From: some blogger
To: Angela Merkel, The Chancellery, Berlin.
Subject: Giving €2500 to Germans to scrap their old cars if they buy a new one.
Dear Angie,
May I call you Angie? It’s just that I feel so close to you now that I have one of your Barbie Dolls. I was going to give it to my daughter, but since she’s not into them and they did such a flattering job on those thunder thighs I thought I’d keep it for myself.
Anyway, about those cars. I think it’s a great idea to give everyone here in Germany €2,500 to scrap their old car if they buy a new one. Prop up Opel through the back door, get those junkers off the road, a little jiggery-pokery by the dealer and maybe with a bit of luck you’ll see the ol’ beater again on your travels after it’s been sold off for a profit in Eastern Europe or Africa. We’ve thought of doing it, but even though our car is about 15 years old, we figure it’s good for another 100,000 km if we treat it right, so why bother?
Instead, I thought that since I’m in desperate need of a new bicycle to get to and from work, you might extend the favour to cyclists by giving us a few bucks too?
I love my old bike, Ange. We go back 15 years to my Hong Kong days, but it’s on its third set of front and back sprockets, the front and rear bearings once, two sets of new gears, brakes, cables, rims, spokes, tires – the works. The only thing left from the original bike is the frame, the forks, the handlebars and a few scratches.
Since the new bike I lust for is going to cost between €1,500 and €2,000, I figure if you’re throwing €2,500 of my tax money at people willing to spend €15,000 to €20,000, we could just lop off a zero on both sides and both of us can go home happy.
I know what your thinking. You’re rolling those sweet, droopy eyes that look so good on television and thinking: yeah, right. Why should you care about cyclists? We don’t buy that high-tax gas, so we don’t contribute anything to the German state. We don’t provide workers with high-paying jobs, we’re always whining for more bike paths, and when we get home we drip sweat on the carpet.
But I figure I’ve saved the planet about five tonnes of carbon over the past decade by refusing to buy a car. In fact, I’ve probably saved it about 5,000 tonnes because I haven’t chartered a helicopter to get to work each day. When you think about it, I could sell you carbon credits for that trip to Greenland you made a while back to traipse around on the ice and say: It’s melting! It’s melting! Let’s do something!
So whaddya say, Angie babe? Instead of caving into the unions and the auto lobby and propping up the last legs of an industry that only holds us hostage to this unsustainable petroleum- and metal-addicted vampire economy, how about living up to the Germans’ worldwide reputation as people who actually care for the environment and help out those of us who choose the most sensible form of transportation so we can do just that? I promise to donate the money to research into alternative forms of energy.
Yours sincerely,
Ian in Hamburg
The banner photograph shows the town of Britannia Beach, BC, Canada, where I grew up. It's home. But I don't live there anymore.
Oh … I think I need to get a bike. Or a car that I can turn into cash for a bike!
Hi Ian,
please let me know if it works. I can’t afford money for a new car (even IF it is less Euro 2.500,-) but two old bikes are left and so that could make sense to me.
Thanks for your support.
Hey, you never know! Why not help make it happen? Copy the URL from this post and send it in a message to Angie herself.
http://www.bundeskanzlerin.de/Webs/BK/DE/Service/Kontakt/kontakt.html
Sorry, Ian, but nobody—and I mean NOBODY—can cave into the auto lobby like the bottom feeders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
One of the main reasons I stayed in New York City for almost 20 years is that in all that time, I didn’t have to own a car. My friends/family back in Ohio couldn’t wrap their minds around not owning a car but I loved it.
€1,500 for a bike!? Yikes! I’ve spent less than that on a car!
Yeah, I know it seems like a lot of money to pay for a bicycle, but good ones here are really expensive, and I’ve got my eye on a good one.
I think though, in light of what happened in Germany only two hours after this was posted – the school shooting in Winnenden leaving 17 people dead including the kid with the gun – there’s not much to kid or laugh about around here today.
And I was laughing and celebrating your cleverness – up to your last post. There are eleven dead in yesterday’s Alabama shootings now, and apparently there just has been another shooting here, although I missed the details while reading your post.
When I read some of the hateful,violent trash being spewed on blogs and in other online postings, and then hear news like this, such events become increasingly difficult to pass off as isolated examples of unhappy individuals who just “snapped”.
Yeah, I know. It’s been a tough day here, believe me. I posted this two hours before the news broke. Seventeen kids! I felt so bad I wanted to take it down and write something else in its place about it, but it’ll have to wait.
I’m so very sorry about the deaths in Germany and the USA, tragic for all concerned.
But don’t even consider taking down this excellent post – great idea though I am still reeling from the cost of bikes in Germany. I thought most of Europe had adopted that wonderful solution that Sevilla has. Bike stations all over town. you just ride wherever you want and drop the bike off at a station afterwards. Pick up a new bike for the ride home. how cool is that?
Good luck with your bike quest! Such sad news about another mass shooting. Strange fact, I live in a country with one of the highest violent crime rates in the world, but the one thing we don’t have is school shootings.
Oh, great idea, good luck!
).
Too bad, I already own 3 bikes, none of which is old and bad enough to need replacing (I’m also *not* wrecking my 15-year-old car. It’s still good and will have no problem passing the next TÜV inspection. Way cheaper and more economic than any new car
@nursemyra: Well there is such a thing as that, in Munich at least, and you don’t even need to go to a bike station for that. The bikes are numbered and coded, you call a service number an they tell you how to open the lock. And charge money, no idea how much.
)
Still, I don’t like the idea. Bikes are like shoes, not just any bike fits any person. My ‘Munich’-Bike is old and worn, but it fits me and it is really comfortable (and fast
For sure, the city bike where you can just pick one up and drop it off somewhere else is a fantastic idea – in Paris it’s really popular, though you have to be a local to use it because it’s based on bank cards – anyway something we couldn’t figure out because we wanted to go for a spin.
But you’re right, Angel. You just have to have your own bike – or three.
Dude, that’s a pretty big ASK? Suspect you are going to have to sleep with her to get the cash!
It’s a snip, beave! If they’ve got 10 times as much to throw around on every car buyer getting rid of a nine-year-old car – sales have shot through the roof since this was announced, btw – they can toss some chump change to the curb our way.
OK, that does it, I am NOT paying my January BVG fine for riding schwarz on Berlin’s U-Bahn. Which I got even though I had a valid (albeit unstamped) ticket with me. Which they could have just required me to stamp right there when they pulled me off the train. Ian, if you get 250 smackeroos for your new bike, I should get at least one BVG fine waived annually (40 euros), don’t you think? It’s precious small thanks for my contributions to the environment.
As for new cars, well, Angie’s hardly thinking about the environment, now is she? If she were, she’s be running scared because Germany’s burgeoning transportation sector puts into serious jeopardy the increased Kyoto reduction requirements that will kick in after 2012. Transportation is a MAJOR drag on Germany’s progress in this respect. I do get so tired of asking why world leaders don’t realize that a Manhattan-project approach to this problem would be so much better as an economic stimulant than subsidies to the evil car companies that NEVER make any more than the bare minimum emissions reductions with which they can legally squeak by.
Hi Katchita,
That’s so true – the economy has absolutely no clothes. Any pretense that it’s not based on keeping those auto and truck factories working has been completely shattered with panic moves to prop them up.