Ups and downs

We look at media comment on plans to raise German health-care premiums, actions by the British government to cut costs in the public sector, as well as on the results of the investigation into Climategate.

Blooming health

The German government’s decision to raise health-care premiums to 15.5 per cent of gross pay shows just how much “free” health care really costs, writes The Wall Street Journal.

The Chancellor’s reform does little to “bend the cost curve” but simply reaches deeper into taxpayers’ pockets. Mrs. [Angela] Merkel may thus be able to plug an €11 billion hole in the system, but at the price of raising German labor costs in the midst of a fragile recovery. ...

Steel will

The UK government is showing a “flash of steel” in its determination to cut the cost of the civil service, writes the Financial Times.

A court ruled that the state was not allowed to alter redundancy terms for civil servants without the agreement of a truculent trade union. So the administration announced ... it would simply change the law. This is the first concrete step in the government’s welcome push to cut the cost of the civil service. ...

The unions will not like any of this. But they cannot expect an exemption from the austerity drive. The government will want agreement with the unions. But, as this week’s announcement has proved, it does not always need their agreement.

Scientific stupidity A British investigation into “Climategate” has found that research on climate warming by scientists at the University of East Anglia was not a hoax. However, the leaked emails that caused the scandal have caused great damage, writes The Guardian.

These emails, which mostly concerned work to establish past temperature records, make startling reading. Quoted selectively, they seemed to show that scientists were hiding the truth. Even taken as a whole, they show a closed and arrogant attitude on the part of some of those involved, protective of their data sets and dismissive of outsiders. The secretive nature of the CRU's work, intended to protect climate science from unqualified intruders, ended up doing great damage instead. There was nothing to hide. Openness was not something to fear. ...