🙂 Before I start my vacation, I am going to be really grumpy!
Yesterday morning, as I read the SZ, I discovered the following note in the local section:
The number of the day – 2.9 – successful harbour!
It is about the “Bavarian Harbour at Regensburg”. Here is what it says:
General tendency is growth!
Because during the last year, the turnover increased by 2.9 per cent, now being 7.6 billion tons!
Well, I think to myself, maybe then the Rhein-Main-Donau-Channel makes some sense, after all? And I am a little surprised.
A few lines into the article, I am no longer surprised. Because here I can read:
The growth, however, is exclusively thanks to the products transported by trucks and railway. Shipping only has a turnover of 1.5 billion tons. That is a decrease of nine per cent compared with 2010.
That annoys me!
Is that what they call the number of the day for the “successful Bavarian Harbour of Regensburg”? Or are we talking a container reloading site with a little shipping as a by-product?
But then there is the explanation that saves the day. The decrease is easy to justify, because:
The director of the local branch, Andreas Pippig, put most of the blame on the difficult weather conditions last year. Danube flood, ice locks and the week-long low water level in autumn kept making it hard for shipping.
Well, maybe the gentleman has never heard about the climate change? Perhaps someone should come and enlighten him?
So what do I do about it?
I try to be honest, instead of lying to myself and to others in such an unscrupulous way as at least the headlines of newspaper articles do.
RMD
(Translated by EG)