Tweet

Financial Times

9 Sep, 9 tweets, 4 min read

When Angela Merkel came to power the iPhone had yet to be launched, ExxonMobil was the US’s most valuable company and George W Bush and Tony Blair were still in office. What is her legacy as she steps down 16 years on? We asked Germany’s youth 👇ft.com/content/dab5f8…

Merkel steered Germany through shockwaves such as the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the EU’s sovereign debt crisis and the arrival of millions of refugees as new populist leaders stirred up nationalisms and questioned the European project ft.com/content/dab5f8…

One of those affected by Merkel’s immigration policy was Mohamed Sahly, a 13-year-old who fled Syria with his family in 2015, crossing the Aegean Sea on a small rubber dinghy with 40 other migrants. Today he lives in Berlin & dreams of becoming an engineer ft.com/content/dab5f8…

The EU surviving recent trials was, to no small extent, thanks to Merkel — her ability to compromise and her willingness to negotiate all night. With Brexit and Donald Trump she became, one newspaper wrote, the liberal west’s ‘last defender’ ft.com/content/dab5f8…

‘I don’t think about my role in history,’ she once told the FT. ‘I do my job.’ But in a campaign speech for her Christian Democratic Union party this year she listed her achievements. Which do you think was her greatest? ft.com/content/dab5f8…

Wiebke Winter, a 25-year-old lawyer from Bremen, is a rising star in Merkel’s party, the CDU. She says that a once abstract thing — for a girl to dream of ruling Germany — is now perfectly realistic ft.com/content/dab5f8…

Josepha Albrecht, 17, has known only one leader, who she admired until joining the Green party aged 14. For her generation, Merkel’s efforts on climate change, the nuclear phaseout, expanding renewables and pledging to close mines were simply not enough ft.com/content/dab5f8…

But Merkel’s government has recently been savaged for failing to help Afghan staff and for not providing adequate warning of this summer’s floods that killed more than 180 people. The pandemic has also exposed an overly bureaucratic, ponderous Germany ft.com/content/dab5f8…

Merkel, who said that she didn’t want to be ‘some half-dead wreck’ when she left politics, will be just 67 when making history as the first post-war chancellor to leave office of her own free will, at a time of her choosing. Tap here to find out more ft.com/content/dab5f8…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @FinancialTimes

Financial Times

@FinancialTimes

13 Sep

China has shaken markets and cryptocurrencies with its new regulations and tech crackdown. But why is the country taking such a hard stance and overhauling its governance? on.ft.com/3llFmKh

China’s president Xi Jinping is reinserting the party into the private sector and into family lives in a way that has not been seen since Deng launched the ‘reform and opening’ era in 1978 ft.com/content/bacf9b…

In a series of dramatic moves over the past year, from a crackdown on China’s biggest tech companies to strict time limits on playing video games, Xi Jinping is flirting with propaganda tools and intimidation tactics that many see as similar to the Mao era ft.com/content/bacf9b…

Read 9 tweets

Financial Times

@FinancialTimes

9 Sep

One in 3 Britons is financially illiterate and 1 in 2 has low confidence making financial decisions. The FT has decided to do something about it. Our new financial literacy & inclusion charity FLIC educates & lobbies for policy improvements. Read on here: ft.com/content/e6ae38…

@patrickjenkins_

How can we improve the prospects of millions in the UK and beyond?

Fixing economic deprivation is a mammoth task, but assisting with basic financial education — to boost budgeting skills and debt & investment knowhow — need not be, says @patrickjenkins_ ft.com/content/804807…

Until banking & finance are better regulated we must combat the poverty premium – the ways in which society makes it so expensive to be poor. How?

1. Policy improvement campaign
2. Access to money management building blocks
3. Access to learning resources ft.com/content/7e6172…

Read 6 tweets

Financial Times

@FinancialTimes

8 Sep

Looking for a breakdown of Boris Johnson’s manifesto-breaking health and social care tax?
Here’s what you need to know 👇
on.ft.com/3naUNYj

It’s a big tax and spend package:
💷£12bn of net annual tax rises will be used to finance the equivalent level of new spending
🏥Higher national insurance rates used to boost to the NHS and social care support
📈Bigger measures than many previous Budgets ft.com/content/eceaf8…

The UK's new levy means health is the big winner:
🇬🇧£11.2bn additional spending in 2022-23 across the UK, distributed as normal to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
📄The money will clear a backlog of operations and reduce waiting lists
ft.com/content/eceaf8…

Read 6 tweets

Financial Times

@FinancialTimes

7 Sep

Boris Johnson announced a £12bn annual tax rise to fund a big increase in health and social care spending in England. It was a defining moment that infuriated many in his own party. But what exactly does the tax hike entail?
on.ft.com/2X6ERvz

The plan to increase national insurance contributions (NICs) by 1.25 percentage points for both employers and employees breaches Boris Johnson’s election ‘guarantee’ that he could fix social care without putting up key taxes ft.com/content/eceaf8…

The UK prime minister said that money from the higher national insurance rates — rebranded a ‘health and social care levy’— would gradually be used to pay for long-term social care reforms. The levy will also be paid by pensioners who are working ft.com/content/eceaf8…

Read 8 tweets

Financial Times

@FinancialTimes

18 Aug

How can governments apply the lessons of coronavirus to the next pandemic? Many want to bring drug manufacturing back home — but it is not that simple. Here’s why 👇 on.ft.com/3ARobXj

It’s hard to create ready-for-action back-up factories, and harder still to plan for future crises. When Emergent BioSolutions tried to scale up one of its plants, tens of millions of Johnson & Johnson doses were contaminated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine ft.com/content/842698…

Attempts to untangle the global vaccine supply chain could end up concentrating capacity in the richest countries and entrenching inequalities. One solution is ‘stress tests’ to see if manufacturers can provide drugs when a country’s supply is disrupted ft.com/content/842698…

Read 7 tweets

Financial Times

@FinancialTimes

16 Aug

Experts say that, despite the promises of reform, Taliban rule in Afghanistan could resemble the dark days of the 1990s as many of the movement’s current top leaders were in power back then. Here are a few of them 👇 ft.com/content/25bb6e…

Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada is a former religious adviser to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammed Omar and heads the Taliban’s leadership council. He fought against the Soviets, though he is known more for being a religious scholar ft.com/content/25bb6e…

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is the Taliban’s top political leader and one of its founders in the early 1990s. Baradar was captured in a joint US-Pakistan operation in 2010 and released in 2018 on the request of the US in order to participate in peace talks ft.com/content/25bb6e…

Read 5 tweets

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!