Quote (dro94 @ 16 Apr 2020 00:13)
Curious as to why the schools opening in late June is a bigger story than the current relaxation of the lockdown? Seems too soon to send essential workers back into work considering the severity of the outbreak.
I was tired last night, and failed to read your post properly.
The lockdown has barely relaxed. It's just that the industry and agriculture are able to operate again because the economy simply can't handle the complete lock down any further.
Not that many more people are working. The minimum amount of people possible are in facilities. People are taking turns and keeping distances.
Keep in mind that these businesses were only shut down for two weeks because the government made them give their workers forced vacations (companies can choose the dates to up to 10 days of the worker's annual minimum of 20 days of vacation, so they all forced the vacations now on their workers)... that way the government didn't have to pay compensation.
The service sector, which is the main part of our economy, is pretty much completely dead.
Quote (Black XistenZ @ 16 Apr 2020 08:56)
Jesus, Spanish regionalism and separatism is such a mess. As if your country needed even more division in a situation like this. :rolleyes:
Here in Germany, the governing grand coalition (between Merkel's center-right CDU and the center left social-democrats SPD) has gained in the polls while all 4 opposition parties have lost ground. The gains have mostly gone to the CDU, which is holding most ministries at the federal level which are key for this crisis, as well as the regional prime ministers (effectively governors of their federal states) which had the largest influence on the public discourse and the health measures taken. By comparison, the SPD has only gained modestly.
All opposition parties are willing to work with the government on the corona situation, but a time of crisis is naturally the time of the executive. Currently, they lack the ability to cut through with their topics. The Greens, which were polling super well, at around 22%, before this crisis, have now fallen down to ~16%. The right-wing populist AfD has fallen down from 14% to ~10%. Over recent years, the CDU had lost a lot of voters to both these parties. It seems as if the CDU's good handling of the coronavirus has - at least temporarily - brought back some of the voters who had left the CDU for the Greens over the climate or for the AfD over the refugee/immigration politics.
However, none of the topics which were dominating German politics before the crisis (climate, refugees, social justice, fixing our pension system, how to modernize our economy) are gone or solved. And the old debate about eurobonds and public debt in the eurozone will come back with force too, once the immediate health crisis is under control.
Therefore, I expect our governing parties to lose ground in the long run. There were some missteps in the government's handling of the coronavirus, which will also be talked about when it's over - it's just that Germany responded better than many of our surrounding neighbors, and that we got lucky in some regard, leading to the health situation staying under control and much less severe than in Spain/France/Italy. This makes our government look good at the moment, as reflected in their polling numbers, but they were far from flawless.
I see, thanks for the input. I expect there will be all kinds of shits in polling in most countries as the focus shifts from subject to subject. Right now, the immediate concern is indeed the outbreak... later it will be the economy, and how to reorganize society. And later it will all depend on how the previous stages went. Elections are very far away here, so the current polling climate doesn't mean much.
This post was edited by zarkadon on Apr 16 2020 02:49am