‘Food is the first thing, morals follow on’ is a famous quote from the song What Keeps Mankind Alive from Bertold Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. Maybe this is an appropriate phrase for a Boxing Day afternoon reflecting on the opulent Christmas dinner or a loose interpretation of the Pope’s Christmas message asking for more consciousness from a satisfied and saturated society.

In that respect – whilst I digest – I understand Brecht and the Pope, but the odd thing is that the most saturated always seems to be the hungriest and thus – one year too late – our President’s skeletons fell finally out of the cupboard, or at least a couple of them. As a high ranking politician of many years and pension rights most of us would get dizzy with and job prospects we only can dream of, he still accepted a dodgy private credit of over 500.000 Euros from business friends.

And after the parliament started to ask questions he managed to convert it secretly to a cheap bank credit through the intervention of his friend. But this was not enough, he holidayed for free in one of Mr Maschmeyer’s properties, a billionaire, whose – let me put it this way – business methods are quite controversial.  No deception says the President, fortunately he did not talk about trust. He will remain in his post, he can’t resign, because the previous one already did last year. But he won’t be our President, because he can’t contribute anything to morals in politics any longer. Hopefully, in four years time, when the election is looming, his peers have advanced and can find a saturated one.

Maybe the German phrase of the year ‘stress test,’ could help to avoid such embarrassing and misguided decisions. Everything got stressed in 2011 from banks to atomic power plants. Surely a stress test for politicians  should be able to distinguish between who wants to serve in public office and who seeks private gain in public office.

The latter is what German motorists moan about these days. Diesel prices have sky rocketed, just like here in Spain and they have reached the prices of normal petrol. Nobody knows why – taxes are considerably lower for diesel – but it is estimated, that an additional five million Euros of turnover is being created each day, paid for by the motorists. Let’s hope that the President does not look for friends in that league (like the previous social democrat chancellor did!)

But there are plenty of people, who are ‘hungry,’ but don’t have the same connections. It is easy to state in the Christmas speech from Bellevue Castle, the official residence of the President, that “Germany enjoys a good reputation in the whole world, not least because nearly nowhere else is there such ample readiness to help others …” After all he has not contributed. That was the speech for the people; conversations with his peers take place behind closed doors.

It would be easy for them to help and stop the widening gap between rich and poor in their own country. According to the OECD this is happening faster than in any other developed nation and it advises the creation of jobs “with perspectives and career possibilities.”  This was echoed a few days later by the finding of the biggest German umbrella organization of social charities that every seventh person in Germany is threatened by poverty. Boom for whom?