So there I was, contemplating the savagely-deindustrialized wasteland of the Pax Post-Britannia, when a line in the Economist's February country survey of Germany caught my eye. Amidst the usual loathesome bleatings about how the second-richest industrial country in the world (behind Japan) just can't afford its poor people anymore, the article said: "It all [the pension funds scare, the European equivalent of our own Rightwing's assault on Social Security] sounds pretty disastrous... And yet, and yet. This is Germany, and Germany is rich." (pg 9, Germany survey) Ye Gods -- could the Economist be finally *growing a brain*? But I scanned further, and the breathless promise of cool britannia, where everything is lower-case but not lower-class, evaporated faster than the words on Blair's Teleprompter: "And even Bavaria, which sees itself as the land of laptops and Lederhosen, has yet to produce a Bill Gates." (pg 11, Germany survey) That's because Dr. Klaus Tschira, doyen of SAP, the Godzilla of ERP software, is in Walldorf, not Munich. Nah, it's the same old bunch of idiots running Ukania into the ground as ever. Let's just hope Ireland, Wales and Scotland secede completely before the wreckage really starts to burn. -- Dennis
