where to start With Hubert Aiwanger or with Markus Söder? Alright, first Aiwanger. The economics minister is something like the master prepper of the state government. And because the war is not far from here, Aiwanger does what a man who is prepared for any emergency has to do: he asks for bulk purchases. First he advised Brussels and Berlin to fill “the food storage facilities to the ceiling”. He then called for sufficient reserves of coal to be built up in case Russian gas ran out. Aiwanger in shopping mode, wasn’t there what?
Yes, there was something. In the spring of 2020, when epidemic concern was suddenly no longer prepper paranoia, his ministry made a bulk order. Including bed linen and mattresses, 10,000 items, or mops, 90,000 items. mops, huh? This is how the CSU, coalition partner of Aiwanger’s Free Voters, reacted. Although, strictly speaking, they weren’t mops, but cloths to wipe the floors of the gyms with disinfectant, which were converted into emergency clinics using bed linen and mattresses ordered by Aiwanger. Or better: should be. It wasn’t quite that dramatic after all, mops and mattresses were gathering dust in the Free State’s pandemic camp, and the CSU mocked Aiwanger in the same grand style as the minister had bought.
So to Söder. The CSU Prime Minister recently uploaded photos to Facebook showing him between Euro pallets on which boxes are stacked. “27 tons of relief supplies from our pandemic camp,” he wrote, for war-torn Ukraine, Slovakia and Moldova. Söder is something like the state government’s spending master. Aiwanger admits the stockpile, Söder clears it out. Aiwanger calls for food hoarding, Söder lets white sausages jump for 4,000 US soldiers. Don’t get me wrong, both are certainly acting with the best of intentions, that’s not the point. It’s about the packages on Söder’s Facebook photos. Under plastic sheets, clearly identifiable: mattresses! Are these…?
yes they are Aiwanger’s mattresses. First scoff at the bedding order and then, well, sit in the made bed!? So they are now amazed in Aiwanger’s ministry about the CSU. And Soeder? See that pragmatically. “Bavaria,” he wrote on Facebook, “helps from the heart”.