In October the news was coming in like machine-gun fire, quite different to the last few months: for example 55 billion Euros was found in a state supported bank – ongoing accounting errors reported assets as losses. Maybe we don’t have a financial crisis after all, but a crisis of accountancy.

Frankly, I would have noticed immediately if 55 billion Euros would have disappeared from my bank account. Independently from this treasure-find, and after enough infighting the government finally decided on tax bribes for 2013, the year of the elections. And who had been talking about enshrining debt brakes in national constitutions?

Fact is the Germans don’t support tax cuts, because despite the booming economy and 55 billion less debt, we still indebt ourselves this year with 21 billion Euros and the coming one, with an estimated 26 billion Euros. Are they consolidating the national household or debt?

Recently, I also was very surprised about frequent TV commercials praising the gas production in Germany. I felt guilty that I might not have listened to my geography teachers because I don’t recall anything about abundant gas supplies, but after some research it turned out that fracking has arrived in Germany. That’s very simple, you drill a hole into the ground, pour chemicals into the hole which crack the stone and then wait for the gas to ascend.

Of course afterwards you try to suck the chemicals out again. If you are unlucky the chemicals and the gas appear somewhere else and by opening the water tap in your home you might be able to do the cooking and washing up at the same time, as it already has happened in the USA.

This dirty business stands in stark contrast with our chicken raising industry, which is that clean, that 96.4% of chicken meat samples showed to contain antibiotics. Maybe that is the reason why Germans do not have to take as many antibiotics as the Spanish, because they get them for free in their meat. Surely we have already started to teach the chicken germs not to interact with the human germs, thus we don’t have to worry about antibiotic resistance.

But really, the news of the month is that the conservatives have now moved so far to the left, that they take all the election promises away from the left; no more atomic power and no more conscription since summer and now they also want a minimum wage – without government input and on a regional level of course (a bit like their voluntary quote for females in leading positions in the bigger companies). The sacred cow of our 3-tier-schooling system, where children and parents so far had been forced to decide at the age of 10 about their future education, is now being questioned, too.  A 2-tier-system is now being favoured, at least a small step in the right direction for late starters and social permeability. Of course comprehensive schools are still not being talked about.

The most talked about subject at present however is terrorism. This time not the fundamentalist one, but the right wing one, which was operating and murdering for more than a decade. I think it is safe to say, that everybody in the nationalist corner knew about it but that the normal people didn’t. But the big question is what the intelligence services knew and on a daily basis the waters turn murkier. Is the past catching up with the present or is there no catching up to do?