lilplatinum

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Posts posted by lilplatinum

  1. Posted

     

    I always think it's weird when someone says they don't like cats (or dogs). Ever since I was a little kid I've always had at least one cat and one dog.

     

    Yes, how weird to say you don't like a self centered, vain and lazy animal like a cat.

     

    Also, lots of people are allergic to the shitty little furballs.

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  4. Posted

    Hamburg was great to me, our "cultural experiences" (Hookers, astra in shitty bars, cocaine dealers) were all open for business on Sunday..

     

    If only the strip clubs on the reeperbahn that were open on Sunday served steak buffets like the classy strip clubs in America, then the problem of not being able to procure food on Sundays would have had a remedy...

     

    But seriously, I never felt a difference between a work life balance of people based on their mandatory day off, maybe because most people I know it didn't apply to - but it seemed no fundamentally different than back home. The big work life balance difference was the mandatory holiday, which I have no problem with as it is an actual counter to the problem of the US giving people 2 or less weeks off.

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  5. Posted

     

    It is a protection. Whether you want to be "protected" or not is the issue. The argument on whether to open shops or not does pertain mainly to shop workers and support personel like Hausmeisters or cleaners. The law itself applies to everyone. The law itself would have to be removed in order to make Sunday shopping possible. Which makes even a discussion of changing the law just for retail a discussion about all worker's rights.

    It is intended as a protection, in order for there to be a protection there has to be a damage it is protecting from. There is not much substantive evidence that, in modern society, having to work on a Sunday is a substantive harm. The only real effect this law has is essentially granting a minority portion of the population a special 'protection' that doesn't even necessarily address an injury.

     

    Regardless of the INTENT of the law, that is it's affect and it is hypocritical, narrowly applied to only really affect one group of people (retail sales), and idiotic.

     

    I agree with you that because of how its stated and because of German legal precedence it is not likely to change soon, but that is not the argument or discussion most of us are having. (And actually, maybe it could change - I am just not educated enough on German con law to judge one way or another, and I've seen too many American retards discussing their feeble grasp of Con Law to trust that anyone discussing German con law is going to be more expert about it than the ignorance that is usually waved about US questions).

     

     

    German Christianity far and wide does not actually contain the idiotic proscription against drinking. There's nothing hypocritical about it.

     

    The hypocricy was not in the imbibing of alcohol, but the hypocritical law enforcement. If it truly is a workers rights protection then surely your right to go get pissed at a beergarden should not be valued above that person's 'rights'.

     

    As for your thing about compromises and "enough is enough", that is equally ridiculous. The fact that it was the compromise that was made doesn't make it the best. Why not shut down restaurants and bars and just allow markets to be open. People wouldn't starve.

     

     

    Are you showing your puritan roots?

    See above, nothing to do with drinking and more to do with the cognitive dissonance of claiming this as a workers rights issues and then saying its okay to violate workers rights for puerile amusements on Sundays.

     

     

    As I said previously, each country has its quirks. It's just as easy to be amused by the fact that in the US it is quite easy to buy firearms while the exchange of money for sexual services between consenting adults is considered to be an issue for the district attorney.

    And you are welcome to discuss those issues on relevant US expat sites. Not sure what either of those things has to do with the price of tea in China.

     

     

    BTW, if we can go shopping on Sundays, why shouldn't I be able to get my car repaired or have may residents' parking pass prolonged as well?

     

    I don't know what a residents parking pass is, but I assume it would not make pecuniary sense for their office to be open on weekends, much like how even here in the US most non retail businesses close on weekends because weekend openings only help a variety of buisnesses.

     

    No problem with car repair on Sunday, I know a guy who ran a garage back in TX that did enough biz on weekends that he basically had 3 or 4 days off where he didn't have to work during the week.

     

    And, on that note, I am retiring from a thread from the first time in TT history - as it has become more circular than a non smoking thread.

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  6. Posted

     

    Well, just today I read that in the U.S. the Republicans have called upon the Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of President Obama's healthcare reform. So the argument "it's in the constitution" or, as needed, "it's anti-constitutional" isn't that outlandish in other countries either.

    No one in this thread has said it is an outlandish idea, it is just completely irrelevant in a discussion of if it is a good thing or bad thing. Most of us know that we have no political say in German politics and even if we did likely wouldn't change. That is why we are arguing what should be as opposed to what is (which is how most arguments go, because arguing normative statements is fairly boring).

     

    Incidentally, neither Republicans (thank God!) nor Democrats have the ability to call upon the Supreme Court to do a damn thing.

     

    Well, I guess they can call all they want but the Supreme court is not under their purvey. The SC gives cert to cases by their own perogative.

     

     

    Again, to all those who think that Sunday rest in today's Germany is mainly based on religious reasons: You're wrong. Here's an article explaining the Constiutional Court's decision: TAZ, "Karlsruhe stoppt 'Ökonomisierung'". I don't have time to translate, but the gist of this reasoning is that Sunday rest protects families and workers.

    Which is an idiotic line of reasoning, it only protects retail workers and their families, and operates under the faulty assumption that it is actually a protection.

     

     

    Overmore, a certain amount of "synchronic timing of social life" is important for the existance of organisations like clubs and parties and ultimately supports democracy in the sense of facilitating participation.

     

    But apparently not important enough that selfish hypocritical Germans should give up boozing it up at the kneipe on Jesus day...

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  8. Posted

    The slippery slope argument is kind of silly. Weekends don't become workdays for most people because most work is pretty much done on banking time and it doesn't make any sense to be open on the weekends. Plenty of other folks pick non office jobs that have funky schedules and which are allowed to work on sundays. All this law does when applied realistically is make service staff have a mandatory specific day off, regardless of if they would rather have a different one or not.

     

    Hell, the real people who could use some time off are the kiosk vendors that are in their store 7 days a week, but apparently they shouldn't be warrented the special 'protections' that register jockeys get.

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  9. Posted

    Venting is quite useful for people, which is why the internet exists. Well, for venting and porn.

     

    I am not starting up and organizing my own campaign because people already did it here and it isn't worth putting effort into changing a system in a country I stay only a month or two a year in.

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  15. Posted

    No one says that there can not be *anyone* who would be happy with shopping not being allowed on Sundays, just that there can not be *anyone with the capacity for rational thought or the slightest bit of empathy with people whose schedules might not be as mundane as their own* who would be happy with shopping not being allowed on Sundays.

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  16. Posted

     

    Massive fail here. Bavaria still has the old closing times of 8 p.m. Mon - Sat. If people considered this as an issue they could have a plebiscite on moving to a e.g. Hessen's 24/6 model with no problem at all. Apparently people aren't even bothered by the old and very restrictive regulation, though.

     

    Massive fail here. This thread is about Sunday shopping, not 24/6 shopping. As other Germans who are more knowledgeable about German constitutional law than me (and apparently you) have pointed out, the difficulty in changing to sunday shopping is based on an issue that cannot be changed by a plebiscite, even if a city such as Berlin which has different ideas of how it should be run compared to some rural dump would like to.

     

     

    point taken, but I'm still wondering what this has to do with freedom? So Germany has kept some old-fashioned traditions; doesn't decide every move it makes based on what might be economically productive. It doesn't mean you're not free to shop, you're just not free to shop on Sunday? I think I must still be missing something.

     

    The lack of freedom is that if you are a small business owner you are not allowed to ply your trade on Sunday, even if it would be in your pecuniary interest.

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  17. Posted

     

     

    What I do not quite get is why you move abroad in order to complain that "abroad" isn't a copy of home.

     

    What I do not quite get is why when you move abroad you are supposed to give up the right to criticize things you find wrong about a place you have lived, in many cases, for a long time. Apparently moving somewhere has to mean blind acceptance and agreement with every facet of daily life...

     

     

    Face it, if shopping hours were a big issue we would have seen a plebiscite on them in Bavaria. Most people seem to accept the status quo if not as desirable then at least as acceptable.

     

    As has been pointed out, the plebiscite would be irrelevant. There have been people who wanted these shopping hours and the archaic portion of the grundgesetz slapped them down, oder? Which I think is fucked up, since the civilized cities can choose the civilized method of functioning and the rural and southern shitholes can operate as if its 1800 - everone would win.

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  18. Posted

    Ha!

     

    http://www.vice.com/read/the-mercy-rule-tim-tebow-is-a-mildcat

     

     

    The most important thing to remember, as Tim Tebow's career makes its official transition into farce, is that it was already, and always, a comedy. It was a complicated one, but broadly comedic even as it resembled drama—as Tebow's Broncos backed, or lucked, or pratfell into one ungainly win after another; as Tebow's name was uttered every 41 seconds on ESPN, even if it meant leatherette error-puppet Skip Bayless was barging into Nissan commercials inna Kool-Aid Man stylee and howling invectives about Tebow's leadership; as the heft of the NFL commentariat wondered in earnest how much more it could possibly take for people to believe that this scatter-armed goofsteak might actually be Jesus Christ returned to earth as a scatter-armed goofsteak.

     

    This all was funny enough on its own, this steak-scented cuddle puddle of columnists, sports pundits, and grown-ass adults in jerseys, all humpily pondering the metaphysical implications of Tebow's 2-for-8, 69-yard passing performance against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 10 (a win!). It was made funnier still by the fact that Tebow, grinning anthropomorphized jug of whole milk from which flowed one-hopped passes, popular bible quotes, and Successories captions of self-praise for his own work ethic, was at the center of all this. This rectangular column of Wonder Bread pudding, at the center of all that. And now, with Tebow's reported trade to the New York Jets, at the center of something even bigger.

     

    In many ways, Denver was the ideal spot for Tebow, both since the Broncos were one of the reliably more competent teams in the NFL's crappiest division, and by dint of Broncos HQ’s proximity to the mile-high ops center of Tebow's own strain of perpetually aggrieved nu-Christianity: the world headquarters of noxious bedroom creepers Focus on the Family, the anti-everything politico-religious organization for which Tebow cut a few cornball anti-abortion television commercials, is in Colorado Springs, an hour or so's drive south of Denver.

     

    Denver's decision, earlier this week, to replace Tebow at quarterback with four-time MVP Peyton Manning was risky, in the sense that Manning has endured a handful of neck surgeries over the last year or so and hasn’t played in over a calendar year. It was not risky in the sense that Manning is an exponentially better quarterback than Tebow is now or is likely ever to be. (He would be so even if he had to play in a full neck brace while zipping around in a Jazzy motorized scooter.) Tebow's celebrity and running skills, in that order, made him appealing to the Jacksonville Jaguars, the sinus headache of a team that plays its mostly blacked-out home games in Tebow's hometown. That the Jaguars were outbid by the New York Jets—a talented but underachieving team comprised of reality show contestants and people too harrowingly sociopathic to survive even a Real Housewives vetting process, who are led by handsomely mediocre quarterback Mark Sanchez and a bellowing foot fetishist of a coach—was both puzzling and fascinating. It is also the perfect next act in the grand comedic epic that is The Tim Tebow Story.

     

    Provided the deal goes through—and there are some clauses in Tebow's contract that could make a trade to any team difficult to swing—one of the NFL's coarsest and most demanding fan bases, covered with pathologically undermine-y glee by the nation's vilest and most giddily destructive tabloids, will get the player for which they are absolutely least-suited. The Jets, who started bailing on each other about two-thirds of the way through last season, will have as one of their two quarterbacks the universe's greatest existing magnet for cunty anonymous quotes from exasperated teammates in Tebow; Sanchez, for all his mediocrity, has already proven formidable in that category, as well.

     

    Tebow, for his part, will work very hard and play quarterback as well as he can—which is better than some NFL backups, though less effective than Sanchez—and, more importantly, live out for real the fed-to-the-lions martyrdom fantasies of a prickly, paranoiac fanbase intent on reading every criticism of his falling-down-the-stairs passing mechanics as an anti-Christian hate crime. And they may almost sort of be right this time—the Post's sports page, and Jets-world, actually are as debauched as Tebow's more politicized superfans believe the entire nation to be. The better part of the Tebow mystique has involved making him some sort of avatar—for conservatives, both the football types that can't process a quarterback better at running than passing; and the religious kind, who boil teachings of Christian love into adversarial culture war junk, and so shrink many of the world’s better ideas into spew better befitting their small hearts. As a quarterback, in any uniform, Tebow is not much. But as a character in the ongoing black comedy that is American life, he just got that much more interesting.

     

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  20. Posted

     

    I suspect that Sunday shopping will, at some point, come to be here in Germany, but I also suspect that will be around the same time that some other countries decided to close the shops again and make Sunday the old fashioned "day of rest", as has been discussed in Ireland already

     

    Doubutful that any question that isn't a regressive religious society like Ireland is going to make steps backwards. (Even the backwards religious shithole parts of the US haven't..)

     

     

    I find it a strange logic to say: These people already have to work on Sundays, so why should this other bunch of people, the shop assistants, have it any better. All should be equally miserable!

    I find it stranger logic to say that shop assistants are somehow afforded some magic protection that the poor turkish kiosk guy who works 7 days a week and never sees his family doesn't.

     

     

    For me, if general Sunday shopping was introduced, it wouldn't be a catastrophe, but please don't make it look like people are denied a human right when shops are closed on Sundays. I don't see shopping on Sundays as progressive.

     

    I never claimed people are denied a right, I am just mocking the hipocracy of people who pretend to care about the workers rights when they step all over other service staff's rights any time they get gas, get a snack, or do anything that requires someone working on sunday. If you are going to use that line of reasoning you need consistency.

     

     

    Nonsense. The law isn't set up to give one group of people the day off, the law was set up to give as many people as possible the day off. I'm surprised that you took that line of reasoning. The entire country, with exceptions that are supposed to be necessities, both for emergencies and cultural value, is supposed to have the day off. And the courts have clarified the reasons why time and time again. Those reasons are sound.

    No, no they are not sound, nor are they consistent in their application.

     

     

    "As long as basic hours are set and people are not forced to work 80 hours a week without proper compensation" Exactly. Without these types of laws, that's exactly what would happen. The 40 hour week doesn't occur because employers have somehow become "nice." Other worker benefits, doubly so.

    The 40 hour work week makes sense, mandatory days off for pretty much a few industries only do not.

     

     

    If they could they overwork people and pay them less, they would. You were raised in an era where the bottom line of people getting screwed by their employers is so much better

    It's not "retarded" that it's not up to the Länder. It's a Federal Law, and placed at the Federal Level, it's harder to change and thus a form of protecting people's interests. The people who wrote the law decided based on popular opinion that a day of rest should exist. It should also be legally workable. It should give as many the day off as possible. It should not destroy the ability of people to cope with emergencies. It should not be culturally damaging. It should be protected. That gave us the current structure of the law. It is actually quite simple, and certainly logical. QED

     

    Your argument is that it is logical because it is currently the law and difficult to change. That doesn't really follow. You shouldn't use the term QED when you don't understand how to construct a logical argument. The fact that it was implemented as a form of protecting people's interests does not mean that it is succeeding in doing so. The fact that it is difficult to change does not give it any inherent worth.

     

    If the purpose of the law is to give as many the day off as possible it doesn't even remotely reach it's application. I can't count how many Sundays I was stuck in the office in Germany, and I can't count how many frivolous hours I spent getting pissed at a bar on Sunday forcing people to work for me.

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  21. Posted

     

    The older I get the more I appreciate how Sunday structures public live.

     

    Amazing how ubiquitous this generality seems to be world wide, the older people get the more miserable they get and the more they agree with using legalities to force other people into structuring their lives in a way that they approve of.

     

    post-20501-13322853522972.jpg

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  22. Posted

     

    It's the same with smoking, isn't it?

    Not at all.

     

     

    What is your view on the ban on smoking in bars?

    I think it is rubbish but it was argued on a completely different form of logic (health risk to the employees of the bar) than this arbitrary certain jobs shouldn't have to work on sunday nonsense.

     

     

    I (as a non-smoker) am being "forcibly inconvenienced" to inhale cancer-causing smoke when I'm inside a bar as you (the smoker) are enjoying "a particular leisure activity" (smoking). With the smoking ban smokers are forcibly inconvenienced to leave the bar for a few minutes so that I can enjoy my particular leisure activity (i.e enjoying a smoke free environment), and that's fine by me.

    Once again, they are not forced to leave the bar so that you can enjoy your alternative method of self destruction, they are forced to do it because studies have found second hand smoke inside enclosed areas damaging other peoples health.

     

     

    I agree with you. You live in the country and I live in the city.

     

    If you live somewhere where Sunday is dead quiet and no one is on the road, it is hard to qualify that as "the city".

     

    Shopping didn't put much of a dent in Hamburg activity during the day, tons of people still out and about, making noise at cafes and bars and crowding the fucking alster and the elbe beach clubs and everything else... All Sunday shopping bans did was made Saturday shopping more miserable since every fucking person was trying to get it done at the same time.

     

    Jesus help you if you made the mistake of going to Ikea on Samstag.. (as if going to Ikea wasn't bad enough out of general principle)

     

     

    Work on Sundays has an impact on your social life, for families as well as other people, because it is much easier to meet and plan activities if one knows that Sunday is free for all. Or should we choose our friends according to whether their free day of the week is the same as ours?

     

    Either you think that cash register operators somehow deserve some protection that millions of people who still have to work on sundays don't or you think that all these other jobs should be also forcibly ended on sunday.

     

    Which one is it, or did you pick the third route of cognitive dissonance.

     

     

    While we are at it, why don't we all return to working on Saturdays (like they used to do until the 60ies) and then also Sundays. We can have another weekday off.

     

    Plenty of people manage like that too. As long as basic hours are set and people are not forced to work 80 hours a week without proper compensation, then there is no reason one special group of people should get this mandatory day off that they may or may not want.

     

    Its kind of retarded that it is in the constitution and not up to the basic areas to vote on what they want since there is no logical argument that it is some violation of worker's rights, and to attempt such an argument would also require shutting down pretty much every non critical service in society on Sundays or wallow in massive hypocrisy.

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  23. Posted

     

    I just like the fact that there is one day where (almost) nothing can be done. It really does feel like a day off. I find walking around the quiet streets in the city center on a Sunday very relaxing.

     

    So other people should have to be forcibly inconvenienced so you can enjoy a particular leisure activity... Nice.

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  24. Posted

     

    So the cops, fire fighters, train drivers, taxi drivers, waiters, bartenders, tourist shop people, pilots, air traffic controllers, gas station clerks aren't forced to work on Sundays?

    No, they choose to take those jobs, just like all of us choose jobs with hours that work for us.

     

     

    Cash register monkeys? Really? Is that what you think of the people who serve you every day?

    I worked at a grocery store as a kid, thats all the job is.

     

     

    Not everyone gets to choose how to spend their Sundays. I, for one, am glad that I'm not forced to work

    Pretty much everyone chooses how to spend their Sundays. Good for you that you aren't forced to work, forced labor probably sucks. But plenty of people do have jobs on Sundays and there is no reason a cashier should be exempt because of some ridiculous religious law - why are the special?

     

     

    I agree that stores being open doesn't make it obligatory to shop. It's just that after 20 years adjusting to the fact, I don't miss it.

    Good for you, many people do miss it and find it ridiculous, which is why surely but steadily stores manage to claw more and more into the 21st century..

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  25. Posted

     

    So if you want to have shops open on sundays others want to run their car repair shop in your street on a sunday , don't complain about the noise then please.

    Fortunately we aren't miserable Germans, so not complaining is not a chore for us.

     

     

    And factories would have the right to work, and so on .

     

    And yet here in America where you can shop on Sundays factories are still closed on the weekends.

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