>Just before elections in 2009, 116 German lawmakers used up their remaining stationery budget to buying luxury Montblanc pens. Seven years on, a top German court will decide whether they can be named and shamed.
>70.000 € in Taxes spent on pens. In not even a year
This calls for a fucking lynching!
Other urls found in this thread:
global.handelsblatt.com
haaretz.com
jpost.com
lepoint.fr
news.bbc.co.uk
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Fug! Forgot Source: global.handelsblatt.com
Paywall, sry m9s!
Here's a list of the top offenders
cont.
>They spent their stationery budget on stationery
What am I missing here? Give them a smaller stationery budget.
cont
Politicians spending taxpßayer money on loads of luxury pens is not what a stationary budget is for, wouldnt you agree?
continuation
A possible explanation is that the way german tax return laws work it encourages people to fully spend the budget or it will be gone. Ask anyone running his own business here, they will tell you what bogus they start doing just before tax recounts.
A stationery budget is for buying stationery. Pens are stationery.
Rather than getting mad at someone who is paying for stationery with his stationery budget doesn't it make more sense to get mad at whoever gave them such a ridiculous budget to begin with?
I know that this is the case. Lawyer here. Worked for a city for some time. They always try to use up their budgets so it doesnt get cut the next year. It's fucking infuriating. Wasting money so they can keep wasting money.
I believe that's pretty common world wide. I work in railway maintenance and the government-funded companies will always overspend because if they have any money left they'll be told that they won't need as much next time.
RIP Peter Struck. Hopefully the pen will prove useful on the other side
It was the end of the quarter and they have more money left to spend, it's common in that situation to spend the rest of your budget on whatever so that your budget next quarter isn't lower, this is literally nothinf
Depends. If they have it in the budget, it's been ear marked. A lot of times, if you don't use the funds that have been ear marked for you, you will get your budget slashed the following year.
I can't speak to stationary, but this shit happens all the time in other departments. On slow years, shit like road repair will spend time tearing up a road, just to relay the pavement, all so they can have the funds the following year without having to fight for it (and maybe lose), when things aren't so slow.
It's also used a lot on light bulbs, as well.
I blame everyone who has something to do with it. Lack of control, lack of morals, lack of ethics, lack of concious on all sides.
From the people who approved these budgets to the people who ordered those pens to probably give them to friends.
I want to hold them all accountable. Let them show that they still have all those pens. This is an absolute outrage!
This, I've heard that stuff like this happens here too.
Wish they would go with the obvious solution of just fucking letting them have an adjustable budget, or a rollover budget so they can spend any budget that they didn't spend last year.
Bump
Fucking kikes
>everybody does it
>that makes it ok
it simply doesnt. This has to change!
maybe they are banned as assault weapons in britbongland, but in germany, you get free pens at multiple occasions. a set of 3 really decent, long living pens is about 10 dollar. as if any handwritten shit would be published anyways.
These rate get payed 120k+ per year just as normal salary but noooo, let's line our pockets even more.
Fucking scum! All of them!
*rats
>I blame everyone who has something to do with it
You pay taxes, don't you?
I'm just saying focusing on the dudes who got the pens rather than focusing on why they had that much money for fucking stationery to begin with won't actually solve the problem.
Hang em all Hans. Hang em all
then give them a smaller budget next time dumbass
You misunderstand me. I focus on everybody, but it starts with the people who made to concious decision to order absolutely not needed luxury items on taxpayer money and goes to everyone who made this shit possible.
I didnt give them that budget. And to change it in the future the people have to get fucking mad at first, wouldn't you agree?
I'm German. Inefficiency and squandering of funds is equal to war crimes to us.
you can't do that, they need a bigger budget to solve the migrant crisis!?
So why cant they be named and shamed. They misused a budget which should be used out of necessity not luxury.
The money doesnt disappear, it doesnt have to be 'used' up. They use it up so they can argue they need those levels of funds in the future for other frivolous things when they could of just put it into sectors like hospitals/transport that need it.
people with this mindset need to be hanged.
and if you don't see anything wrong with it, so do you.
They are already being named and shamed by our largest "Newspaper" the "BILD Zeitung" (equal to the Sun). See my pics above.
Juicy fact: 2. Place goes to a politician from out "LEFT-Party". Fucking champagne commies.
>it starts with the people who made to concious decision to order absolutely not needed luxury items on taxpayer money
It shouldn't start with them, because public outrage is fickle. You start getting mad at them and they'll be demoted and make an apology and then people will move on to the next thing. You start at the crux of the issue (them having a ridiculous pen budget at all) and then the main focus of the problem is inflated budgets and it doesn't go away quite as easily.
This is basically how most governments manipulates things to keep the public liking them. Instead of letting people realise the actual problem (which will involve time, effort, and them losing profit to fix it) they pin it on individuals in government then 'punish' those individuals as a show of how good they are. Don't be the guy who falls for it and definitely don't be the guy who propagates it.
bibi spent 10k a year on ice cream for his fat pig wife
Kek. Maybe he's planning to slather her lard over the wall as a deterrent.
kek seriously?
and his fat pig wife stole returnable bottles and pocketed the cash herself.
>haaretz.com
oy fucking vey indeed
>this headline
>jpost.com
why does he even have a budget for icecream anyways.
This funny.
He keeps getting that sweet American dough, but there's so much that he doesn't know what to do with it. Hence an ice cream budget.
So you blame the supplier not the user?
Thats like saying dont blame the gunman, blame the gun.
why not blame everybody like I am doing?
This is why taxes are theft.
our politicians spent 27k on these things so they can sleep comfy at work...
You want government? This is what you get. You made your bed, now sleep in it
That's a really stupid thing you just said.
Gun suppliers are private companies who sell a product to make money. Government budgets are paid for by the public so the government can effectively do its job.
No government needs stationery budgets large enough that purchases like these can be made, therefore whoever decided upon the budget is a larger problem than the guys who bought stationery with the money they were given solely to buy stationery.
Peanuts if you think about how much a refugee costs. But treasonous nonetheless.
> 70k
Wow.. It's literally nothing
I was working with an old politician who went to Brussels on a trip (unsure what exactly for, I think it was to get European funding) - he was at dinner with a MEP, and they could literally just draw money out of a guy sitting at a desk. No checks or anything, just drawing out money. They spent several thousand on dinner and shit. It's awfully corrupted.
Pens are based. I've got probably $2K worth of pens and I work with my hands.
>No government needs stationery budgets large enough that purchases like these can be made,
Oy vey yes they do goy, check your privileges.
This is a prime example of how governmental institutions work in Germany.
They get a budget of B(t,P) to spend on purpose P during period t. If the actual spending S(t,P) at the end of the period t is S
I use a Mont Blanc rollerball as well. Gifted it to myself when I passed the bar exam, good pens, but whoever doesnt see that these things are not meant to be bought from the stationary budget is nuts in my book.
one should consider corruption in these cases...
it's not that unlikely that someone in the office that is responsible for office supply is wasting the money here and buys these pens without the MP knowing... to take them home later and sell them.
>tfw the penmanship of a 10 year old
>tfw ashamed if having to sign something
that's another point I brought up. Where are all the pens? They should be in the offices, there's going to be hell to pay if they are all gone (what I suspect).
People in companies do this all the time. It's to save your budget from being cut into nothing. Imagine next year you actually need the full amount but because you only spent half the prior year the government says you only need half from now on.
Not saying that you'll need this much of a budget realistically for fucking stationary but there's the principal behind it.
>Pofalla (Ex Minister Now Lobbyist for the Deutsche Bahn) gave Mont Blanc pens away as gifts.
>Norbert Lammer (President of the Bundestag) destroyed Files/Evidence to protect his Party-Friends
Traitors, all of them!
This is nothing compared to the corruption of the French political class. Check out the Balkany's villa on St Martin:
You frenchies are good at rioting and generally fucking shit up if your politicians are out of line. Could you lend us a hand maybe?
Would love to!
You are always welcome here Francois. Looking forward to it.
>small time lawfag/accountant
>buy pic related, 100 pens for 20 euros
>1 pen lasts 2 weeks since who the fuck is writing shit with hand nowadays anyway
>yearly pen expense is € 5.2
Feels pretty jewish tbhwy famalams.
Those pens are practically jewelry. It's not like the money would disappear if it isn't spent.
Being able to buy luxury items from stationary budget is ridiculous. That's my point.
>I focus on everybody, but it starts with the people who made to concious decision to order absolutely not needed luxury items on taxpayer money and goes to everyone who made this shit possible.
if they spent it on a few pallets of letterhead that they had a bonfire with would it still be as bad?
It would be even worse because that would be just malicious and not driven by greed.
Greed is human nature and is easier for the people to comprehend than straight up burning money just for the fuck of it.
Here they spent 2 millions and said that no investigation will be conducted and basically we can shut up about it.
and did you?
Look here:
Is there any knowledge about what happend with those pens afterwards? Are there budget lists for other years? I suspect it was more about dodging budget cuts rather than personal profit.
As a politician giving speeches in front of crowds of corporate managers is much more lucrative than this pen nonsense.
see
given away as gifts
The source is Bild and the direct quote is "Die Zahl der Bestellungen von Herrn Pofalla lässt darauf schließen, dass die Schreibgeräte verschenkt wurden." meaning there is no evidence just speculation.
No , im still laughing. If it was me i'd spend 1 billion for luxury laser pens
A Meisterstück Fountain Pen is a companion for life. These are fucking strong indications that he gave them away. Fucking criminal!
as I said. Human nature.
Thats not human nature . Its a choice .
Human nature to have the urge to be greedy. To act on it is choice. I agree.
Also: Stop plenking!
These fuckfaces refuse to sign off an auditor on their account books, I bet they spend money on whores and cocaine, dirty sods.
Also Merkel is ugly and should be stabbed. Praise allah.
You're late to the party m8: news.bbc.co.uk
Was bedeuted plenking ?
...
Oh, it's a German word for this: en.wikipedia.org
Thats the most german thing i've seen in years.
Ordnung muss sein! I'm off to lunch now.
>named and shamed.
They should be jailed. Corruption is never forgivable.
I have one of these ballpoints somewhere. It was a gift. Wish it were a fountain. Lost it. Rofl.
Well, from their point of view this was an understandable decision.
Can't have someone lower your budget just because you didn't spend it all in the last year, can you?
Pretty much all my class at fucking junior school were elitist cunts with Parker fountain pens, it was a competition in the class room to see who could get the nicest looking one, people treated me with disrespect because I got a customised Parker fountain pen that had a coloured grip.
>mfw my signature is gorgeous and it's also a pun
Oi give us your pen mate
...
Nice try Bibi, but they belong to me.
I'm just proud that you all know how to spell "stationery".
...
Wait, is something like this a scandal in germany? Get on my level.
If you hear something like this in Italy you just go: "ehh, at least it was thousands and not millions"
Good post
As Said before: this is war crime level for us. We're fucking Germans after all.
It's extra juicy because all those pens were ordered shortly before general elections. So everyone and their mother milked the system one "last" time. Stationary budget is 13.000€ a year.
Are these pens any good? Should I get one?
You really are a nation of accountants.
It bothers me too, but this type of thing is so common in the US our reaction to it is very similar to
>No greens on the list
Guess I am #HeiterforHofreiter now
>not buying a high quality pen that will last you a lifetime
Germans know quality, this will lead to a bigger surplus in the future
>politicians are not accountable for their actions, they will spend any money made available to them without thinking about saving it for the country to spend elsewhere
Fuck off
