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Regina Erich's avatar

Hallo!

Ja, “Die spinnen, die Römer …” as Obelix would have said :)

‘spinnen’ is indeed a nice word for many uses. It really means to spin wool to yarn. Many a folk made their meager living as a “Spinner”, i.e. spinning wool to yarn. Old spinning wheels still grace antique shops.

‘Spinnerei’ is still an industrial site for producing yarn of all kinds to be woven into textiles.

The double meaning of someone engaging in “Spinnerei”, i.e. telling fibs, is aptly present in the ancient saying of ‘spinning sailor’s yarn’ “Seemannsgarn spinnen” - when sailors told hair-raising stories of their supposed adventures abroad.

Pie-in-the-sky stuff is downright “Spinnerei” and, well, “Du spinnst doch!” is of course ‘being nuts’.

And to be honest, when I look from Scotland, where a lot of “Spinnerei” is going on, I also get the feeling that quite a few “Spiner” are there in charge as well!

(Es ist nichts so fein gesponnen, es kommt doch ans Licht der Sonnen - noch ein weiser Spruch …)

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Rob Shouting Into The Void's avatar

Unlike Britain Canada has a Britain constitution but it also has what we call the opt out clause or not withstanding clause. That is a government can opt out of a court ruling for up to five years if it doesn’t agree with it. I like it because it returns the power back to the elected Parliament and away from judges.

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Chuck Brown's avatar

And I thought Canadian politics were crazy! Maybe the allure of politics can be found in the unpredictable nature of politics itself - always having the potential to offer up opportunity to those who are ready to pounce! Of course, the public are poorly served

by opportunistic wrangling.

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Rob Shouting Into The Void's avatar

I don’t know enough about German politics how this would work, but I’ve long wondered if the AFD could bring down the firewall by announcing advance that they would something.

For example when Merz lost the 1st round of voting could they not have announced that they will support him in the second wound guaranteeing he’ll win?

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Jörg Luyken's avatar

Hi Rob, they do increasingly try to do that. Ahead of the judicial nominations on Friday they suggested they'd support the CDU candidate. To counter this the other parties try to make sure they have numbers for a majority ahead of time. But it's probably only a matter of time before a law passes 'by accident' thanks to afd votes

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