Harry Mount in The Telegraph amuses with Thatcher, Mandy and the Germans:
'Does Margaret Thatcher have any children who might be interested in running Germany?" It took a brief run-through of the careers of Mark and Carole Thatcher to convince the 30-year-old head of a German think-tank, who had asked the question, that they might not be best placed to bring Germany out of its current recession - declared official last week.Well, it's amusing to me. Probably less so to the citizens of Germany.
But that didn't stop the other German delegates at the weekend's Konigswinter conference - the most influential of Anglo-German conferences, set up by Adenauer in 1950 - from declaring their desperation for a leader cast in the mould of Mark and Carole's mother.
Germany is not in as bad a shape as Britain was in 1979, but there are many of the same problems - high unemployment, unreconstructed unions, rocketing welfare costs. And there's no one there to sort it out. Gerhard Schröder is not considered up to the task. And it's still not clear who might lead the opposition Christian Democrats into the next election to clear up the mess. Oh, how they all longed for a Frau Thatcher to do it.
