RE: Is AUDI trying to kill us?

[quk@isham-research.demon.co.uk (Phil Payne)]

In message <199909112039.OAA04550@aztek-eng.com> DeWitt Harrison writes:

> The bureaucrats can be a pretty stodgy bunch there in the Fatherland.
> I suspect many great ideas go untried in the name of public safety.

Actually, IME, no.  If you go to them with an unarguable case that
satisfies their requirements, you can walk out with the right stamps
on your documents within minutes.

I once had to complete 'Polizeiliche Anmeldungen' for a new flat we'd
rented, and inadvertently went to the town hall during their lunch
break.  I apologised and immediately said I'd come back during
'Dienststunden' - but they refused and insisted on processing my forms
with their mouths full of their lunch.

Paperwork the Germans have in quantity.  But it's a mistake to associate
it with intransigence - there's no correlation.  Such a link _does_
(IMO) exist in the UK - but the fact that some or other German procedure
requires a lot of forms doesn't necessarily mean that it's either slow
or inflexible.  Perhaps this is because they're very good at it?

They didn't invent it, BTW.  A _lot_ of the formal systems used in
modern Germany are the brainchildren of the administrators put in by
Allied forces after the Second World War.  In a very literal sense, the
systems used in Germany are the Utopian dreams of British (and to some
extent American) civil servants ca. 1937.

--
 Phil Payne
 UK Audi quattro Owners Club
 Phone: 0385 302803   Fax: 0870 0883933