 |
| A protest for "fair affordable housing" in Berlin in 2024. |
Berlin SPD wants to set up ‘rental police’ to combat exorbitant rents
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the German capital of Berlin has announced plans to set up a special investigative unit to examine thousands of rental contracts for supposedly excessive rents.
Okay I admit it, I only posted this story so I could include the picture which goes with it - as an example of the things demonstrators can be persuaded to do.
Or maybe this is the uniform of the rental police. I hope so.
7 comments:
I can remember a story of my father's about the wickedness of rent control in his day. It was common, he said, for a chap to buy life insurance and, when he'd died, for his widow to invest that capital in a house - ideally a house near her own. The rent she received would act as her pension. Such widows were ruined by rent control.
In other words, rent controls are not only economic madness but will always be applied in such universal, inflexible ways that they will often be plain cruel.
dearieme - and some of those widows would end up eking out an impoverished life with relatives, or in miserable backstreet lodgings until TB or pneumonia carried them off.
Politics, it's a horrible game.
Post content aside, you have given us what might be the best protest picture ever - the sight of those beautifully handcrafted hats really made my day!
Also (o/t but too good not to share): following news that, after a 30-year gap, young orcas have again been observed balancing dead salmon on their heads for extended periods of time, someone posted this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/orcas/comments/1h291e3/i_made_my_own_salmon_hat/
Macheath - wearing the hats doesn't do much for the serious nature of the demo though. Or maybe that's the idea and their next outing will be an environmental pollution demo with knitted salmon on their heads.
I did enough marching back in my radical days to convince me that the only benefit ever derived is a good afternoon’s exercise and a warm glow of smugness. These days, media attention is all; a hat is probably as good a means as any of getting it.
Your suggestion is an excellent one, but protestors could also easily construct similar hand-knitted turd hats to highlight the problem of water companies polluting our rivers and seas (an idea prompted by an old post from the late (and much missed) Mark Wadsworth): https://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2011/11/stick-to-knitting.html
Surfers Against Sewage have missed that particular trick so far but perhaps some dedicated knitters could offer to help
Macheath - yes Mark is much missed, I'd forgotten about the knitted cow pat.
Post a Comment