It will come as no surprise to my readers to hear that all is not well in the Federal Republic. We have entered a prolonged economic recession, and our future prospects are very dim. Inflation, de-industrialisation, labour shortages and increasingly dysfunctional public services have all become uncomfortable features of everyday life. Our most immediate problems are all self-inflicted. The Government that came to power in 2021, via the votes of a complacent and politically ignorant electorate, has ruled as badly as expected. They eagerly supported the catastrophic European Union sanctions against Russia, they presided in awkward silence over the unprecedented Nord Stream attacks, and they’ve made up the energy shortfall by burning more coal and importing liquid natural gas from the United States. As a result, Germany has one of the highest-emitting power grids in Europe, but in other areas our leaders have chosen to exacerbate the economic damage by pressing forward with nuclear phase-out and the energy transition, driving energy prices even higher. They’ve increased social entitlements, reducing incentives to work precisely as the baby boomers retire. They’ve harassed their own people with enormously expensive laws like the building energy ordinances, which have no prospect of doing anything to save the climate, but will cost individual Germans and the Federal Government alike billions of euros. Then, to make it all worse, the doubtful budgetary tricks they employed to pay for all of this were declared unconstitutional, and so they have gone back on prior promises and sought to raise taxes in oblique ways, whether with the CO2 toll or the cancellation of tax rebates on agricultural diesel. And this in a country that already has one of the highest tax burdens in all of Europe.