On Tuesday, the German media oversight agency, the ZAK, announced that it was prohibiting broadcasting of the Austrian alternative TV channel AUF1 on German satellite television. AUF stands for Alternative Unabhängige Fernsehen or ‘Alternative Independent Television’.
The decision is ostensibly based on a technical violation: it is, more precisely, the Stuttgart-based television channel SRGT which is prohibited from broadcasting AUF1 programming in Germany. But, as reaction to the ban in the mainstream German media and from activist organisations makes clear, it is in fact the content of the programming that is at issue.
Thus, the self-described “citizens’ movement” Campact, which has campaigned for a prohibition of the channel, celebrated what it called a “victory against Right-wing extremism” by posting the below graphic on X. The top line reads: “Success against Hate and Fake News on TV.” This is gleefully followed by “Far-Right TV-Network Shut Down!”, which is highlighted in red, and then “Our protest works! AUF1 is no longer allowed to broadcast in Germany”. This is all very reminiscent of the campaign against GB News in the U.K., a TV station which occupies a similar role of conservative dissent from the broadcast mainstream.
The selected, er, ‘hate’ figures featuring in the image include two prominent representatives of Germany’s AfD or Alternative for Germany party: Alice Weidel, the party Co-Chair, and Björn Höcke, the head of the party’s parliamentary group in the state of Thuringia. The AfD is under surveillance by the German domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, for suspicion of “extremism” and is regularly threatened with being banned. The regional party organisations in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, where the party enjoys the support of around one-third of the electorate according to the latest polling, have been officially classified as “far-Right” by the BfV.
But sandwiched between the two AfD politicians in the Campact graphic is none other than the former director of the BfV, Hans-Georg Maaßen! Maaßen headed the domestic intelligence agency, whose spying activities are largely devoted to ostensibly “combatting extremism”, from 2012 to 2018. But, in light of his frequent criticism of Government policy and the often heterodox positions he has adopted on a wide variety of subjects in the meanwhile, he has somehow now morphed into an emblem of alleged ‘extremism’ himself.
While its detractors accuse AUF1 of having provided a platform for the ‘far Right’, the channel has in fact, above all, made a name for itself in Austria and Germany for its critical coverage of and frank opposition to Covid-related measures. This is reflected in the below photo with which the German public broadcaster SWR illustrates an article on the banning of the Austrian channel. The SWR article also, incidentally, attempts to highlight the channels’ connections to the AfD and the “far Right”.
The posters, which include the AUF1 logo, read “No to forced vaccination!” and “The pandemic is over. Take off your masks!”
While the banning of AUF1 has been applauded by German activist groups and the mainstream media, there is less unanimity in social media. Thus, in a post which has garnered many hundreds of reposts and likes, X user ‘AntoineRichard’ comments:
Have you heard? #Auf1 has been shut down in Germany! But it’s also important to know that in the best Germany of all time there is no #censorship, but rather #freedomofspeech! This is something we can be really proud of!
This is followed by two emojis:
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.
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Soon to be replaced by workers in other countries. If it can be done remotely, you don’t need a British passport for it.
This has been repeatedly raised, yet so many are ignoring it.
Or algorithms running on a server somewhere.
Even if not replaced abroad there’s plenty of cheaper UK locations than anywhere HSBC is currently based where people will be happy to take on these roles remotely.
Call centres are not renowned for length of service awards. With just natural wastage all those 1,200 jobs could be located overseas in less than five years.
I wonder how many will extract a commercial rate for premises and facilities. Or will there be yet another weak roll-over – to capital and its predations, whilst unions just ‘Tut’?
They’re laughing all the way to the bank. £300 a year to turn a room in your house into an office? How much does that extra room cost per year?
They will all be happy to do it, until they are told their pay is being frozen. When are the councils going to start claiming business rates from these people? If your home is a place of ‘work’ then the rates should be applied. Have the H&S visited all the home ‘offices’ to ensure they are ‘Covid Secure’? An injury at home when working is the responsibility of the employer!
Not only is the home COVID secure there will be insurance implications for both the homeowner and company.
There are also GDPR and other privacy concerns with people working from home, many not on a VPN, with other adults able to look over shoulders at screens and access clients personal information.
And the next step, of course, is to gradually offshore these jobs!
I’ve been involved in the outsourcing of accounts functions to India. Each one has been a disaster because management have failed to calculate how much efficiency is added through communication with people you are sat next to. In one case they brought the entire function back into the UK, and in the other two a small team was created in the UK to carry the teams in India.
However, if you get the employees in the UK to prove it can work, make them work remotely, and work out how those inefficiencies can be overcome, then …
Waiting for colleagues to get around to responding on whatever chat app they’re currently ignoring is a total nightmare vs a quick chat over the top of the desk.
I’m anti-social at the best of times but there’s no way I’d choose to work from home 100% of the time.
HSBC UK the next bank to go under. Customer Service is overlooked until its too late, there is seldom any going back. Bloody fools.
Customer service is so 20th Century and bloody fools they certainly are.
I’m pretty sure there are insurance/liability issues to working from home 100% of the time. The reason I know this is a former employer restricted our wfh for this reason.
A friend of mine who works for a large, solid multinational was concerned last summer that the next step after the home office would be an even more intense shift of these home offices to countries in the 3rd world.
This week, they got news of a major restructuring in that direction and British redundancies to come because of that.
Next step: Britain becomes the third world
When I worked for a big multinational company about ten years ago we were all offered the opportunity to become home workers if we wanted to – with laptops and mobile phones it made it much easier to do so – anyway, all you had to do was apply to work from home and that was that – you got lots of help setting up your ‘work station’ at home etc and quite a lot of people leapt at the opportunity to work from home and not have to come into the office anymore except for the odd important meeting which wasn’t very often or if they preferred they could just join-in via a conferernce call and number provided. I was tempted to work from home myself but held back for a little while to see how others found the experience – I’m glad I did really because the initial novelty of home working quickly wore off for many homeworkers who were steadily starting to regret their decision – among many things they would complain about was for example feeling they were being ‘left out of the loop’ etc when important decisions were made and they didn’t get to hear about or were the last to know, they found trouble getting assistance when they were struggling with their work, they complained of feeling isolated and had no one to talk to about their work related problems and complained that their ability to contact someone quickly about an urgent problem could be lengthy and troublesome – when they worked in the office they could usually discuss their work issues almost immediately face-to-face with someone who could usually help there and then and the problem could be resolved almost immediately rather than it taking hours, days or sometimes even weeks to resolve where homeworking was concerned … but most of all many homeworkers say that they missed the office comradery … that cohesiveness that made them feel connected with the rest of the workforce which you just cannot form working home alone.
Things may have changed today but evidently I decided back then not to work from home.
I decided that it was much healthier to (try at least) keep work and homelife as seperate as possible.
All part of the reset to benefit giant corporations