Electronic tagging for the unemployed

Christean Wagner, Justice Minister in the German state of Hessen, has suggested that electronic tagging will offer the long-time unemployed the chance to return to a regular daily routine and find employment.

Kritik an Forderung nach Fußfesseln für Arbeitslose

That doesn't make any sense. Christean Wagner must be some kind of nut-case right winger. This is the CDU?

Fußfesseln-sounds kinky.
Didn't an unemployed person in Munich win 2.2 million in the lotto recently? Since the money they were using to gamble with came from the government, shouldn't they get the cash or at least part of it?

Some people in Germany would be very happy living in North-Korea and would find Crazy Kim an intelligent conversationalist it seems.. Fascho-stuff. Orwell says "hi".

I've heard that one of the biggest problems of Langzeitarbeitslosen is that they can't manage to responsibly show up to work on time every day. This electronic monitoring could help.

I knew a girl who had three alarm clocks and consistently slept through all of them and had to have people come over to her dorm room and bang on her door to get her every morning for class or she wouldn't make it. This was during the six week preparation course for the German exam required for studying at the Uni Regensburg, Fall 1991. She flunked the course, so she had to spend one semester just in German language classes, then take the course again. She flunked it again, so she wasn't allowed to study anything at the Uni anymore and got a semester full of nothing, so she went traveling around instead. Wonder what ever happened to her. Anyway I imagine that such an electronic thing could have helped her without annoying all the other people who lived in her dorm and who had to get her all the time.

So what...

If your late for work does it giv'ya a 10k volt shock to the heart to "Wake you up" or what... Now that would be intresting..

@Gen

i don't want to be accused of being a fascist, but sounds to me like your friend just could not be arsed going to school.

Wow, and I thought the states are bad for fingerprinting in airports. What a bizarre proposal. Would there be some sort of real-time employee tracking on a map, like they do for airplanes?

Edit: removed dubious humor map

excellent idea, it could be like logan's run, and when they reach 40 with no job the chip explodes or somefink

I rather thought the thing would vibrate to get your attention, didn't think they had electric shock capability...

and she wasn't my friend either, she was too weird, nobody liked her. I think there was really something wrong with her, and I really think the electronic thing would help. Without shocks of course. Just -- an alarm that you really cannot ignore.

Uh..sounds to me like your friend was a screw up who had no business being there in the first place. She obviously didn't take it seriously or she would have made more of an effort.

Gen, you have got to be kidding. The girl or her parents could get her an alarm watch or such like that if they think it will help but do you really want the government forcing tracking shackles on law-abiding people? I'm sorry, but that is really a screw loose proposition. Anyway, the things don't buzz, they just report your whereabouts to the spies.

Newspaper silly season has started early!
BUT, The Hessen CDU is fairly influential on the right of German politics.

Maybe it won't be shackles but forcing the unemployed to sign on every day or something? Watch this space...

No, but this sort of talk really gets up my nose. I mean, god forbid your company ever rationalizes your job, Gen, so that you can be shackled yourself. Maybe they ought to just brand the losers with 'useless human' across their forehead?

hello Kat, thanks, I was downsized more than a year ago and have in fact been unemployed ever since.

I think the english speaking employed of munich need electrical shock collars for everytime their browser accesses toytowngermany.com

I'm sure Herr Wagner will then come up with some additional ideas after tagging... like maybe the next step would be to have those with "undesirable" tracking patterns in some kind of "work camp" (hey and why not have a sign out front saying "Work will set you free"?)...

But then those camps will fill up and they'll have a storage problem... I'm sure Herr Wagner will have a "final solution" in mind.