markus spring photography
As I’ve found these pipes in the center of our capital, it must be sheer power that gets pumped here. But then, maybe it’s just sewerage, consisting of half-baken press releases that nowadays seem to become the core of the political business. At least the pipes are blue, a color not assigned to any political party here in Germany.
Oh yes: „half-baken press releases that nowadays seem to become the core of the political business“.
Finland’s government is teetering due to disagreement over health-care overhauls, and nobody seems to know what really is happening in the discussions. Today a new proposal for the reform was put forward. It is the most complicated one so far, pushing privatization and regional thinking that fits the political agendas. The proposal was given the title „himmeli“, a word in Finnish which means „mobile decoration made of straw or other similar material“. Little of the expert opinion was taken into account in the proposal, but it is of course „historic“ and „forward-thinking“ etc.
Your photograph fits the mood, and it so happens that blue is a color of a party in Finland.
Juha, this is interesting: „Himmel“ is the German word for heaven or sky, and German common wisdom knows that politicians tend „to promise the blue from the sky“.
Re. privatisation: this trend seems to slow down here in Germany, now that the Liberal Democrats are not in the government any more (they had and sparingly have politicians that fought for freedom within the society and the framework of the constitution, but the party degraded to mere fighters for unrestricted capitalism). But we are fighting with the damage already done, like missing a necessary minimum of regulation in the telecom market and so on – of course decorated as well with all that acoustic bloatware that seems to accompany even the weakest acts of legislation nowadays. I have a hard time trying to tell my daughters how to distinguish substance from disguise.
Indeed, „himmeli“ is a straw decoration that is usually displayed hanging from the ceiling, and the word originally came to Finnish from the German word Himmel, as you suggested.
Regarding politics (or the mess of it), we are living interesting times.
A Chinese curse aimed as someone you don’t like is, „May you live in interesting times.“ Always thought this was a subtle curse.
Oh well, interesting times *can* be a curse, but in my brighter moments I do hope they aren’t!
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