In December, when concern about the vaccine led to a warning to Americans to prepare for 'a potentially severe flu season', still the UK authorities said nothing. In the last two weeks, there has been a 40 per cent rise in deaths among over-65s compared to 2014 – with flu a major factor. How many lives might have been saved if people who wrongly believed the jab would protect them had been told to take greater precautions or anti-viral drugs?

How much money was spent sending reminder letters and organising special clinics to administer a jab already suspected of being largely useless? Wasting taxpayers' cash is bad enough. If the silence of officialdom has cost lives, it would be nothing less than a scandal.

Britain's former top Nato commander General Sir Richard Shirreff said the UK should be playing a larger role in the efforts to resolve the crisis amid fears that it could lead to an all-out European war. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'This is the most serious crisis to have faced Europe, arguably, since the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. There is a threat of total war. The UK is a major Nato member, it is a major EU member, it is a member of the UN Security Council, and it is unfortunate that the weight that the British Prime Minister could bring to efforts to resolve this crisis appear to be absent.'

Meanwhile US Vice President Joe Biden has warned that America must stand together with Europe to stop escalating Russian military involvement amid reports of transatlantic divisions over whether to send weapons to support the Western-backed Kiev government. 'We, the US and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment,' Biden said. 'Russia cannot be allowed to redraw the map of Europe.'

Biden also accused Putin of riding roughshod over peace efforts. 'Ukraine is fighting for their very survival right now. Russia continues to escalate the conflict by sending mercenaries and tanks and, as we euphemistically say in the United states, little green men, without patches, very sophisticated special operations soldiers. President Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside, and he absolutely ignores every agreement his country has signed in the past.'

And according to the latest update from the 29 west coast ports that serve as the entry point of the bulk of Asia/Pacific trade into and out of the US, things are about to get far worse for America's manufacturing base, because as RILA [Retail Industry Leaders Association] reported earlier, talks between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) representing port management, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) officially broke down on Wednesday, and without an agreement, experts have suggested that nearly 30 west coast ports could be shut down within a week.

As RILA reports, "a work slowdown during contract negotiations over the past seven months has already created logistic nightmares for American exporters, manufacturers and retailers dependent on an efficient supply chain. A complete shutdown would be catastrophic, with hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk if America’s supply chain grinds to a halt."

The association of shipping lines, terminal operators and stevedores made public details of its contract offer, including 3 percent annual raises over five years, retaining employer-paid health care, and raising pensions by 11 percent. The average dockworker now makes $147,000 a year in salary, plus $35,000 a year in employer-paid health care and an annual pension of $80,000, according to an association press release.

A 20-day lockout now would cost more than $2 billion a day, the association said in a report last year, including losses to railroads, ocean carriers and the broader economy. Which incidentally, in an economy that is desperate for any "one-time, non-recurring" item to explain what is now global secular stagnation and economic slowdown, an excuse such as a port strike, or a harsh winter, or a strong dollar, or plunging crude, may be precisely the scapegoat that the central-planning doctor ordered.

One of the main reasons why the Germans followed Hitler with such enthusiasm (also never mentioned) is that he employed the brilliant economist Hjalmar Schacht to reform the currency and give the banknotes hard-currency value again. The people would have followed any Pied Piper who could do that. But even Schacht cheated. He passed off full employment creating motorways, infrastructure and weapons of war as prosperity whereas they just piled up debt.

But the plan was to use the weapons to invade all their neighbours, confiscate the central banks’ gold and currency reserves and thus firm up the Reichsmark. And it worked – for a while. But when they lost the Nazis left not just Germany but all of Europe bankrupt. After 1946 when Adenauer morphed the Reichsmark into the Deutschmark he employed another brilliant economist, Ludwig Erhard. His job: keep the Deutschmark hard, no matter how much discipline was required. And they did – trade unions included. That is why German unions never went on strike while ours struck this country into ruin. And it worked.

The whole economic miracle was based on a single and simple creed – never debauch the currency. Go through the hell of self-denial if you have to but keep the currency rock solid. Now they are in the eurozone and what is happening? An Italian at the European Central Bank is debauching the currency.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who was raised in an East Germany with a loo-paper currency – is against it but this time, for the first time, she has been overruled. She is between a rock and a very hard place. She hates the europrinting spree but is also a fanatical supporter of the EU and all its works. But that may not be the mass verdict of the German people for much longer.

Instead, debt continues to grow in nearly all countries, in both absolute terms and relative to GDP. This creates fresh risks in some countries and limits growth prospects in many,” according to new research carried out by consultants McKinsey in 47 countries. The amount of world debt reached $199 trillion at the end of 2014, with the growth rate exceeding the pace of global economic expansion and the debt to GDP ratio increased from 269 to 286 percent. “Higher levels of debt pose questions about financial stability and whether some countries face the risk of a crisis.”

Geographically, Ireland was the country where the debt to GDP ratio saw a record increase – of 172 percent. The ratio in Japan added 64 percent and remains the world’s highest at 400 percent. In Russia, the debt to GDP ratio saw a moderate growth by 19 percent, remaining relatively low at 65 percent.

China is one of the key concerns as debt there has skyrocketed almost quadrupling, from $7.4 trillion in 2007 to $28.2 trillion in mid-2014. The debt-to-GDP ratio reached 282 percent comparing to 269 percent of the US. Although total Chinese debt is still manageable, experts are concerned with worrisome levels of debt in the property sector and the rapid expansion of shadow banking. “China’s total debt, as a percentage of GDP, now exceeds that of the United States.”

To avoid another crisis, the governments might take recourse to new ways of reducing the national debt such as larger sales of assets, non-recurrent wealth taxes and more effective programs of debt restructuring, the report said. “Policy makers will need to consider a full range of responses to reduce debt as well as innovations to make debt less risky and make the impact of a future crisis less catastrophic.”

Instead, the message after meetings in which both sides grasped for common ground was that the same rules still apply. On Thursday, the Greek and German finance ministers even failed to reach an agreement on whether or not they disagreed.

It was a lesson in eurozone realpolitik for Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s new finance minister. After a private meeting on Thursday with Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, who is regarded as Europe’s chief enforcer of the austerity doctrine, the two men struggled to come up with even the public platitudes of harmony that usually follow such meetings.

Mr Schäuble told reporters afterward they had agreed to disagree. But Mr Varoufakis disagreed. “We didn’t agree to disagree,” Mr Varoufakis retorted. “We agreed to enter into a discussion for a joint solution for all European partners.”

Yet pulling the plug on Greece would pose enormous risks, not just to Europe’s economy, but to the whole European project, the 60-year effort to build peace and democracy through shared prosperity. A Greek banking collapse would probably lead Greece to leave the euro and establish its own currency — and if even one country were to abandon the euro, investors would be put on notice that Europe’s grand currency design is reversible.

Beyond that, chaos in Greece could fuel the sinister political forces that have been gaining influence as Europe’s Second Great Depression goes on and on. After a tense meeting with his German counterpart, the new Greek finance minister didn’t hesitate to play the 1930s card. “Nazism,” he declared,“is raising its ugly head in Greece” — a reference to Golden Dawn, the not-so-neo-Nazi party that is now the third largest in the Greek legislature.

What we’re looking at here is, in short, a very dangerous confrontation. This isn’t diplomacy as usual; this is a game of chicken, of two trucks loaded with dynamite barreling toward each other on a narrow mountain road, with neither willing to turn aside. And all of this is taking place within the European Union, which is supposed to be — indeed, has been, until now — an institution that promotes productive cooperation.

And what if the Germans don’t wake up? In that case we can hope that the central bank takes a stand and declares that its proper role is to do all it can to safeguard Europe’s economy and democratic institutions — not to act as Germany’s debt collector. As I said, we’re rapidly approaching a moment of truth.

John Michael moved to Sheboygan, married the daughter of another German immigrant, who owned the local foundry, and took over his father-in-law’s business. He transformed it from a maker of ploughshares into a plumbing business. Today Kohler is the biggest maker of loos and baths in America. Herbert Kohler, the boss (and grandson of the founder), has done so well selling tubs that he has been able to pursue his other passion — golf — on a grand scale. The Kohler Company owns Whistling Straits, the course that will host the Ryder Cup in 2020.

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46 million Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33 million) or England (25 million). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group. Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock.

Yet despite their numbers, they are barely visible. Everyone knows that Michael Dukakis is Greek-American, the Kennedy clan hail from Ireland and Mario Cuomo was an Italian-American. Fewer notice that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky with presidential ambitions, are of German origin.

Companies founded by German-Americans tend to play down their roots, too: think of Pfizer, Boeing, Steinway, Levi Strauss or Heinz. Buried somewhere on their websites may be a brief note that “Steinway & Sons was founded in 1853 by German immigrant Henry Engelhard Steinway in a Manhattan loft on Varick Street”. But firms that play up their Germanic history — as Kohler does, in a short film shown at the Waelderhaus — are rare.

German immigrants have flavoured American culture like cinnamon in an Apfelkuchen. They imported Christmas trees and Easter bunnies and gave America a taste for pretzels, hot dogs, bratwursts and sauerkraut. They built big Lutheran churches wherever they went. Germans in Wisconsin launched America’s first kindergarten and set upTurnvereine, or gymnastics clubs, in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and other cities.

Today German-Americans are quietly successful. Their median household income, at $61,500, is 18% above the national norm. They are more likely to have college degrees than other Americans, and less likely to be unemployed. A whopping 97% of them speak only English at home. They have assimilated and prospered without any political help specially tailored for their ethnic group.

On February 9th Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, will meet Barack Obama in the White House. They will discuss the war in Ukraine, transatlantic trade, the wobbling euro zone and the upcoming G7 summit in Bavaria. Unlike Indian-Americans, who went wild when their new prime minister visited America, German-Americans will barely notice.

The delay is highly contentious and will be seen by many Nigerians as foul play. What is not clear at this stage is whether it will favour President Goodluck Jonathan or his rival, Muhammadu Buhari. Attahiru Jega made a point of saying this was a decision taken by the electoral commission but clearly the "referee" was under intense pressure.

The Boko Haram conflict has raged for five years but just days before the vote, Professor Jega was suddenly told the entire military would be focused solely on the north-east - in other words, "you are getting no help from the military, you are on your own". With the threat of violence so real, he was put in a tight corner.

It seems highly unlikely that the conflict will be brought to an end within the next few weeks, so will the election be held at all? That may depend on whether some powerful personalities feel President Jonathan is well placed for a victory.

He added that the Church must speak out in defence of religious freedom – but with the humility of a reformed alcoholic who recognises that they once practised the very things they now urge people not to do. Mr Fry triggered an Internet storm last week when he lashed out at the idea of God during an interview with Gay Byrne, the veteran chat-show host, on Ireland’s RTE.

Asked what he would say to God if he found himself standing at the gates of Heaven, he said he would say: "How dare you. How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that's not our fault? It’s not right. It's utterly, utterly evil.” He added: "The God who created this universe, if he created this universe, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish.”

US experts warn that in the EU's crisis countries, the German austerity dictate has resulted in "a level of misery" "that surpasses the limits of tolerance for a democratic society," and suggest that Greece be dealt with pragmatically - a partial debt remission along the lines of the London Debt Conference 1952/1953 model.

Two years ago, Greece's new Minister of Finance Giannis Varoufakis had already called on Germany to shift from an "authoritarian" to a "hegemonic policy" that would not use its economic power to hold the EU countries down, but to allow them to participate in the hegemonic benefits, as Washington had once done for the Federal Republic of Germany with its Marshall Plan. Varoufakis wrote explicitly, "Europe" does not need an "authoritarian" but "a hegemonic Germany."

An EU military force has been a dream for europhiles for decades, yearning to give the EU more clout by having an armed back up to its political and economic policies. And following the latest battle between Israel and Hezbollah, the senior EU figure spoke of a new ‘presence’ on the Lebanese side.

While it has a Common Foreign and Security Policy, the EU has made little advancement in a Single European military force, mainly because of the huge opposition it would have amongst the population of member countries and the very different approach those countries take in their foreign policy.