The social market economy is becoming less socially just every year he
“The social market economy is becoming less socially just every year,” he writes damningly in the preface. Mr Muller, a close friend and political ally of the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, takes a hatchet to virtually all the sacred cows of the German “social market economy”, and advocates drastically cutting state spending by nearly a fifth.
Mr Muller’s main thesis, outlined in the annual report of the Economics Ministry, is that the rising cost of the welfare state is sabotaging its original mission. A radical blueprint published yesterday by the Economics Minister, Werner Muller, is the first evidence that the recently espoused Blairite thinking is beginning to translate into action in Germany. THE GERMAN government is proposing to roll back the welfare state, cut bureaucracy and slash subsidies to try to rekindle competitiveness in the country’s economy.
The 230-strong European People’s Party won backing from the Liberals to defeat the socialist rival, the ex-Portuguese premier Mario Soares.. Alan Donnelly, the leader of the Labour MEPs, who said the new building was “inexplicable to the public”, blamed John Major for agreeing to its creation.Complaints about the building overshadowed the parliament’s first session, when Europe’s centre-right domination was made clear by the election of Ms Fontaine. The competition between Brussels and Strasbourg [the two sites of the parliament] is getting out of hand.”In 1992, EU governments decreed that the parliament should have two main sites. A breakdown of interpretation services, the failure of lifts and complaints over access for disabled people were among a catalogue of teething problems to dog the new building.A newly elected vice- president of the parliament, the Conservative MEP James Provan, declared: “Many people are very dissatisfied with the office accommodation and are really questioning whether it was necessary I am sure the old building could have been adapted. Despite the election as President of Nicole Fontaine, a 57-year-old French barrister, most MEPs were preoccupied with the building’s logistical nightmares – some calling for a return to their old site.
Neil Kinnock, the European Commission vice-president, whose wife, Glenys, is an MEP, described the new project as “ridiculous”, adding: ” I have great reservations and I have to say, since all of the pounds 250m that the edifice cost was paid by the French taxpayer, if I was the French taxpayer I would not be too happy about it.” Rent on the building this year will be pounds 14m.Mr Kinnock’s views were echoed by MEPs of all political persuasions as they battled to accommodate their staff in confined office space, and to navigate their way around the maze of corridors. Parliamentarians across the political spectrum united in anger at the shortcomings of the building dubbed “Alcatraz” by some French socialist representatives. A TIDE of criticism over the futuristic pounds 250m home for MEPs in Strasbourg dogged the new parliament’s first meeting yesterday, overshadowing the election of the first female President of the assembly in 20 years.
When she drove home that evening – after her husband had gone to the casino to fetch her – she noticed that the child was no longer breathing.Investigators concluded the baby had died of dehydration after about two hours in the car.. The car’s windows were closed and the temperature outside reached 30C.The woman never went to the car but looked out of the casino door to check on her daughter, police said. Baker, then assigned to Hunter Army Airfield outside Savannah in Georgia, was originally charged with homicide by child abuse, punishable by up to life in prison. She spent 15 months in prison awaiting trial.
Baker left her child in the car for more than seven hours, while she played video poker at a casino. Fighting back tears, Baker told South Carolina Circuit Judge Jackson Gregory: “There are no words to express how I feel Joy was my pride and joy”. AN AMERICAN woman who left her 10-day-old baby to die in a sweltering car while she played video poker was given five years’ probation yesterday. Gail Baker, 28, a former US army sergeant, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the August 1997 death of her daughter, Joy.