Greece should Quit the Euro and join the £ United Kingdom

To get back to the main point of this thread, the following appeared in the Kathimerini online newspaper this morning.

Nearly one in five Greek households faced deprivation last year, ranking the country sixth in terms of the worst living conditions in the European Union, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) said on Friday.

The agency said that, in 2012, as the country’s economic crisis gathered pace, 19.5 percent of the population had trouble obtaining a variety of basic goods and services.

“During the last five years [2008-2012] there has been an increase in material deprivation in at least four out of nine categories of basic goods and services,” ELSTAT said.

“Specifically, 19.5 percent of the total population in 2012 faced financial burden” obtaining these goods and services, it said.

Basic needs include the ability to face unexpected financial expenses, afford a week’s holiday away from home, eat meat every second day, heat one’s home or purchase a home appliance.

This difficulty affected 76.3 of the poor population but also 30.8 percent of the non-poor, the survey found.

[AFP]
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Regardless of whether you think the main problem is Greece's aggressive lenders or the political system and public sector in Greece, it's clear that the medicine being applied is in danger of killing the patient.
 
Quite. And the problem will not resolve until the doomed currency breaks up. It's not just Greece, Italy is struggling in the wrong currency.
Even in France there are mutterings about perma deflation under the euro. I wonder how many of these countries actually have secret hoards
of a national currency ready?!!!
The european elections next year could be some kind of watershed, the commission will have to deal with a much less compliant european parliament.
 
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Borden said:
I'm becoming a tad fed up with folks who regard anyone who isn't British as some form of sub species.
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Lets look at the facts. Just about every darned thing on this planet was discovered or invented by the British. From TV to photography, from telecommunications to the internet, from tennis to football, from sailboat racing to sailboat ocean cruising, from the English language to the British Empire, From anti-biotics to whatever, etc. The list is endless. I believe the British have played a major part, more than any other country, in forming the civilised world.

Modern politicians with the EU have put out the fires temporarily, but the embers are still smouldering and one day Britain will be back. So grow up and get used to it. We will be back.

And I get a tad fed up with anti- British jealousy and envy. To be British is something VERY special.
 
BurnitBlue said:
Lets look at the facts. Just about every darned thing on this planet was discovered or invented by the British...the British Empire
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So brutalizing and controlling many nations is a good thing is it? (maybe a hundred years ago it was thought to be) I think you should be posting this in a zealots forum somewhere, where all the others hangout, but it's got no place here.

It's OK to be patriotic but not when you consider other nations to be inferior. Go and get your dna checked out and you will find multiculturalism inside your own body...then you can go and argue with yourself in a corner somewhere.
 
BurnitBlue said:
Lets look at the facts. Just about every darned thing on this planet was discovered or invented by the British. From TV to photography, from telecommunications to the internet, from tennis to football, from sailboat racing to sailboat ocean cruising, from the English language to the British Empire, From anti-biotics to whatever, etc. The list is endless. I believe the British have played a major part, more than any other country, in forming the civilised world.

Modern politicians with the EU have put out the fires temporarily, but the embers are still smouldering and one day Britain will be back. So grow up and get used to it. We will be back.

And I get a tad fed up with anti- British jealousy and envy. To be British is something VERY special.
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[Pedant Mode On]

The Internet is not a British invention, it is entirely the work of Americans. The world wide web was invented by a Briton but that's just a set of services that run on the Internet, it's not the Internet itself.

[Pedant Mode Off]
 
I totally agree with BurnitBlue on everything. Well, except the rather minor sail racing thing. Pausanias in his “Korithiaka” writes that in Ermioni, on Aphrodite’s temple, swimming and sail racing were held to honor Dionysus Melanaigidos (Black goat). Actually the Black goat regatta still happens every year. I don’t claim we were the first racers though as I am not familiar with history of Egypt China etc. One last point. When back and on your way to India, remember to leave Constantinople intact as we have long promised to recapture it.
 
To be exact the internet was conceived and funded by the us military to provide post nuclear holocaust communications.
More to the point show me one non Anglo Saxon country from the old empire that is better off now than when it left to become self ruled.Apart from Singapore.
Apologists for our Empire forget that Pax Britannica gave far more to the world than it ever took.
 
Tony Cross said:
[Pedant Mode On]
The world wide web was invented by a Briton

[Pedant Mode Off]
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Just a tease as you were in pedant mode....Tim Berners Lee was actually part of a multicultural team who seem to have been forgotten about (a Flemish guy named Robert Cailliau was one). Furthermore, they were working at CERN which crosses the border of France and Switzerland. CERN was itself started by 12 Western European countries. ;)
 
Greece is no longer having a "financial crisis" it has now turned into a humanitarian disaster!

The Greek church is currently feeding 300,000 people a day from their soup kitchens. 10,000 families are living on the streets of Athens. How many in the rest of the country?

In case you don't know, in Greece your council tax, TV license and property taxes are put on your electricity bill. Don't pay the bill and they cut you off. Over 100,000 homes in the country are now without electricity! On TV last night (Friday) on the "Extra3" channel there was a program about an organisation calling itself "Won't (can't) Pay" who are reconnecting the electricity supply to the sick and disabled after they have been cut off by DEH (the electricity co). Won't Pays spokesman accused DEH of legallised murder when they cut off people who need it to stay alive. They quoted cases of people who had a dialysis machines at home yet their electricity was cut off, cases of diabetics (insulin needs to be kept in refrigerated storage) who were having to store their medication with neighbors and disabled unable to recharge the batteries on their mobility aids.

If this is a cold winter then people will die because they simply don't have the money to cover the ever burgeoning costs. Several locals I know have said the people are close to a mass revolt.

I do not know all the implications of Greece quitting the Euro, I just know that Greece cannot go on much longer like this and leaving seems the only hope.

John
 
I started this thread as a bit of light hearted banter to take the bad edge off the tax issue. But truly, looking at the slow and painful disintegration of Greek society I am forced to conclude that Greece will not find a route out of their nightmare until a Politician steps forward with a vision and strength of character to carry it into action. A fascist statement? No, history shows that even democracies in dire need lean towards strong leadership, to be given the confidence to stand up against their persecutors.
The shortsighted overpaid, over qualified and wholly incompetent children who bag carry for the Troika have no idea how much damage they are doing. They're focused on their careers and bonuses. What they do not do is lay awake at night angsting over the outcome of their actions. Neither do the fat cat creeps who brought their mother country to its knees have concern or social conscience. They're still running around trying to hide their cash.
If the Troika continue their great socio economic experiment and no strong moderate leader emerges then history shows that people will turn to the petty tyrants and opportunists of the extreme left and right. We will all watch the Greece we cherish descend into chaos and violence.. Over dramatic?. Just read the history of the balkans since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman tEmpires.
Maybe Greece joining the United Kingdom is not a stupid Idea.

And for those among us who enjoy slagging off our UK politicians and have to ask. Would you prefer the Greek model?
 
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Bertramdriver said:
I started this thread as a bit of light hearted banter to take the bad edge off the tax issue. But truly, looking at the slow and painful disintegration of Greek society I am forced to conclude that Greece will not find a route out of their nightmare until a Politician steps forward with a vision and strength of character to carry it into action. A fascist statement? No, history shows that even democracies in dire need lean towards strong leadership, to be given the confidence to stand up against their persecutors.
The shortsighted overpaid, over qualified and wholly incompetent children who bag carry for the Troika have no idea how much damage they are doing. They're focused on their careers and bonuses. What they do not do is lay awake at night angsting over the outcome of their actions. Neither do the fat cat creeps who brought their mother country to its knees have concern or social conscience. They're still running around trying to hide their cash.
If the Troika continue their great socio economic experiment and no strong moderate leader emerges then history shows that people will turn to the petty tyrants and opportunists of the extreme left and right. We will all watch the Greece we cherish descend into chaos and violence.. Over dramatic?. Just read the history of the balkans since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman tEmpires.
Maybe Greece joining the United Kingdom is not a stupid Idea.

And for those among us who enjoy slagging off our UK politicians and have to ask. Would you prefer the Greek model?
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I completely agree with your analysis of the aims and goals of the Troika. I'd go even further and suggest that they're not really trying to reform Greece at all, they are simply propping her up until such time as a Greek exit from the Euro does not destabilise Italy and/or Spain. Their actions are not driven by the needs of Greece they're driven by the needs of the Euro and the EU.

But I also believe that many of Greece's current problems stem from a string of corrupt and self-serving governments that have created a similarly corrupt and self-serving public administration. Many of my Greek friends are of the same opinion and you'd be hard-pressed to find many Greeks who think their governments have not been at least partly responsible for the current crisis. For example, I read in Kathimerini a week or so ago that in 2012 the Greek government collected barely 46% of the taxes they were owed for that year. I'm not blaming the Greek people for that failure, I'm blaming the Greek governments and the state machinery they have put in place. So do most Greeks I think.

Successive Greek governments helped create this mess, I'm sorry if that's an inconvenient truth, but you are absolutely right that the Troika are not helping Greece to recover from those mistakes, I don't believe they are even trying to.
 
Tony Cross said:
But I also believe that many of Greece's current problems stem from a string of corrupt and self-serving governments that have created a similarly corrupt and self-serving public administration. Many of my Greek friends are of the same opinion and you'd be hard-pressed to find many Greeks who think their governments have not been at least partly responsible for the current crisis. For example, I read in Kathimerini a week or so ago that in 2012 the Greek government collected barely 46% of the taxes they were owed for that year. I'm not blaming the Greek people for that failure, I'm blaming the Greek governments and the state machinery they have put in place. So do most Greeks I think.
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Exactly! See here: http://www.grreporter.info/en/new_scandalous_cases_tax_evasion/10423

I totally agree with the rest of your post.

John
 
I was in Piraeus last week buying from the marine shops there ,I was hit on by various young to middle aged women for paid sex and I don't mean 1 or 2, at least a dozen ,never seen that before ,mid day as well.
 
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There is a proverb that says that the last straw is the one that will break the camels back. There is also the nautical version that a drowning man will clutch at a straw to keep afloat.

Greece will never leave the EU or Euro because they are the proverbial straws. They will by nature of being human never let go of the Euro and the EU's central bank because that is where the money is coming from to keep their country afloat.

To keep the proverbial comparison alive, the Greeks Government (and people) know that if they took up the drachma they would be on their own, up the creek without a paddle, drowning with not even a straw to grab. Excuse all the metaphors but they work in this instance to put the situation in a nutshell ... there, thats another metaphor.

Edit for substance
 
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To keep the proverbial comparison alive, the Greeks Government (and people) know that if they took up the drachma they would be on their own, up the creek without a paddle, drowning with not even a straw to grab. Excuse all the metaphors but they work in this instance to put the situation in a nutshell ... there, thats another metaphor.
[/

I fear you are right but history since the 2nd world war is that countries that do default on international debt eventually climb out of the pit and prosper. The Drachma is the only way Greece can save itself, but why does everyone assume the bailing out of the Euro automatically means they'll get drummed out of the EU. The two issues are not inextricably linked.
The main benefit would to be get the Troika Carpet Baggers off their backs, devalue and start rebuilding their economy.

The main stumbling block are their incompetent, sycophantic and corrupt politicians and their ruling class who need to keep their noses buried in the Euro trough, snorting bailouts like coke. We see them driving their mercs around Berkshire, rubbing shoulders with the oligarchs. Why should they care? Their families are in the UK and their money is in the Caribbean. They are not suffering so sod the plebiscite.
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Tony Cross said:
I completely agree with your analysis of the aims and goals of the Troika. I'd go even further and suggest that they're not really trying to reform Greece at all, they are simply propping her up until such time as a Greek exit from the Euro does not destabilise Italy and/or Spain. Their actions are not driven by the needs of Greece they're driven by the needs of the Euro and the EU.

But I also believe that many of Greece's current problems stem from a string of corrupt and self-serving governments that have created a similarly corrupt and self-serving public administration. Many of my Greek friends are of the same opinion and you'd be hard-pressed to find many Greeks who think their governments have not been at least partly responsible for the current crisis. For example, I read in Kathimerini a week or so ago that in 2012 the Greek government collected barely 46% of the taxes they were owed for that year. I'm not blaming the Greek people for that failure, I'm blaming the Greek governments and the state machinery they have put in place. So do most Greeks I think.

Successive Greek governments helped create this mess, I'm sorry if that's an inconvenient truth, but you are absolutely right that the Troika are not helping Greece to recover from those mistakes, I don't believe they are even trying to.
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The benefits to Greece will be real, but collateral to the protection of the rest of the €bloc.
What else can you expect - they're bankers!!!
 
Bertramdriver said:
I started this thread as a bit of light hearted banter to take the bad edge off the tax issue. But truly, looking at the slow and painful disintegration of Greek society I am forced to conclude that Greece will not find a route out of their nightmare until a Politician steps forward with a vision and strength of character to carry it into action. A fascist statement? No, history shows that even democracies in dire need lean towards strong leadership, to be given the confidence to stand up against their persecutors.
The shortsighted overpaid, over qualified and wholly incompetent children who bag carry for the Troika have no idea how much damage they are doing. They're focused on their careers and bonuses. What they do not do is lay awake at night angsting over the outcome of their actions. Neither do the fat cat creeps who brought their mother country to its knees have concern or social conscience. They're still running around trying to hide their cash.
If the Troika continue their great socio economic experiment and no strong moderate leader emerges then history shows that people will turn to the petty tyrants and opportunists of the extreme left and right. We will all watch the Greece we cherish descend into chaos and violence.. Over dramatic?. Just read the history of the balkans since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman tEmpires.
Maybe Greece joining the United Kingdom is not a stupid Idea.

And for those among us who enjoy slagging off our UK politicians and have to ask. Would you prefer the Greek model?
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One very big point if I dare mention it without getting blown out the water is the Greek Orthodox Church which holds property estimated at a reported 700 billion euros and that is more than twice the national debt. It is very scary what wealth and power the church holds over it's country and people. The Greeks are very pious and proud people so I don't think to much pressure would be aimed their way.
This is a link to the Greek Rich List . . . . http://www.greekrichlist.com/2012/0...rch-put-under-pressure-on-greece-debt-crisis/ Interesting reading.
 
grumpygit said:
One very big point if I dare mention it without getting blown out the water is the Greek Orthodox Church which holds property estimated at a reported 700 billion euros and that is more than twice the national debt. It is very scary what wealth and power the church holds over it's country and people. The Greeks are very pious and proud people so I don't think to much pressure would be aimed their way.
This is a link to the Greek Rich List . . . . http://www.greekrichlist.com/2012/0...rch-put-under-pressure-on-greece-debt-crisis/ Interesting reading.
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Unfortunately about 2 years out of date and overestimates the Orthodox Church's wealth by a probable factor of x10.
Unfortunate because the point is valid.

Isn't it a good thing that Henry VIII sorted out the Church's economic stranglehold on the English economy in 1536-41? and set the scene for our economic success for the following 350 years.
 
Excerpt from Greek on line news

Former Transport Minister Michalis Liapis was due to stand trial on Thursday on charges of false certification and forgery after he was caught by traffic police driving a car with false license plates.

Liapis was stopped by traffic police in Artemida, eastern Attica, on Tuesday morning for a routine inspection that revealed the license plates of his SUV were forged. He was also driving without a license and could not produce valid insurance.

If convicted, the former conservative minister faces a suspended jail sentence of between six months to five years.

No wonder the Greek people are depressed.
 
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