Tank discount and peace prize to NATO: A critical view

The economic and ecological sense of this measure has already been discussed at this point, but I don't think much of it. Today I'm concerned with the question of the political sense of the fuel discount. It is obviously intended as a signal from the federal government, which wants to show that it can alleviate the hardships of price-burdened combustion engine drivers. With demonstrative ability to act, she wants to gain new trust among the population.

And then I ask myself whether it will work. For all those who criticize the fuel discount as an anti-social watering can subsidy, certainly not. Neither do the drivers of electric cars who are left out. Likewise, the people who, as users of the Deutschlandticket, will have to pay 3.80 euros more per month from next year will not be particularly grateful (more on that here). And these groups also help finance the fuel discount through the associated tax losses, even though they have nothing to gain from it.

It is not expected that the Chancellor will cry again today. Like just the day before yesterday, when he was apparently so overwhelmed by the friendly reception of the students present at the German School Prize award ceremony in Berlin that Friedrich Merz could no longer hide his feelings (more on that here).

Today, such an uproar is probably impossible: Merz gives the laudatory speech at the awarding of the Westphalian Peace Prize in Münster. The prize is endowed with 100,000 euros and is awarded every two years, half to personalities or representatives of states and groups who have worked for European cohesion; on the other hand to a corresponding youth organization. This time the Peace Prize winner is NATO, and the award will be presented to its Secretary General Mark Rutte.

I don't want to deny that the awarding of the prize to NATO can be well justified: it is a defense alliance and has contributed to stability in Europe over the past decades through its deterrent effect. But the fact that a peace prize, which previously honored the conductors Kurt Masur and Daniel Barenboim and most recently the Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, is going to a military organization this year is just another worrying sign of the weapons-ridden conditions of our present day. I find that hilarious.

Today is Thursday and the new films are showing in the cinema, including one whose trailer left me somewhat perplexed. A man with a shovel was doing a strange dance and, as you could only tell at second glance and in disbelief, that was the old and unsightly styled superstar Tom Cruise. Very, very strange and enigmatic. Do you have to see this?

My colleague, our film critic Hannah Pilarczyk, has already seen "Digger" - and is, let's say, impressed: "It was the most terrible 128 minutes that I have spent in the cinema so far in 2026." At the press screening she was asked not to reveal any surprises, but Hannah says that is not possible because there were none in this film: "Nothing develops for the better in it, it just remains constantly terrible." What the Mexican director Alejandro What González Iñárritu did there was “terrible big-ass cinema”. And I don't know yet whether I'll watch "Digger" despite Hannah's warning, but I can say one thing: That was the most furious 4,500 characters of film review that I've read so far in 2026.

By the way, if you're now wondering whether Sandra Hülser is in it too, because Sandra Hülser is in every film now: I can reassure you. Of course, Sandra Hülser also plays along.

The full story here: Are these the most terrible 128 minutes of film of the year?