Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Giving Angela Merkel a chance

As you may or may not be aware of, Germany does by now have a female leader, Angela Merkel. While I'm not a fan of her party (CDU, the Conservative in my country), I never the less love the idea of us finally having a woman in the leading position.


But ever since she has started doing her job last year, people are unhappy with the way she does things. Admittedly there are some things which have been happening that shouldn't have.


Like the rise in our consumer taxes that is going to take place at the beginning of 2007 (from currently 16% to 19% - and yes, I know that's still low compared to some other countries in Europe). Originally her party claimed that there would be no tax rise during their reign - something I highly doubted even then - and surely not with any taxes that concern the majority of the German people.


Then there are the changes in our health system and considering our pensions. While I personally don't like the idea of having to work longer (especially considering the fact that today it's almost impossible for a person over the age of 50 to find a new job anyway) and having my meagre health care cut even more, I know that those things need to be changed, whether I like the changes or not.


While one can argue about how the government tries to solve these problems, it's obvious that there have to be changes. We need those solutions and they have been put off for far too long.


Our last chancellor - Gerhard Schröder - has had almost eight years to take care of those problems and he hasn't solved them. I say we need to give Angela Merkel the same amount of time - even though I still can't stand her party.

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