Parliament and procedure

Most bills die quietly, and German has two idioms for the two ways it happens. Etwas auf die lange Bank schieben is to push a matter onto the long bench: somebody has decided not to decide, and the phrase always has a culprit — a minister, a committee, a coalition that would rather not vote before an election. It sits close to kicking something into the long grass, and like that phrase it is an accusation rather than a description. Im Sande verlaufen has no culprit at all. A project seeps away like water into sand and simply stops, with nobody’s hand on it. A reporter chooses between the two with care, because the first blames and the second excuses. And a parliament has one mechanism that ends a bill without anybody voting against it, with a name as dry as its effect: die Diskontinuität, under which whatever is unfinished at the end of the term lapses.