Angela Merkel may be well respected but she is often painted as being rather cold and calculated, even by German standards. I get that not every politician can be like Boris Johnson (and that’s a good thing)  but it isn’t often we get to see the emotional side of the German Chancellor.

Yesterday saw the Good Life in Germany TV show hit people right in the feels, a Palestinian teenager reduced to tears following Merkel’s response to her plea. Below from Huffington Post:

 Shortly after the broadcast, the hashtag #Merkelstreichelt, which translates to ‘Merkel strokes’, was being used to criticize (sic) Merkel on Twitter for the way she simply offered condolences by patting the teen’s back.

Spare a thought too for the host of the show who gets well and truly snarled at by Merkel after interrupting her back-patting efforts. On a more serious note the amount of asylum seekers heading to Germany makes for sober reading:

More refugees are seeking asylum in Germany than any other country, driven from their homes by violent domestic and international conflict…The country is expecting more than 400,000 immigration applications this year.

Say what you want about Angela Merkel, she is still a million times better than Australia’s Tony Abbott.

[source:huffingtonpost]