Unrelated to? Nice joke. Most civil servants have little use for the cliché of the tired office; rather, when asked, they state that they cannot complain about too little work. According to all that is known, the Augsburg Public Order Office also does not have any complaints about boredom on file. Rather, the work there could suddenly pile up in the coming days: Because local climate protectors had called for photographs and notifications of illegal parkers throughout the city this Wednesday.
In fact, Augsburg’s parking offenders were threatened with a kind of concerted punitive action on Wednesday, announced at short notice in the morning by the climate camp. The reason: “It’s just crazy how many motorists endanger cyclists by stopping and parking on cycle paths and how much the police and the regulatory office tolerate this illegal behavior through inaction.”
The reaction to such sentences can be imagined quite well in Bavaria at the moment: some cheer, others drool. In fact, there is little objection to sinners being punished. Rescue services also point out that illegal parking provokes accidents. In the past, the fine might have been enough to make sinners repent, but today more than ever the power of clichés seems to dictate courses of action. And both “the climate activist” and “the driver” have to grapple with distorted images alike. One should therefore prefer to go to work instead of being stuck somewhere – and the other should stop living out his motor fetish at the expense of future generations.
As you can guess, it is difficult at the moment to really get in touch and talk to each other. Not only in climate protection. Instead – as the cliché also wants it – the “now more than ever” mentality rules: if one side proposes something, the other calls for the opposite. So it’s a good thing that the Augsburg activists announced their action at such short notice, otherwise hundreds of drivers might have circled the city all day to defiantly block another cycle path every ten minutes. In any case, the regulatory office feels the consequences. No work at all: have fun!