There is a sale this week in Penny stores in Germany: nine of the 3,000 products are available for up to 95 percent more than the regular price. With the title “Real cost”, the company wants to indicate how much customers would have to pay if the price reflected the climatic, environmental and health effects of the given food – as part of excellent public education,
a cheese produced in Germany, containing no additives, for example, costs 94 percent more during the promotion week,
while the plant-based vegan “Vienna Schnitzel” made from 18 ingredients (including acidity regulators, methylcellulose and yeast) – which is roughly three-quarters water and canola oil, and which tests unanimously describe as tasteless and unpalatable – is only 5 percent.
According to the somewhat contradictory statements, the discount chain will transfer all of the resulting additional income to a climate-friendly agricultural project – at the same time, the company is expecting a drop in turnover in the order of millions, and has directly increased the price of products that, due to their expiration date, they cannot sell even after the “sale” to give, normal price. At the same time, in the parallel promotion, the price of beef steak was lowered, as well as the 70-gram Czech children’s pudding with a surprise figure from Made in China, which contains more plastic than dairy products, and with the help of which the younger generation can adopt the most climate-killing consumption habits ;
but the point is that the customer finally realizes that artificial meat is better than real cheese.
However, this is only the beginning of the story: the independent-objective public TV was so taken aback by the price-raising action that it immediately included a longer compilation about it in the prestigious evening news. With good sense, he entrusted the task to the employees of his studio in West Germany, which has considerable experience in green matters – this is the certain WDR whose children’s choir enriched the music literature with the song “A grandamám is an environmentally polluting old pig”.
As part of the sufficiently one-sided reporting, they also visited a store to ask the customers’ opinions; among the many skeptics, they also found a young girl who likes this “thought-provoking” action. It’s a shame that it soon became clear: the girl is an employee of WDR Radio. The embarrassing part was subsequently cut from the newscast, and WDR explains itself with amazing arguments: on the one hand, there was a mere misunderstanding, as the young man who was randomly addressed told the reporter that “I’m just coming from WDR Radio”, but the reporter said that there “because of the noise of the shop” meant “heard about this topic on WDR Radio“.
The sound of these two sentences is even less similar in German than in Hungarian (especially with regard to the two-word past tense),
therefore, for the sake of safety, the editor-in-chief of the WDR program came up with a more compelling argument: “Does anyone seriously think that there wasn’t a single customer in the store who liked the sale, and that’s why we had to hire an actress?“
Even from the point of view of a so-called illiberal hybrid electoral autocracy, it is strange that, according to a leading journalist, a person who is especially happy about a price increase by the Green Party should always stay in a not too crowded discount store in every time zone – if there are such coincidences that the store is one of the WDR co-worker buys, who just agrees with the sale, then perhaps other coincidences should not be ruled out, especially if our starting point is that opinions are free. Especially considering that the liberal-conservative https://twitter.com/dg_graeber/status/1686691285782892544: years ago, he worked as an intern for a public TV channel in southwest Germany, and was taken to a bank to be filmed as an angry customer complaining about high fees – and if German public TV sometimes even has to deal with complaints about high prices, then why not let’s rule out that the WDR employee spontaneously argues in favor of the hypocritical “climate protection” price increase.
The Sargentini report, which forms the basis of the procedure according to article seven, emphasized that in Hungary “the so-called “public service” broadcaster (…) spreads the government’s messages uncritically”, while media diversity “it forms the cornerstone of democratic societies“, Moreover “is one of the fundamental values of the Union“.
So we might think that we can at least trust Daniel Freund, the relentless fighter for democracy and the protection of public funds,
and if, in view of the summer vacation of the European Parliament, he reacts not with a speech, but with a small Twitter message, to the latest green propagandist move of the German public television, a solid thumbs-up.
I mean, we could think, if we hadn’t enveloped the only post made since the ominous ARD news: “What they say is that it is Hungary against Brussels. The fact is that Orbán is against Democracy“.
It seems that the German public service journalist is selectively deaf, and the German Green Party politician is selectively blind. But at least they all share Estonia sufficiently confidently.
(Opening image: Daniel Freund’s Facebook page)
Tags: orbital prank German public television selective deafness blindness Daniel Freund expected public address system
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