So, I’m spending my winterval holidays with my parents in Germany. I’ve not really been following German politics for years now, but a few things have jumped out at me over the last couple of days which I thought I’d share.
Germany is currently governed by a government which, in name at least, doesn’t look that different from our glorious overlords: a coalition of the main centre-right party with a smaller liberal party. And yet, here are just a couple of the news headlines I’ve picked up over the last few days:

• The government, the opposition and pretty much the entire political establishment have unequivocally rejected demands from the airport security industry to introduce passenger profiling. All the comments I’ve heard have been along the lines of “WTF, that’s racist!” So proud of Germany.
• The government has announced that they will cut down the number of practically-unpaid, benefit supported private sector jobs (where tax money is basically used to subsidise businesses who don’t pay their employees enough to live on) and instead create more public sector jobs.

And of course LibCon has already covered the story of the German government’s approach to the recession and how Germany is now reaping the rewards with strong growth and low unemployment.
Just to provide some balanced coverage and show that the grass isn’t always greener, another topic currently under discussion is the introduction of a national minimum wage, which still doesn’t exist in Germany. (In all fairness, there is less of a need for it as trade unions are still relatively strong here and tend to negotiate minimum wages for their industries as part of the regular pay negotiations.) Still, the government is actually beginning to move in the right direction on this too.
But yeah… food for thought on what a centre-right government could look like. There are a few bones I have to pick with the CDU, but looking at the snapshot above I’ve little trouble believing that they are genuinely motivated by working in the national interest. With the Tories… well, you decide.