"It wasn't a merry Christmas in Greece..."

Τέβε - Insurance & Pensions Fund ~ Aristeidis Metallinos 1981 (cat.112 marble relief)

Greece faces into yet another unhappy year

Another general election is almost inevitable within the next three months

Richard Pine - Irish Times Tuesday 29th December 2015

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Clientelism and plutocracy are so embedded in the Greek political system that to change it would require heart and brain in the corridors of power. Photograph: Orestis Panagiotou 

It wasn’t a merry Christmas in Greece and it won’t be a happy new year. Not for the 26 per cent unemployed (many of whom will be long-term unemployed), in a system where the dole stops after one year. Not for the 50 per cent of unemployed and unemployable school-leavers and university graduates. Not for the 25 per cent of small businesses that are more than likely to go bust. Not for the thousands of migrants herded in near-animal conditions on islands which are unable to sustain them alive or bury them dead.

Yet despite the misery caused by the major players – the International Monetary Fund and the EU – Greeks continue to support a government which is unable to deliver on its election promises, which cannot reverse the downward spiral of recession or rescue those 30 per cent living below the poverty line.

The left has always been on the margin of Greek public life. That is why the rise of Syriza, from its formation in 2004 with just over 3 per cent of the national vote, to victory with 36 per cent in 2015, has been so phenomenal. It is as unthinkable as an all-Labour government in Ireland, yet it happened for three reasons.

First, voters were utterly disenchanted with the two major parties, New Democracy and Pasok. Second, Syriza offered a radical answer to austerity: rescind the bailout. Third, PM Alexis Tsipras is a charismatic figure – young, handsome, casual, and, like all successful politicians, looks as if he almost cares.

Tsipras thought one year ago that he was in a win-win situation. He could not only give Greece a voice but he could transform European politics by the power of argument. He may still hold the moral high ground, but his compromises on reform and capitulation to austerity show how naive he was when it came to playing politics.

Over the past year we have learned that good intentions, especially if politically incorrect, carry as much weight as a puff of wind in the real world.

The Syriza election slogan a year ago was “Hope is on the Way”. That’s all the Greeks are left with – hope. But what use is hope if there is nothing to hope for? Even so, Greeks have not abandoned the spirit of resistance, the capacity for argument and the determination to survive in conditions that all but the most destitute in Ireland would find unlivable.

Greek politics since independence has been remarkably like Ireland’s. The redistribution of land, the opening up of the professional classes and the opportunities for commercial exploitation bred a bourgeois mentality anxious to achieve social and economic respectability and to educate the young in orthodox conformity. Syriza came on the scene to change all that.

But clientelism and plutocracy are so embedded in the system that to change it would require heart and brain transplants – not for the man in the street or the olive grove but in the corridors of power. Greek people are the servants of the 1 per cent owning 90 per cent of the wealth, controlling most of the media and occupying seats in Tsipras’s cabinet.

Greeks are rapidly discovering that not all conspiracy theories are wishful thinking. They now know that German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble set out to crush Tsipras, Syriza and Greece itself if necessary. They know that refusal to contemplate a “Grexit” was an elaborately choreographed charade. They know that the IMF admits it was wrong in setting up the austerity programme.

It is a cruel fact that small countries have little choice in international affairs. Greeks are now openly saying what had been unacceptable before: that Germany is responsible for many of Greece’s difficulties.

In 1833 foreign powers imposed a German king. The last queen in Greece (deposed in 1974) was German and a Nazi sympathiser. Greece is still pursuing war reparations from Germany, but even more serious is the fact that old people today still carry memories of their pregnant mothers bayoneted by German soldiers.

German companies – including Siemens – bribed Greek officials in some of the biggest corruption scandals of recent years. One government minister was jailed, but the Siemens trial, due to start in 2014, has yet to get under way because at least 14 of the 64 defendants are being sheltered in Germany, which has refused to extradite the former chief executive of Siemens Hellas.

German banks benefit from the Greek debt crisis and German companies are the biggest earners from Greek imports. Is it any wonder that Greeks get angry when a German tabloid tells them they should sell off the Acropolis and some of the islands? Is it any wonder that street posters show Angela Merkel wearing a swastika and an Iron Cross? Is it any wonder that Greeks are incensed because the Greek fascist party openly venerates Hitler, burns synagogues and mosques and beats up immigrants while all of its 17 MPs are on trial for murder or associated crimes?

One hundred years ago, while the Easter Rising was being planned in Dublin, the humiliated Serbian army of 150,000 men women and children and their government in exile, arrived in Corfu, where the Greek government gave them asylum after their defeat by Germany. They were a broken people. The mausoleum of those who died here is a chilling place. But they carried the same hope in their hearts that Greeks continue to cherish. And the Serbs regrouped and went back to fight the Germans who had precipitated the world crisis.

In 1916, the Serbs brought with them love of country and a deep faith in its survival. This gelled at the time with the Greek spirit and could offer some hope to modern day Greece, where yet another general election is almost inevitable within the next three months.

Richard Pine’s Greece Through Irish Eyes is published by Liffey Press

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Dora Metallinou writes on 26th December on the Ano Korakiana website 'In celebration of love' Στη γιορτή της Αγάπης:

"Καθώς οι μέρες περνούν ο προβληματισμός μου εντείνεται.. Όλο και πλησιάζουμε στη γιορτή της ''αγάπης''. Ποιας αγάπης; Ποιο το νόημα σήμερα; Στολισμοί στα σπίτια και στους δρόμους! Λαμπιόνια να φωτίσουν τα σκοτάδια... Μια φενάκη να κρυφτεί η αλήθεια...Μα πάλι ,να αλλάξουμε κάτι..να ξεφύγουμε.....κι ας είναι το ΄΄φαίνεσθαι'' Το ''είναι '' το καταχωνιάσαμε, το τυλίξαμε σε σελοφάν γιορτής...Μια βιτρίνα για να κρύψουμε τη ζοφερή πραγματικότητα... Βαυκαλιζόμαστε πως όλα θα αλλάξουν, με ευχές, διακοσμήσεις και κατ επίφαση εορταστική ατμόσφαιρα...Και το γνωρίζουμε πως δεν θα αλλάξει κατι... Άνθρωποι πεινάνε,κρυώνουν,πνίγονται! Τι να γίνει; θα πείτε; Δεν ξέρω ! Απλά λέω δυνατά τις σκέψεις μου!Μια διαφορετική γεύση πήρα χθες το βράδυ,σε μια γιορτή που πραγματοποιήθηκε σε ίδρυμα με άτομα νοητικής στέρησης...Συγκινήθηκα πολύ...προβληματίστηκα... Ένοιωσα όμως όμορφα! Αληθινα! Υπήρχε αγάπη! Αληθινή! Αυτά τα πλάσματα αγαπούν ανιδιοτελώς! Κοιτάζουν στα μάτια τους ανθρώπους που είναι κοντά τους και τους αγαπούν!!!!!! Ίσως είναι η ομορφότερη εικόνα που θα πάρω από τη φετινή χρονιά...... [και σε ένα όμορφα στολισμένο σκηνικό!!!!!!!!! Μπράβο στους ανθρώπους που είναι κοντά τους και τους προσφέρουν ,εκτός των υπηρεσιών τους, και την αγάπη και το νοιαξιμο! Το είδα!!!!!]"   ΔΩΡΑ ΣΠ. ΜΕΤΑΛΛΗΝΟΥ

Late summer in Greece

Our balcony is festooned with grapes. I eat them pips and all. Down at Piatsa with Mark we were canvassed at the weekend by SYRIZA's MP Fotini Vaki. I took the opportunity to give Richard Pine's latest book - this one about Greece 'through Irish eyes' - some exposure...The general election is next Sunday - tomorrow. The village will be full of voters and cars but there's far less excitement about this election than the one in January. Alexis Tsipras is now another bail-out signatory, mucking down to EU conditions due in October as part of the next tranche of prop-up credit...

At Piatsa on Democracy Street with my friend Mark and Fotini Vaki MP

I have two complimentary copies of Richard's book, one for me and one for Angeliki Metallinos, whose grandfather's work appears on page 244...

The other day, a while away, we had a family supper to celebrate Arthur's and Dorothy's 70th wedding anniversary. Cards at Clinton's ran out at the 50th. Our waitress kindly took a photo of us at Toby's Carvery in Sutton...

Guy, Simon, Richard, Linda, Hannah, Dorothy, Arthur, Amy and Oliver

It's almost astonishing that Dorothy is enduring three weeks of radiotherapy for cancer; treatment she undergoes with stoicism and dignity - a few minutes every afternoon at the cancer unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston. Sometime near the end of last year, in part as a result of pressure from Lin, the medics switched from care that could be regarded as 'palliative', to therapy at probably the best hospital in the kingdom. They made a plastic mould of Dot's face that holds her head steady as, lying on a table, the large and very expensive linear accelerator directs beams at specific points on her face, targeting her nasal cavity cancer - result, Lin's surmised, of her mum's work years ago in the leather industry in Walsall.

My father-in-law and my mother-in-law - Dorothy (91) and Arthur (97) in our garden in Handsworth

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Minor irritations, that didn’t bother great Achilles…

Outside the unique Achilleon Palace with Lin's cousin Val beside Herter's cheesy sculpture of the dying Achilles 1884

...like filling my paper coffee cup during turbulence at 30.000 feet from small spits of milk squeezed from a fistful of catering packs passed down from the passing trolley...

Sent 22 Aug 2015 by Simon B ... Your ref: *** Parking charge notice: *** This morning I received Debt Recovery Plus Ltd’s demand for payment of an unpaid parking charge dated **/08/2014. Can we proceed to court on this matter at our mutual and earliest convenience, rather than any party wasting further time exchanging correspondence?  I have evidence to present to a judge from a file on this incident that goes back to the date of the charge, most of it involving certified letters and notices which received neither acknowledgement nor replies from UK Parking Control Ltd. Yours sincerely… 

Received 28th Aug. Thank you for your email regarding the above Parking Charge Notice (PCN). As per the British Parking Association’s (BPA) Code of Practice, Point 22.7, the time to challenge the charge has now expired and therefore access to the Independent Appeals Service (if applicable) is no longer available….I feel obligated to inform you that, under the Pre-Action Protocol of the Civil Procedural Rules, court action must only be viewed as a last resort. I am attempting to abide by this direction by trying to settle the matter amicably without court involvement. Your actions may be viewed as obstructive to this aim and will be made clear to the court should the matter escalate to such a stage. Please ensure that £150.00 is paid by 1th September 2015. Payment can be made online or by phone…. 

Sent 29 August 2015…I’ve asked for this matter to be brought to court so that I can, as well as presenting a defence, describe my attempts to communicate with your client, who failed to acknowledge that I had issued an appeal immediately after the imposition of the parking charge, failed to give my appeal due consideration and failed in their legal requirement to inform me of my right to appeal to an independent body. You claim to be attempting to comply with Pre-Action Protocol of the Civil Procedural Rules, as this is actually the responsibility of the private parking company, not of a debt collection agency. I deny this alleged debt. Any debt can only be established by a court hearing. No court hearing has taken place regarding this speculative invoice and UKPC had no legal grounds for referring this matter to a debt collection agency. I am under no obligation to have any communication with you and, should I receive any further correspondence from you, other than an acknowledgement of this letter, will seek compensation for harassment. Yours truly, etc 

Received 1st September 2015...Thank you for your email. Harassment has been referred to and therefore I feel obliged to point out that under S1(3)(c) of The Harassment Act 1997, a course of conduct that someone alleges to be harassment will not be deemed so if the person who pursued it shows that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable. Under the circumstances our course of action has been entirely reasonable and in no way reaches the high threshold of harassment. Our company has legitimately pursued recompense for a breach of the terms and conditions attached to our client’s site. Kind regards 

Sent 1st September…Dear ***. You are saying that pursuing someone for a debt unproven by a court is ‘reasonable’. UK courts disagree. I will treat this letter as an acknowledgement of my last email as requested. Yours….I

On other matters...in early spring we had a water meter installed. The work sprung a leak on our side of the meter. The water company requires us, who'd asked for a meter to save on water rates exceeding £800, to pay the repair of the supply pipe to our house. A friendly and intelligent agency plumber found the leak under our driveway. There’d be no need to delve expensively under the house. He warned that mending would take many weeks while his company gained permission to access the pavement a few inches from our frontage. 8 weeks later and into autumn this permission has yet to be obtained. The leak continues. We hear it in the pipes. Our insurance covers the work, for an excess charge of £200. We’d feared more, and the water company, on a one-off condition, guarantees a post meter installation refund of the charge for the leaked water. We wait.

...and another, in our attic next to our header tank  - increasingly rare in these days of closed systems – there’s an expansion tank. For about a year water heated to provide a shower would, after a few minutes of the boiler lighting, splutter forcibly out of the pipe into that tank, overflow it and leak through the landing ceiling into a plastic tray placed to collect the worst of the drips, whose brownish water made discreet drip lines down the plasterwork. Yacub, our neighbour, a heating engineer, after repeated pleas inspected and suggested a new thermostat. I dug out the paperwork for our 30 year-old boiler, identified make and mark; bought the part on ebay for under £30. A second visit by Yacub. He suggested the thermostat wasn’t the problem. Perhaps, he surmised, "You need a thermostat on your boiler tank upstairs" “Perhaps?” There the problem rested through warm months until we thought of winter. I phoned Dermott, recommended by a neighbour, who came almost at once. His inspection said the boiler needed a thermostat. I dug out the spare from ebay. He fitted it in minutes and waited with, us testing the repair. £140 for his expertise. A worry off our list. We left the plastic tray where it was – in case.
*** ***
In early September I’m alerted by a text from a a friend, that the company that produced and retails my stepfather’s recovered TV programmes has ‘gone into administration’. I ask about the timing of my next royalty cheque – due in August, a useful sum.

Dear X. I have heard troubling news that xxx have been put into administration. If this is not the case please reassure me to that effect. If it is true can you please forward me contact details for the administrator. Yours S 

Dear Simon. I am sorry I haven't spoken to you, but have been out at meeting for the last couple of days. We are having to sell the business, through no fault of our own, which hopefully should be finalised in the next couple of days. The purchaser will no doubt be in touch with you. No, we are not in Administration, I can only guess who told you we were. Best wishes X 

Dear X. So I miss Jan-Jun royalties!  Can I assume that this is 'for the time being' and that what I should have been paid in August will be swiftly paid by your new owners. When can I expect the new owners to honour the obligations they acquired with the purchase of the business? I’d appreciate contact details rather than having to wait until they choose to contact me. I am, as you may imagine, seriously vexed at missing over £xxxx expected for half-year earnings on sale of OOT DVDs. Yours Simon 

I'm not at all happy with the situation myself Simon. It's all due to AAAA, at the end of April we were due a payment for CDs we supplied for £140,000. We received from AAAA £10,000 and £130,000 worth of stock back for credit. It made YYYY, our bankers, panic, wanting their overdraft repaid ASAP. We have sold the racking business, but (are) still to be paid some money. We have two sealed offers for the rest of the business. It will be decided who gets it and the terms in the next few days. Best regards X Sent …from my iPhone

It’s my guess that the company is already in administration.

These things would have no more effect than a slightly barked shin on my normal sense of slightly detached optimism and well-being, especially when balanced against such good things as my shared involvement in maintaining the profile of Black Patch Park…

- The plan to build on part of it still exists but in 18 months has made no progress tho’ we stay in congenial touch with Tony Deep MBE of Eastside Foods... 

Andrews letter to Sandwell MBC this July…. Our constitution states: “The Friends of Black Patch Park is a group committed to the retention in perpetuity of the whole of Black Patch Park and to the improvement of the Park for the benefit of all local people.“ Endorsing a development that would see a significant proportion of the park disappear is therefore a major step for the Friends to take and will in our view require much more detailed information on what is being proposed and dialogue on how any proposed development might be done in such a way as to minimise the social and environmental impacts, while maximising the benefits to the park – its heritage and biodiversity – and the current and future and park users.

The Friends Christmas card in 2006 - The Black Patch in winter (photo: Karen Fry)

- Wikipedia’s entry on Charlie Chaplin does not admit the man was born on the Black Patch – does anyone? – but no longer confidently claims London as his birthplace
- With support from my fellow Friends of Black Patch Park I’ve suggested the park become the responsibility of Birmingham – message to the committee”

Hi everyone. Below my words is an acknowledgement from the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) . I am copying this to Cllr Sharon Thompson of Soho Ward who has shown an active interest in this proposal and endorses the idea that Black Patch be brought back into Birmingham as her electorate comprise its main users.
QUOTE TO LGBCE consultation on 4th Sept 2015 from Simon Baddeley on behalf of the FoBPP: For the committee of the Friends of Black Patch Park I have been asked to make recommendations to alter the boundary of Soho Ward in Birmingham to include this park, which, until 1974, was inside Birmingham. Black Patch Park is presently inside Sandwell MBC, bounded by Foundry Lane, Woodburn Road, Perrott Street and Kitchener Street, at grid reference SP038888. I’ve not marked the consultation map with specific details as the Boundary Commission may, via other consultations, have an expert understanding of ways to include this green space in Birmingham’s Soho Ward. The argument for including Black Patch Park within Soho, has been informed by discussion with Soho Ward members, Cllrs Sharon Thompson and Chaman Lal, who, with us, argue that most users of the park, and those most likely to approach their councillors about the park, and its unused community centre, are nearby residents of Birmingham. Over 20 years all but a few Sandwell residents, once living next to the Black Patch, have moved. The main users of this potentially attractive small green space are separated from it, not by geography, but by a council boundary that we propose should be changed. (END)

…and the fecundity of the allotment.
“A work of art” surmises Winnie “That’s what it’ll be!”
We sit under the shed veranda sipping tea looking past the grape-fringed trellis admiring our new fruit cage – a structure held together by carefully propped bamboos and bright green scaffolding net.

Winnie and her boy on Plot 14

I've numbered every bed at last.

..and started notes...

PLOT 14 ~ 8 Sept 2015

Bed	Notes
1	Asparagus – 8 plants from Scylla’s plots lifted and replanted 2/9/15 Daff bulbs planted 9/9 in corners. [Potatoes sown and harvested March-June – wireworm)
2	Grazing rye (Secale cereale) seeded 6/9/15 – experiment with green manure. Spring 2016 dig in
3	This bed (perhaps others wireworm infested – ruining potatoes). Potato traps set (spuds on sticks under soil) 9/9 daff bulbs planted on two edges [Onions sown and harvested – Jan-July’15. Some onion fly]
4	Runner beans – seedlings planted June 2015.  West end of bed: turnips planted from seed in June. Not thinned enough?
5	Brussel sprouts – seedlings planted June. Attacked by cabbage white caterpillars despite netting, also slugs. Used pellets, and cut off egged and skeletonised leaves.
6	Beetroots. Grown from seeds germinated at home and replanted mid-June. Mixed success. (Peas sown and harvested – March-early June’15. Leaves damaged by pigeons)
7	Fallow [Potatoes sown and harvested March-Aug’15]
8	Garlic – cloves from previous crop planted 7/9/15
9	Aubergine. 4 plants from seedlings in mid-June. Unlikely to fruit.
10	Swedes planted from seed in early June. North: Brussels sprouts (ditto as for bed 5
11	Jerusalem artichoke clump. Regrowing from last year’s tubers. Apple tree
12	Pear. Balm scented poplar. Buddleia
13	Apple. Plum. Stone garden
14	Pond. Various edge plants. Wild strawberry, rushes, speargrass, Chives, Lobelia 4/9/15
15	Rhubarb x 2 planted March 2015. No harvest 1st year
16	fallow. Couple of transplanted parsnips.
17	Parsnips. Already harvesting. Germinated in early March 2015 and sown out late March.
18	East: turnip planted June. West: Winter cabbage seeded June. All netted.
19	Brussels sprouts – seedlings planted mid-June.  As in beds 5 & 10, attacked by cabbage white caterpillars despite netting, also slugs. Used pellets, and cut off egged and skeletonised leaves.
20	Mountain Ash.  Thyme & Rosemary trans-planted from Scylla’s plot 3/9/15.  Rhubarb planted in March’15. No harvest 1st year
21	Runner beans. Planted from seedlings in early June. Harvesting started mid-Aug
22	Fruit net. Raspberry, tayberry, gooseberry bushes planted in late Aug.
23	Fruit net. Raspberry, tayberry planted late Aug.  West: cauliflower [Broad beans sown and harvested April-June’15. Winnie planted in April after my sowing in March failed]
24	Fruit net. Strawberries planted end of Aug – transplants from Scylla’s plot

3 compost bays were built at the end of March 2015. Usable earth in Bay 3, from riddled soil recovered from plot digging and added well rotted leaf-mould. Older compost in bay 1 seems working down well (8/9/15). Later material with added accelerator has gone into bay 2. This is warm. On 5/9/15 I experimented by added approx 75 brandling worms to bays 1 & 2. Both 1 & 2 are covered with carpet over 6” thick insulation blocks.

There are also 2 plastic upright composters for immediate organic material.
*** *** ***
...and a message from the Chair of Handsworth Helping Hands

Hello Simon. Preparing Environmental article ‎for Birchfield Bugle and wondering how many residents we would have serviced over last year with our activities. I'm thinking 1500 households and say 20 Vulnerable individuals, but I could be wrong, any idea on tonnage dropped off to Holford, furniture recycled, etc? Cheers, Mike

Dear Mike. Excellent. My guess - part conjectural. Tonnage of waste to Holford during 2014-2015 under our charity disposal licence is about 13 tonnes - all recorded in the van log. We’ve also probably removed a great deal more in the skips we and partners pay for when doing street clean-up days, so you could add, at a guess, at least another 20 tons ,to which you might add the skimming off of overloads of skips by Council Fleet and Waste. 1500 households could include all residents in streets where we run clean-up days as well as households benefiting from our scavenging - removing specific items from an address and at the same time an eyesore from neighbouring homes.
Might be better to use van log to list all the streets where we have had both ‘Skip-it Don’t tip it’ days as well as the two places we’ve done or started ‘Clean up Green up’ projects as well as various planters all over the area.
I think we’ve assisted more than 20 vulnerable individuals with clearance, furniture moving, gift recycling, gardening, and specific assistance with phoning and contacting people needing help they couldn’t get themselves from BCC and/or Midland Heart - but again we should add these all up next committee.
I think HHH has (with a very small number of mostly pension-age volunteers) established a reputation for ‘working’, ‘getting things done’, even ‘settling disputes through tactful conversations with neighbours’ (educational work re collection dates and how to fill recycling bins etc.). We have I believe always been polite and shown good will in even frustrating situations (in other words we are Handsworth street-wise’, plus we seem to have done well in partnerships with MH, Fleet and Waste, Community Foundation, and BRAG...and of course many residents in streets we’ve worked over the year/s. We’re also transparent as regards accounts and minutes of our meetings.
I am sure you won’t crow about this, Mike. Complement those who’ve helped us; mention generous donations to HHH, some of which, if not receipted cash donations, include gifts we’ve passed on to Birmingham Charities - SIFA Fireside, Red Cross, City Mission, and the Birmingham Dogs’ Home, also the pensioners' buffet at The Stork Pub last Christmas.
We should also mention our lively use of Facebook with illustrations for social networking and exchange of information with residents, city officers and elected members about HHH but also as a noticeboard for other local events in Handsworth, Lozells and Birchfield, plus work done identifying unoccupied, abandoned properties that have become rubbish magnets and, in one case, a cannabis factory. Lobbying members and officers, HHH has managed to draw attention to vacant properties whose owners are supposed to pay extra on top of council tax for leaving them empty. We have also dealt with the gating of alleys, cul-de-sacs and vulnerable green spaces where security has been lax, identifying who is responsible for maintenance and replacement. In this way HHH have ensured that some of the ‘grot spots’ in the area no longer attract fly-tipping. We have also, without becoming party political, been using reports on Fix My Street and photos on the social web, to keep the issue of street cleaning and tidiness on the Council’s agenda.

You might mention that commendation from the last Lord Mayor last March! Best wishes, Simon

Tea break for HHH volunteers courtesy of a resident

"Let us therefore brace ourselves..."

'If SYRIZA survive the tough beginning, a looming change in European attitudes to austerity politics in Europe might vindicate their struggle.' SYRIZA are inexperienced in government and up against such powers and carrying such hopes in Greece and across Europe. I would have thought that the most important requirements within this government along with Odyssesian agility is courage. ("Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves etc".) For us watching and, in some cases, directly experiencing this bold attempt to end Greece's 'fiscal waterboarding', the trickiest thing will be sorting out the truth amid the media blitz that arises from the fact that we are seeing a small country, a truly 'forlorn hope', charging the agents and agencies of mainstream economics. Tsipras and his cabinet are up against current economic science, present economic faith and almost universal economic common-sense. But all these things, for which we can see no clear alternative, means imposing upon Greece a prolonged version of what the Treaty of Versailles - so very understandable, such common sense - did to Germany in 1919. We have a dear friend in Greece who pays her bills, obeys the law, pays all the latest taxes, and works work works. 'There is not a morning I do not wake up scared" she says. In the case of Greece economic 'common sense' is not working. Some people use language and interpretations of events in Greece as though they have nothing to do with this. That is not the case. Let's have some tunes? Hallelujah

"We need to stop this carnival of tax evasion and tax avoidance" Alexis Tsipras

Cheek

Μαγουλιά ...from the village website for Ano Korakiana

Ψαρόσουπα με λαχανικά «σβησμένα» με κρασί και «μαγουλιά» λυθρινιού, συνοδευόμενη από άσπρο κρασί και το Τριώδιο ακόμη δεν άρχισε…Στην τηλεόραση, τα τελευταία τηλεοπτικά σποτ των πολιτικών κομμμάτων, λίγο πριν την κάλπη...On TV, the latest TV spots for political parties just before the ballot in the village. They will be voting on Democracy Street today.

Polling on Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana ~ 25th Jan 2015

*** *** ***
My personal connections to beloved Greece means the matter intensifies my interest, but this turn of events - like many in Greece in modern times - has implications. Greece's connection to the EU and the Euro always had more to do with the symbolic significance of Hellenic membership, than economic logic. Alexis Tsipras is an attractive bright idealist, leader of Syriza with government-forming support in the polls.

He thinks there is an economic alternative to austerity. My neighbours in Ano Korakiana like this man's thinking. At previous elections they saw him as too young, even naive, lacking in experience. Inside the polling booths, they may yet have reverted to older politicians and parties, rather than support Tsipras' avowed policy to renegotiate the policies of austerity - conditions affecting Greece worse than other PIIGS. Syriza is about to form a government that will challenge the neo-liberal economic method and faith we've inhabited since Mrs Thatcher read Hayek's Road to Serfdom* in 1944 and took it to heart, and pursued its message with conviction for most of the free world.
Our trust in the power of markets is lessening these days but while many. including me, can explain our mistrust - especially the visible facts of market failure and its consequences, we tend to keep 'a-hold of Nurse For fear of finding something worse'.
Syriza's going to have a go. If it elects a workable government under Tsipras so is Greece! Tsipras without becoming a useless, and dangerous, populist (not impossible given the despair of so many in Greece) must, to succeed, sell to his fellow citizens and the rest of Europe 'the big idea' that there's something better for Greece than the horrid prescription of continuing austerity.
Those, who like me, don't trust, communism or the bureaucratic fumbling of state socialism, are attracted to Tsipras' more moderate nostrums - ones that focus on bringing government authority to ameliorating the toxic effects of market externalities.* We've heard the poetry. it stirs!

...Mario Cuomo's famous dictum that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose...The poetry of campaigning is lofty, gauzy, full of possibility, a world where problems are solved just because we want them to be and opposition melts away before us. The prose of governing is messy and maddening, full of compromises and half-victories that leave a sour taste in one's mouth.

But I hesitate to test my intuitions and hopes of alternatives to austerity to the rigorous prose of government - especially as I am quite comfortably off. especially as I'm alright.


It's a complicated case, hence Tsipras' vagueness - along with all aspiring political leaders - about what he will do as Prime Minister. He's been effective in opposition. I cannot see him being as effective in government. He wants to keep Greece in the euro. He wants Greece to withdraw from the bailout agreement. Samaras has given his main opponent little time to turn that popular adversarial vision ("the future begins today") into a reality that will get votes on polling day. But then I'd far rather have Tsipras than Golden Dawn. There's an easy opinion!
I am too far imbued with the painful principles of neo-liberalism to believe in practical alternatives to continued austerity. Is there one? Margaret T did well. "I can see no alternative - TINA!"; perhaps there are alternatives in those Scandinavian welfare states with small, still relatively homogeneous populations. Whether there's an alternative that can work for the rest of us, the rest of the world is asking.

*Hayek's case for free markets includes the view that where market activities damage third parties - negative externalities (corruption, harm to the environment, 'exploitation of ignorance') there's a place for the intervention of government. 

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Exit poll as promised around 19.30 in Greece, 17.30 here in UK

• French Tart What does it mean?

  59 mins · Like · 1
• 

  Heather Skinner it's the spread across the various exit polls "from %" on the left column "to %" on the right - IF Syriza actually has polled 39.5 % they MAY have enough seats (151) for an overall majority to make a government on their own, parties that poll 3% or over (which in this case includes the extreme right Golden Dawn) will also have seats. If Syriza cannot form a government on their own, they will have to form an alliance with one or more of the other parties

  37 mins · Like

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Syriza Rides Anti-Austerity Wave to Landslide Victory in Greece
by Eleni Chrepa & Marcus Bensasson
Bloomberg NewsJanuary 25, 2015

Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza brushed aside Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s party to record a landslide victory in Greece’s elections, after riding a public backlash against years of budget cuts demanded by international creditors, exit polls showed.
Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left, known by its Greek acronym, took between 36% and 38% compared with 26% to 28% for Samaras’s New Democracy in Sunday’s election, according to an exit poll on state-run Nerit TV showed. To Potami, formed less than a year ago and a potential Syriza coalition partner, tied for third place with the far-right Golden Dawn on 6% to 7%.
The projected victory, by a wider margin than polls predicted, may be enough for Syriza to govern alone. It hands Tsipras, 40, an overwhelming mandate to confront Greece’s program of austerity imposed in return for pledges of €240 billion ($269 billion) in aid since May 2010. The challenge for him now is to strike a balance between keeping his election pledges including a writedown of Greek debt and avoiding what Samaras repeatedly warned was the risk of an accidental exit from the euro.
Syriza, in a statement read out by a party official, said the victory was “historic” and one that represented hope.

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From the poll in Ano Korakiana, above average support for Syriza:

Αποτελέσματα βουλευτικών εκλογών

Γράφει ο/η Κβκ

25.01.15

Αποτελέσματα βουλευτικών εκλογών 25ης Ιανουαρίου 2015, στο χωριό μας: Ψήφισαν: 735 Ακυρα-Λευκά: 13 Έγκυρα: 722 Έλαβαν: ΣΥΡΙΖΑ: 314 (43,5%) Ν.Δ.: 162 ΚΚΕ: 63 ΠΟΤΑΜΙ: 48 ΑΝ.ΕΛ.: 36 ΠΑΣΟΚ: 27 Χρυσή Αυγή: 27 ΚΙ.ΔΗ.ΣΟ: 16 ΛΑΟΣ: 6 ΑΝΤΑΡΣΙΑ: 5 ΛΟΙΠΑ: 18 New Corfu MPs: SYRIZA, Stefano Samoilis and Fotini Vaki for SYRIZA, Stefanos Gikas for ND

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