

Johnson⁩ to blitz seats in Labour heartlands

‘The Michelangelo of kitsch’: the restoration of outsider architect Bruce Goff

“It is still unclear,” the New Statesman politics team’s very own cherubic wunderkind writes, “just what the Prime Minister is willing to compromise on in order to fulfil his pledge to have a trade deal signed, sealed and delivered by December.”

… there was no denying the mood of angst that prevailed in the conference hall, and the sense that new centres of disruptive decision making were emerging to which the west, and especially Europe, were too slow to adapt.