Each year the Free State of Saxony holds a competition called futureSAX for startups and fledgling businesses with innovative ideas. The winners receive funding towards developing new products.
This year Dulig awarded the third place to a noise-less sex toy. The silent vibrator walked away with €5,000. But not everyone was impressed with the invention of the vibrator by company Laviu, which is neither new nor innovative.
The rightwing AfD’s vice chair in Saxony, Thomas Hartung, on November 7th called the award “a pathetic display” by minister “Dildo-Dulig”.
“Whoever considers the development of a silent vibrator to be innovative and gives it third place in the futureSAX competition must ask themselves about their own understanding of technology,” Hartung wrote.
“Saxony used to be proud of inventions… like the mechanical loom or Germany’s first functionally-built steam locomotive, but now it’s supposed to be proud of sex toys,” he said.
“The promotion of sex toys is quite the opposite of smart technology,” Hartung added.
The name “Dildo-Dulig” has stuck among Saxon AfD members, with Hartung’s economic affairs colleague Mario Beger using it last week in pointing out that Dulig has done little to expand broadband internet in the state.
“Next to last place in Germany: ‘Dildo-Dulig’ is letting Saxony’s broadband expansion fall by the wayside,” Beger said in a statement. Beger cited internet rankings in which Saxony has the second-worst Internet speed nationwide.
“His only vigour in his ministerial role, is when he’s distributing awards to dildo-makers,” Beger said of Dulig. “If he no longer feels like [expanding broadband] – or even cannot – he still has the option to apply to be the new Sexual Minister of Saxony.”
Dulig himself has not personally given a statement about his new pet name, but an equally feeble SDP spokesman told the broadcaster Sachsen Fernsehen that the minister thought silent dildos represented the future of technology.
“The AfD expects, though not seriously, that Minister Dulig will jump on and react to this painfully cheap little notion from the 1950s,” the spokesman angrily retorted. “If they [the AfD] want to disparage an innovative company, that is their issue and says something more about the party.” Indeed.
One comment
Martin Dulig travels a lot.
Lonely in his hotel room he likes to…
but doesn’t want anyone to hear.
.-)
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