Schadenfreude – dontcha love it!

The Germans have lots of wonderful combined nouns. There’s ‘Weltanschauung’, ‘Zeitgeist’, ‘Bodensangst’�(I made that one up)�and ‘Schadenfreude’. Schadenfreude is defined as “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune”.

There have been two opportunities for lots of schadenfreude over the last few days. First, in Mecca hundreds of mad Muzzies were trampled to death by hundreds of other mad Muzzies as happens every year. There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. But why? It was clearly God’s will otherwise it wouldn’t have happened, would it? And as for the departed, well they’ll be enjoying the pleasures of Paradise slightly earlier than expected, so they’ll be happy. And one can hardly claim that the world is a poorer place without these lunatics.

Then there’s VW. The German car-maker’s motto was, of course, “Vorsprung durch Teknik” (“Advancement through technology”). For over 30 years, VW has carpet-bombed us with advertising boasting their superior engineering. But now we find that VW couldn’t work out how to build diesel engines that were as clean as their competitors. So instead they fitted about eleven million cars with ‘defeat’ devices to cheat emissions testing:

What is truly incredible is that VW thought they could get away with this. After all, hundreds of VW employees must have known what was happening and all it needed was one disgruntled VW engineer to blow the whistle and the company would be well and truly screwed.

It’s difficult not to experience a rather large amount of schadenfreude at arrogant VW’s entirely self-inflicted agonies:

So, how much will this monumental blunder cost VW?

First there’s the company’s share price:

Fixing eleven million cars at about say �100 to �200 per car will only set the company back about �1bn to �2bn. And Merkel will have been on the phone to other European leaders to tell them that they’re welcome to huff and puff about the VW fraud, but if they take any real action against VW, she will use German economic power to crush them. After all if VW goes down, over 500,000 German jobs will be lost. If that happens, where will Merkel put the 800,000 crazies she’s importing this year to work in German factories? Ooops, Angela’s great plan may be going up in smoke. Lots more schadenfreude.

Cameron, in particular, will have been told in no uncertain terms that, if he wants something from the British renegotiation with the EU, then it’s hands off VW. We can expect lots of heat and noise from the authorities across Europe in the months to come, but don’t expect much action.

However, it will be more difficult for Merkel to intimidate the US. So, there at least, we can look forward to VW getting a well-deserved kicking from the American authorities who will see this as a great opportunity to help General Motors and Ford by crippling VW. Plus swarms of US lawyers will be descending on VW like great white sharks as they join what will possibly be the greatest legal feeding frenzy since the entirely predictable BP Gulf of Mexico disaster:

So, get in the beers and popcorn, relax in front of the TV and enjoy the continuing spectacle of VW’s utter humiliation at the hands of the Americans.

Schadenfreude – dontcha love it?