ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Democritus

Finally, with apologies to the OP for the off-thread irrelevance, may we know what your "deadly boring" file contained?

Ah, yes, Bugsy’s “X-Files”. I mentioned a couple of times that for all the files that the Stasi held on various domestic and foreign citizens, what they mostly had was complete crap. My own files just confirmed that and it was all in all a bit of a surreal experience.

The semi-bound reports were contained in three concertina files and some of them only covered three or four months, while others (with no clear system involved) were for much longer periods. There were 12 files in total. The contents was just mind-blowing. There were entries such as: “14.07.77, 15:30 hours. “Reichsmark II” (my surveillance name, I've no idea who “I” was) parked Alpha(sic) Romeo VIN: XXXXXXXX (my jam-jar) in Fresestraße in front of No 36 and entered corner cafe "Mickis Laden". Reichsmark II drank two cups of coffee and read current edition of newspaper “Neues Deutschland”. Reichsmark II remained alone at table and only spoke with proprietor, Michael Lautner. Reichsmark II exited café "Mickis Laden" at 16:22 hours, got into aforementioned vehicle and departed towards Torweg".

Part of another giddily exciting entry was: “22.01.78.10:10 hours. Reichsmark II stopped on autobahn Berlin-Dresden at marker 143 and urinated before continuing journey. Passenger Christa Schatz remained in the vehicle”. It was page after page of totally banal and uninteresting shite like that. The surveillance was also not uninterrupted: it was on average three (normally different) days per week, although at times that also included the weekends I spent in my flat in West Berlin.

After a few thousand GDR citizens had read their own files, there were masses of cases in which folks had discovered that the next-door neighbour had been merrily bubbling them as an IM and they’d nipped round to deliver a good malletting. The “Gauck-Behörde" (initially responsible for the files in Berlin) then took to blacking out the names. However, I was one of the first to see my file and the names of my six trails were in clear. Two of them I knew anyway and I'd already been warned by my work-colleagues and neighbours respectively to steer well clear of them, but there were four other in-clear names and also surveillance IDs who were (and still are) a complete mystery to me. Also in the file was the name of their Stasi handler, but I couldn't find out anything on him either.

In my case there really was nothing at all to report, but that was also the case for thousands of GDR citizens (and other non-German residents) who perused their own files. There were even still files in the system on folks who’d been bubbled for one reason or another and the Stasi had investigated the case and found nothing amiss. Whereupon the file was declared dead, but was still archived. An awful lot of noise has been made about the Stasi files, and it's true that some of them were the basis of court-cases and compensation claims and really did represent genuine repression and discrimination, so they weren’t entirely harmless. But they were never the oppressive-surveillance “smoking gun” that the German gobment liked to present them as. I hope this was helpful to you along with another item of possible interest – the GDR citizens enjoyed 31 public holidays per year.

MsG

Originally Posted by BugzDaMick

I hope this was helpful to you along with another item of possible interest – the GDR citizens enjoyed 31 public holidays per year.

The West German's got 8. So assuming both sides got 4 weeks (20 days) holiday a year and worked 5 1/2 days a week for the remaining 48 weeks, you can work out the number of days worked:

East Germany: (48 x 5.5) -31 = 233 days a year.

West Germany: (48 x 5.5) - 8 = 256 days a year.

I make the East Germans only about 90% as productive as West Germans - and that's before things such as more modern factories are taken into account.

No wonder the East was impoverished compared to the West by the time the wall came down.

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Wordsmith

The West German's got 8. So assuming both sides got 4 weeks (20 days) holiday a year and worked 5 1/2 days a week for the remaining 48 weeks, you can work out the number of days worked:

East Germany: (48 x 5.5) -31 = 233 days a year.

West Germany: (48 x 5.5) - 8 = 256 days a year.

I make the East Germans only about 90% as productive as West Germans - and that's before things such as more modern factories are taken into account.

No wonder the East was impoverished compared to the West by the time the wall came down.

Wordsmith

I wont argue with your statistics W, but having six years of hard graft in Germany under my belt, I have never seen a German work as long or as hard as us Brits. The hard working "sausage gobbler" is a myth, a fable, invented by the people who run/ruin British industry.

Originally Posted by trowel

I wont argue with your statistics W, but having six years of hard graft in Germany under my belt, I have never seen a German work as long or as hard as us Brits. The hard working "sausage gobbler" is a myth, a fable, invented by the people who run/ruin British industry.

Strange that I have the opposite experience to you, so it may be a regional thing. My partner works part-time and that is a minimum of 34 hours per week. Most workers are on site for between 07:0 - 07:30 hrs here.

The Ossies needed the extra time off. The Politburo wouldn't go out & worship itself you know!

Originally Posted by CaptainPlume

The Ossies needed the extra time off. The Politburo wouldn't go out & worship itself you know!

I'm minded of a saying I believe came out of the east bloc:

"They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work".

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Recce19

Strange that I have the opposite experience to you, so it may be a regional thing. My partner works part-time and that is a minimum of 34 hours per week. Most workers are on site for between 07:0 - 07:30 hrs here.

I think most Brits work their nuts off.

In the West Country, anyway, it's on site at 7.30am for a normal days's finish at 4.30.

An hour lunch break - which is your time and for which you don't get paid - and two 15 mins breaks, morning and afternoon, which is in the boss's time.

Outdoor work, Sat mornings till lunchtime in the summer to make up for work/time lost during the winter due to light and bad weather.

Personally I think that's a very reasonable amount of collar for what is usually physical work plus a fair few late finishes thrown each month.

Workshops are more 8 till 5, but one chap I worked for for a while had a great system of a basic 8 to 5.30 and and early finish on Friday.

Can't speak for factories, don't know the first thing about them, but in most offices the hour lunchbreak has long been sacrificed to a sandwich on the desk and pretty much crack on through.

Originally Posted by Pyianno

Oh the irony:

Christine Lagarde, scourge of tax evaders, pays no tax | Business | guardian.co.uk

Yup, most of these people were bought and paid for a long time ago.