The Germans

Tancred

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Well I'm not overly criticising them for it. I can accept that overall they are very productive, but their analysis of the 'rules', the stretching of them was (I thought) rather obsessional....

My boss, at one stage, was French! I couldn't abide the "J'Accuse" system by which the French work. If the Sales Director said to him (say) "Our sales are low because IT messed everything up...." then he would always assume that was God's honest truth, until the theory was disproved beyond all reasonable doubt. It's a very difficult management system for us British to work under.

Interesting. There was once a French guy in my team and he was generally a very good worker, but he expected everyone to be perfect and wouldn't hesitate to blame others when something went wrong, covering his rear end extremely well.

I also worked in Milan for 6 months in the late 90s. Everyone trotted in at 10.30am and you were allowed to smoke in the office (I'm sure it's illegal now). Going home time was around 6.30pm. Supper before 8pm was regarded as a definite no-no; only foreigners ate that early.

Tancred

ibizafan wrote: »

I have a very close German friend who I am visiting for the second time at the end of the month. Last time I stayed, I came away feeling that Germany is the only European country I could live in apart from the U.K. She lives in a small town near Stuttgart and I loved every minute of my stay. The people were very friendly and there seemed quite a lot of similarities between our countries. They even have a lot of the same T.V programmes! Things that impressed me were:
1, They seem much more interested in leading a healthy lifestyle and cooking from scratch. Not many ready meals to be seen there, and lots more shopping for fresh food. They also seem a lot more active than us.
2, They are far less obsessed with "stuff" than us. Didn't see anyone glued to i-phones and I got the impression that they just aren't so interested in them and various other gadgets.
3, I never saw any threatening, drunk groups of youths hanging around at night. People seem to have more respect generally for each other.
4, The towns just seemed cleaner and better kept than a lot of places here. Perhaps people have more pride in their country, I wonder.

The key thing here is the Germans don't have the chav culture that has plagued Britain since the 80s. Anti-social behaviour is stamped on very early and very quickly. Of course it's different in the immigrant areas, but the Germans as a people would never tolerate the type of low level criminality that is sadly common in many parts of the UK.

ibizafan wrote: »

Of course, I've only seen a snapshot of life in a middle class area, so can't comment on life in an inner city. I like their idea of not channelling everyone to university, but giving them other skills. No wonder their manufacturing industry thrives.
Their main bugbear in that area were the Russian immigrants who they seemed to think mainly lived off benefits. There was even some joke that went along the lines of that if a Russian said that he had had a German cat at some time, he was entitled to live in Germany! Sounds similar to some of the myths that go around here. Expect I will be questioned a lot about Prince George when I get there as they seem to be very interested in the Royal family!

Many Russians in Germany are actually ethnic Germans who lived in Russia since the 1700s and were entitled to 'return' to Germany under German nationality law. The real problem are the Turks, who are very numerous and came as 'guest workers' but never went back.

globalds

I watched with interest the Program on Germany last night and could not help but see lots of similarities with time I spent in Japan.
Especially trying to solve this efficiency thing.

There is an unwritten code of purchasing loyalty ,at all levels ..This directly affects how profitable businesses look ..It might be more expensive buying bottled German water than evian ...but that money keeps swilling right back around the German economy ..
How long that loyalty will last I am not sure ..Maybe when Germans start buying foreign made Police cars and most taxis are foreign we will be able to point at that as the change over ..
Or maybe like Japan it will never happen ..I see a country that has worked out how to look efficient even if it nothing like it ..Just keep your own cash cash going round and round your own economy ..And tell the fools like the English that it has nothing to do with the type of car , water or televisions they buy.

John1993_2

Tancred wrote: »

The key thing here is the Germans don't have the chav culture that has plagued Britain since the 80s.

Your part of Britain perhaps.

If you were to get off your !!!!, make something of yourself, and find a way to live in one of the more successful parts of the country, you'd find no chavs here either.

Just because you live in a sewer, please don't assume that we all do.

And yes, I've lived in Germany, too. I worked for both DB and Dresdner in past years, in Frankfurt. I find it hard to believe that anyone with knowledge of life in both countries could make such crass generalizations as you have above.

Tancred

John1993 wrote: »

Your part of Britain perhaps.

If you were to get off your !!!!, make something of yourself, and find a way to live in one of the more successful parts of the country, you'd find no chavs here either.

Just because you live in a sewer, please don't assume that we all do.

And yes, I've lived in Germany, too. I worked for both DB and Dresdner in past years, in Frankfurt. I find it hard to believe that anyone with knowledge of life in both countries could make such crass generalizations as you have above.

It's the truth, not a crass generalization. You sound like a pompous fool - probably because you are one. :rotfl:

I live in a decent area with a high number of professional people - my comment has nothing to do with where I live. The fact that this country has a high number of dysfunctional families and feral youths who seem to spend most of their time causing trouble.

Here is an example: http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/Army-Corporal-81-attacked-outside-Grimsby-home/story-19613864-detail/story.html#axzz2bKGR3ZQV

This is the 'real' England, not your pretty village in the Surrey stockbroker belt. Anyway, you get the posh chavs as well - 'hooray henrys' - they were a real pain when I was at university. They were always pi**ed as farts.

Most of the anti-social trouble in Germany is generated by immigrants.

Jonbvn

Radiantsoul wrote: »

That is true if you live in flats in urban areas.

I am currently in Geneva. It certainly was not true early this morning.;) Although, I understand that the French speaking part of CH is far more relaxed on such issues.

Generali

movilogo wrote: »

May be an urban legend, but I heard in Switzerland, after certain time in night and till before morning, you can't even flush toilet as its sound may wake your neighbors up.

As we(e) say in areas that are short of water:

If it's yellow, let it mellow.
If it's brown, flush it down.

ukcarper

Tancred wrote: »

It's the truth, not a crass generalization. You sound like a pompous fool - probably because you are one. :rotfl:

I live in a decent area with a high number of professional people - my comment has nothing to do with where I live. The fact that this country has a high number of dysfunctional families and feral youths who seem to spend most of their time causing trouble.

Here is an example: http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/Army-Corporal-81-attacked-outside-Grimsby-home/story-19613864-detail/story.html#axzz2bKGR3ZQV

This is the 'real' England, not your pretty village in the Surrey stockbroker belt. Anyway, you get the posh chavs as well - 'hooray henrys' - they were a real pain when I was at university. They were always pi**ed as farts.

Most of the anti-social trouble in Germany is generated by immigrants.

I used to live in one of the more expensive villages in the Surrey stock broker belt and still have connections to it.

The village is not immune to anti social behaviour and a couple of weeks ago there was a mass fight on the local council estate supposedly with baseball bats being used.

Tancred

ukcarper wrote: »

I used to live in one of the more expensive villages in the Surrey stock broker belt and still have connections to it.

The village is not immune to anti social behaviour and a couple of weeks ago there was a mass fight on the local council estate supposedly with baseball bats being used.

It doesn't surprise me, sadly.

John1993_2

Tancred wrote: »

This is the 'real' England, not your pretty village in the Surrey stockbroker belt.

Again, you make assumptions that don't match reality, so look foolish. I live in Canary Wharf, not Surrey.

I fulley expect you to make yet another ignorant generalisatin about what this shows about me.

I'll say it again, if you are seeing disfunctional families, an societal decay, then you aren't doing as well as you'd ike us to think.

Work harder, work smarter, move to somewhere nicer, and you'll see.

And tell me, which part of Germany did you live in that you found to be such a paradiise by comparison?

Please don't tell me that you "know" it's better without having lived there...

Edited to add, if you want to see discussion of the chav problem in Germany,

http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t163858-45.html

Which incudes the quote "If you watched German TV randomly, you'd know they exist! Just watch those daytime TV "real life" shows on RTL or something. I'm thinking in particular of that one that's on about 1600 (forget its name), before that schools investigator one (and even that has its share of up-the-duff 15-year-olds with drink problems trashing schools and so on). All human life is there."

You really need ot get out of your little world, and travel. Try living in other countries. I've lived in ENgland, Germany, the US, France and Switzerland, and you get the same issues in all of these. Humans are the same the world over. I know that you like to think that England is different, but that's an ignorant view, rooted in the 50s. We English have the same mix as everyone else.