You've got to admire the bastards I suppose.

[Gob]

Germany is the most positively viewed nation in the world in this year's annual Country Ratings Poll for the BBC World Service.

More than 26,000 people were surveyed internationally for the poll.

They were asked to rate 16 countries and the European Union on whether their influence in the world was "mainly positive" or "mainly negative".



Germany came out top with 59% rating it positively. Iran was once again the most negatively viewed.

Global views of Europe's biggest country have improved significantly in 2013, according to the poll.

It was conducted for the BBC by GlobeScan and PIPA, who conducted face-to-face and telephone interviews with randomly selected people, mainly in urban centres, in 25 countries around the globe.
View of India deteriorates

A three-point increase in Germany's average rating returned it to the top of the BBC list, displacing Japan, which saw its positive ratings drop from 58% to 51%, and fell from first to fourth place overall.

The UK saw a bigger increase in positive ratings than any other country and climbed to third place in the table, in the wake of its hosting of the 2012 Olympics.

The poll also indicates that positive views of China and India have fallen sharply around the world over the last year. After improving for several years, views of China have sunk to their lowest level since polling began in 2005, putting it in ninth position.

India is ranked 12th, with negative views (35%) slightly outnumbering positive ones (34%) for the first time.

But Germany, whose economy has done better than almost every other in Europe in recent years, scored well across the world in the poll.

In Ghana, 84% of people polled said Germany's influence was mainly positive, while 81% in neighbouring France and 76% in Australia felt the same. The big exception to the trend was in recession-hit Greece, where a majority of people polled gave Germany negative ratings.

Positive views of the EU dropped to their lowest level last year but have stabilised this year, rising one point to 49% on average.

But this figure masks significant changes. There has been a sharp drop in positive ratings by Germans, down 14 points to 59%. Canadians and Americans both give significantly lower ratings to the EU. In the UK, positive views of the EU continue to fall steadily and, for the first time this year, more Britons rate it negatively (47%) than positively (42%).

Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and Iran came out worst in terms of how they are viewed globally. Only 15% of respondents said they saw Iran as having a mainly positive influence.

[dales]

Germany?

Those ppl are nutz!


eta: I'm surprised that N. Korea is even on the list with thousands of their populace in concentration camps.

eta: I see Australia didn't even make the list, WTH?

[dgs49]

For the second time in my long and rambling career, I am now working for a German company. A huge one.

There is very much to admire about both the company and the people whom I encounter, both here and in Europe. They are eminently fair with their employees, treating everyone equally, regardless of gender or ethnicity. In my own specialty (Legal/Contract Management), the majority of both the professionals and the top managers are women. Constructive "diversity" is universally practiced, which makes it a very interesting place to work.

The decision-making process is, as you would expect, very regimented, but it is possible to get consensus on "one-off" solutions, if you can make your case. This was not the case with Westinghouse Nuclear, which is one reason why I left.

In my opinion, there is very little bad to say. There is a quasi-joke that goes around in German companies that are engineering-intensive: When an American engineer finds something that breaks down often, he will redesign it so that it is easy to fix; when a German engineer finds something that breaks down often, he will redesign it so that it doesn't break down as often.

[Crackpot]

Who told you that a German? My experience with German engineering is that it is by and large the same as ours. The most notable rubbing points are their ego and they are often literally meticulous to a fault. That is spending resources on things that don't really matter. That being said they (at least in my company) have reached the point that they are finally working together with us .... against the Japanese ( you want to talk a out incompatable engineering philosophies...)

[Joe Guy]

When an American engineer finds something that breaks down often, he will redesign it so that it is easy to fix; when a German engineer finds something that breaks down often, he will redesign it so that it doesn't break down as often.

Those Germans must be constantly redesigning their automobiles. They make some of the most unreliable and most expensive to repair cars on the market.

[dales]

Yeah, that's for sure.

I stopped buying German when VW went water-cooled.

Although the fool that I am, I wouldn't turn down a Porsche Cayman.

[oldr_n_wsr]

meticulous to a fault

I've been accused of that. Overall though, it has helped me more than hindered.
although right now it's hindering me on this project. I am redoing the wiring for the envornmental chamber and have never done industrial wiring before. Because of my lack of experience, I am being extra careful and thorough thus taking longer than they would would like.

[Crackpot]

You missed a word there literally. their meticulousness has cost time and money and resulted in little to no value. They actually demanded that we write a program to show o-rings compressed more accurately actually this isn't correct because it wasn't much more accurate just more aesthetically pleasing which doesn't matter since no one can see the damn thing anyway since it's internal to the part and once installed view of it is totally obstructed.

[oldr_n_wsr]

That's not meticulous, that's nit picking.
But I do understand your point.

[dgs49]

I don't disagree with anything said here (except possibly the little rant about German cars). Making something more robustly necessarily means that when it eventually does fail (as everything will, in time), it will cost more to fix.

Certainly, they like to do things "a certain way," and can resist deviation with neurotic persistence, but in my experience once you make your case they can be pursuaded to see reason, even if it does mean doing something differently than it has been done in the past.

[dales]

They actually demanded that we write a program to show o-rings compressed more accurately

Teutonic o-holes!

[Econoline]

Certainly, they like to do things "a certain way," and can resist deviation with neurotic persistence

A good example of this is the fact that while my (German-made) Dodge Sprinter van has an "Intermittent" setting for the windshield wipers, the interval is *NOT* adjustable; the German engineers have apparently determined that an interval of approximately 8 seconds is ideal and that anyone who might ever want the wipers to operate every 2 seconds or every 20 seconds is wrong. (Mine is a 2004 model; I wonder if this was ever changed in later model years?)

[oldr_n_wsr]

Vee do know best, ya?