hamogles

  Especially gumpf that is near impossible to understand. When it mentions an exception for example it's not clear whether the exception applies to that sub section or the whole thing or something else entirely.   I wonder how many people get caught out because they misinterpreted something opaque.

https://reopen.europa.eu   That website is nothing for the faint hearted.   Oodles of legalese gobbledeygook rather than straight concise answers.   Can we not have a website where you preselect things like nationality, whether you are on 1, 2 or 3G, where you are going and whether you are going by car, train, bus, plane or whatever and it simply tells you what you need to bring.

  Not really. I got on the plane without having my paperwork checked.   Maybe people less honest than myself might not bother with the paperwork next time?

  I think your mileage may vary.   I was in Spain not long ago flying back to Zürich. I had checked in online, or thought I had. Only I didn't actually open the confirmation email which actually said that i was not checked in and that I had to turn up at the airport early to do that.   And as I am one of those people who hates airports, I turned up as late as humanely possible only to realize this problem.   And then panic.   I rushed to the Swiss counter only to discover the line went right out of the check-in area and around two corners. It appeared everybody wanted to be on that one flight. There was only one counter open and the person was meticulously taking his time and scanning every document, sometimes twice or three times because the scanner wasn't working very well. Several people didn't have the right paperwork and the person was doing their best to help these people, but one or two were sent away.    Time passed and people got nervous. As this was a once a week flight, I think the airline got nervous too about having to rebook people should they miss the flight. So a second desk was opened about 20 minutes prior to departure and the person there simply said, have you got your certificate? Good, here is your boarding pass.   So ironically, people without the right paperwork who turned up early were sent home, and others who may have had incorrect paperwork but came late were nodded through.   That's the new COVID normal for you.        

  Profit margins need to have proportionality to risk. The auto industry is high risk as it has a very front-heavy cost structure when you consider the years of R&D plus the costs of setting up a new factory that means you are pissing tons of cash into the wind before you have generated a single sale. Furthermore, sales projections are highly speculative and can easily be damaged by disruptive competition or even supply chain disruptions as we are seeing right now. Especially as many auto manufacturers have been squeezing their suppliers for margin over the last decades and forced consolidation onto them. The only hope is to make up for this in volume, and as the market overall is not going to be growing, it's going to be a dog eats dog scenario.   If you want to invest in auto stocks right now, go ahead. But I'm pulling out while the price is still good.

  Most people who fight for freedom in their country do so out of loyalty and love for that country. Not because they dislike it or it means nothing to them. So yes, treason can be a very loyal thing under certain circumstances. Most countries have in their history people who fought against some oppressive regime, and thus committed treason, but are in hindsight considered heroes, regardless of whether they succeeded or failed.   If you didn't care about your country and the plight of the people in it you would be more likely to simply walk away than to attempt to bring about change. Most people don't struggle for things they don't believe in.   People can be mistaken or misguided of course. But that's a different discussion. That's why I said that struggle for things they believe in rather than saying, that they struggle for what is right.

  That would be partisanship.   Being loyal means loyalty to those elements of the culture and way of life that define it and make it likeable.   This can be a mix of things.   It can also be different from place to place and individual to individual. But there will always be a certain intersection of aspects that most people would agree upon.   If there isn't then essentially you are saying a country has no defining values. In which case I wouldn't be loyal to it either as I wouldn't see what would be worth protecting on a country level. Such a country would do well to break apart into smaller countries that do have a graspable and justifiable identity.  This is what the Soviet empire did, or the British empire.

  so if voters walk over from the SPD to the AFD but that doesn't change the left/right balance, then either the AFD is more left than you admit or the SPD is more right than you admit?

  A country is not the same thing as its government. Being loyal to Germany does not mean uncritically or mindlessly doing as the government tells you (for a start that would mean you would always vote for the people currenty in power - such people do exist, but you would hardly call them patriots by any stretch of semantics).   I think being loyal to Germany means being loyal to the people who live there and their values and way of life. I think if Germany should cease to be democratic, then people who are genuinely loyal would stand up for what was right and fight back. Disloyal people would hide or walk away.   Ditto for any other country.    

  AFD is not a classical right-wing party in that they are not necessarily low tax and pro business but have lots of spending ideas and they managed to attract a lot of dissatisfied SPD voters, especially in the East.   So if your statement is true that the right / left balance did not shift despite the huge walkover of SPD voters, then something somewhere is seeing other right wing parties losing support to the left.   I also see lots of immigrants or second and third generation immigrants in SPD and Greens but struggle to think of many in the CDU or FDP, not even on a local level. And I don't think that's because they are being kept down but because they are not attracted to such parties in the first place. So I do think that immigration is bolstering the left.

  Overall the automotive industry has never been exceptionally profitable. If you look at all of automobile history and correct for inflation, the damage incurred by the numerous players who went broke more or less offsets any profits that were made.   I don't think that's ever going to change. The thing is that it's an industry that needs a lot of up-front high-cost investment that has to be offset against highly speculative sales predictions, while competition keeps margins low. Chinese manufacturers trying to break into the European and American market will ensure margins remain low for the forseeable future, just as Japanese manufacturers did during the 1980s.   I think, in the west at least, the automobile market has peaked and is in decline as urbanism means people are turning to things like car sharing or public transport instead. The electric car is just an attempt to slow down that trend and attract additional subsidies, but its not going to prevent the inevitable.   I for one am not putting any of my own money into automobile stocks.

  a lot of Irish people might disagree with that

  plus the genes that make the crop resisitant to pesticide are quick to hybridize out into wild plants and before you know it you have pesticide resistant super weeds. 

  yes, modern water melons are bigger, more watery and have blander taste than their predecessors.

  I don't think anybody in Germany marched against black people or for kicking foreigners out or against gay people. Definitely nobody within even the remotest striking distance of power.   But quite a few people from a party who will probably now come to power very soon did march for censorship and for shutting other people up.   So maybe it's good to check who is the greatest threat to democracy right now.