'...το ωραίο άρθρο για την Κορακιάνα....'

From the Ano Korakiana website: From the littered overbuilt shores of Corfu lots of people still reap perfect images of the island landscape that so enchanted those who passed through before mass tourism – the monastery of Panagia Vlacherna and Pontikonissi omitting the roar of the airport and the multistoried hotel on Kanoni, the pretty sight of Gouvina Cove where you can park by the road a few hundred metres from the end of the dual carriageway at Tzavros, and a small crop with photoshop can easily disappear the cloned boxes and concrete skeletons that disfigure Barbati, and from a distance even the jutting hull of the Nissaki Beach Hotel can be blended into the towering cliffs of Pantocrator, though ignoring 'Seashore Villas' plonked on what was once the village of Ag Spiridon near the car-blocked streets of Kassiopi is a little trickier, but removing the endless plastic detritus from the beaches needs no army of earnest litter-pickers - just a tiny upward shift of the lens records the sublime landscape of archetypal Greece above the sparkling blue of the Kerkyra Sea, as from the dizzy heights of Angelokastro the cliffs of Capes Iliodoros and Plaka facing the Adriatic horizon distract from the disastrous shamble of Paleocastritsa. It was the better-off who recorded their memories of Corfu’s charms; incubating their future commodification. For peasants, fishermen, small shopkeepers, beauty lay in health and harvest; the two connected. Once upon a time, when people gazed longingly at the green island from the rocky mainland of Epirus they saw its wealth not in its landscape but its fecundity, as a family judging a prospective daughter-in-law might rate child-bearing hips, above a pretty face [Of these observations Jim Potts remarks: 'Succinctly stated. But I sincerely believe that even the poorest peasants appreciated Corfu's natural beauty and recorded it in their own ways, through orally-transmitted tales, folksongs and proverbs, for instance. Is it not possible to feel a sense of profound regret, even while cutting down olive trees to build a better house or to make some money to pay to educate one's children? The sense of regret increases with time.'] Only in the last fifty years has Corfu’s harvest changed from what grew here to what disembarked from ships and planes. The shift in wealth that followed – from the grand farm estates of the nobility - the signorini - thriving and then just surviving on the close cropping of tenant labour - needed and got little help from government. Oil in Arabia and Texas turned arid scrubland into gold. Tourism in Corfu made hard-worked seaside estancias into cornucopias. Sea, sand and gravel were already here.  Cement made new byres, the digger and the dozer swiftly cleared the island curtilage of unnecessary trees. An olive grove or a vineyard anywhere on the island sprouting concrete in place of roots could send your children to university and show a way, other than emigration, to escape a life of sweated labour, as a fibreglass boat with a glass bottom over one busy summer could replace the hazards and uncertainty of fishing round the year. Landscape enjoyed by those with the means to gaze upon it, that had inspired painting and poetry became publicity and copy to attract the new wealth of millions. I hear myself muttering “You make all this sound like a bad thing” “Well yes and no” I reply “Yes and no” The noble leftwinger Lord Bertrand Russell remarked that ‘the central dilemma of socialism is that you can ruin anything by making it available to everybody’. “If only governments instead of being bought by the Lopakhins so excited about laying an axe to Corfu’s cherry orchards had pursued a research based policy that had regulated the massive changes brought by mass tourism; created an infrastructure that was less piecemeal and opportunistic” A broad smile grows on my face at my naïve pomposity. “Έλα τώρα! Surely you jest?” I exclaim “Weren’t these messy changes always going to be irresistible, any attempt at planning overwhelmed not just by greased palms and brown envelopes but by human yearning. Try testing your commitment to properly regulated planned development of tourist infrastructure against another lifetime of horizon-less poverty heaped on the deprivation of centuries” The challenge of Ano Korakiana; a few years back – three or four at most – there was a discussion, probably one of those animated debates in which I’ve sat in the back nodding sagely as though my Greek is good enough to follow the arguments, in which villagers, in large numbers explored whether they should have a taverna or indeed any other commercial establishment in the village that catered for and attracted foreign visitors. I first heard of this meeting from two British neighbours in the crowd awaiting midnight the Easter Saturday before last “They decided, on balance” said Wesley “that they would not.” This confirmed the presumption I heard a few years earlier when we were planning to buy a house in the village that “Ano Korakiana doesn’t welcome tourists.” To suggest that Ano Korakianas do not welcome strangers – for all those 44 voting last Sunday forGolden Dawn to keep foreigners out of Greece – would be slander. Apart from the fact that an overwhelming majority of eligible voters here voted for the left including the KKE (third in the poll here), this village is nothing if not hospitable, not just to people who have made their lives here but to passing tourists on foot, on cycles and in cars, who stop to look about, sometimes puzzled as to where to buy a drink or a meal. Such people are sometimes treated to these; as guests, not customers. So? So what makes this village? What makes any village? It’s a question elaborated across the world. I have urgent thoughts on this, I feel a need to know and understand. This village has a website, as with all Greek villages - a global diaspora, an historian, a documented history that goes back over a 1000 years...and a permanent population that qualifies it as a working village in the eyes of government. It has a medical centre staffed at different times through the week, and of course it has the Spyros Samaras Philharmonic Society of Korakiana, including its superlative band that performs here, in Corfu Town and across Greece, with practise rooms (a new finely restored band-room higher in the village will probably be ready next year), instruments, uniforms and regular rehearsals – an institution linked to a choir and dancers – who rehearse and learn in both the band-room on Democracy Street and in the Agricultural Co-op which also processes olive oil; providing space for meetings and village celebrations like Carnival through the year. It has 35 churches – the one’s most used Ag.Georgios, Ag.Spiridon, Ag.Athannasios, Ag.Isadorus. I can’t list all their names though they are described in Kostas Apergis' history – but also the semi-ruined Prophet Elias... Prophet Elias before Mother Greece ...marking the ancient village boundary on the hill a mile away and Kiriaki, a church below the village. There’s a taxi service on Democracy Street - almost opposite us, and buses to and from the city. There’s a second olive processing factory below the village, a furniture making workshop, a carpentry shop, a thriving bakery serving other villages and two grocery shops onDemocracy Street and a kindergarten and nursery and a kafenion – τουκαφενείου Κεφαλλονίτη - regularly attended, where even Linda and I have enjoyed a coffee and beer, tho' there's still a mainly male attendance there overseen by Maria, its proprietor. Another kafeneon - John Laschari's, Γιάννη Λάσκαρη, ceased in 2007. The village primary school closed last year and is to be replaced by a special school serving the whole island. Ano Korakiana appears to have a museum for an exceptionally gifted village sculptor who worked in the first part of the 20th century – but disappointingly, this though full of invisible sculpture, with parking spaces and displays signs saying it’s a museum, is, I’m authoritatively assured, never open. There is another business – Luna D’Argento – a kilometre below the village, a venue for weddings and dances, also occasionally for the whole village as at the cutting of the New Year Cake, Vassilopita, and next to that a stable for horse trekking and riding lessons run by our friend Sally. I couldn’t attest to how many other skills and talents are exercised in Ano Korakiana. There are people who in repairing or rebuilding parts of their houses are conscientious about maintaining its architectural character – what experts sometimes call 'vernacular'. (Example 1 ~ Nick and Sophia's house. Example 2: George Poplis's work and Sally and Mark's house - scroll down. Example 3: The restored Music School). Our house lost some of this vernacular at the hands of an English builder hired by the previous English owners who destroyed its balcony and steps, replaced by us via the admired skills and taste of Alan Barrett of Ag Markos. There are doctors, pharmacists, house-painters, plasterers, carpenters, artists, probably writers preferring anonymity, many wine makers, woodcutters preparing a delivering fuel, gardeners cultivating vines and vegetables, gardeners growing a festival of flowers – geranium, roses, honeysuckle, jasmine, bougainvillea, wisteria, cane and arum lilies; a few farmers tending larger fields, small vineyards, keeping sheep and goats, chicken, turkey, guinea fowl, ducks and geese and of course harvesting olive oil from their olive groves - the island’s most distinctive crop; plumbers and mechanics and builders, roofers, private tutors teaching English and other skills; engineers, accountants working in the city. Kostas is the village priest. Ano Korakiana fields a football team that triumphs across Corfu and beyond, but hopes of having a local football field - one a quarter completed that has sat fallow below the village for over a decade - seem to have expired. This is made less problematic by the existence of two pitches finely maintained that Ano Korakiana can share with its neighbour Skripero, sited close to the T-junction between the winding south-westward lane out of Ano Korakiana where it meets the road to Sidari. Ano Korakiana has organisation. It has committees for the band, shareholders for the Co-op. It has government. It debates and makes decisions – με δημοκρατικό τρόπο - about events and direction. Some say it has the best water on the island. Does all this make ‘a village’; in modern parlance – a sustainable community? [A cautionary essay on the village in England, Bagnor, where I grew up between 1949-1960 - translated. and posted on Ano Korakiana's website..Νομίζεις, ότι κάποιοι από εμάς θέτουμε σε κίνδυνο αυτό που αποκαλείται «ακεραιότητα» της Άνω Κορακιάνας; Είναι δυνατόν οποιοιδήποτε από μας (προσπαθώ να αποφύγω το «εμείς» επειδή εσείς και εγώ και οι συγγενείς μας είναι μοναδικοί και δεν θέλω να μας χαρακτηρίσω όλους μαζί ως «αλλοδαπούς») να επικριθούμε για τις επιλογές μας στη ζωή; Δεν θα επιθυμούσα η Άνω Κορακιάνα να γίνει όπως η μη-κοινότητα του Μπαρμπάτι, με τα νεόκτιστα σπίτια και τη θαυμάσια θέα  προς τη θάλασσα, που κατοικείται όμως αποκλειστικά από εποχιακούς επισκέπτες. Ελπίζω ότι νέοι Έλληνες γεννημένοι στην Άνω Κορακιάνα θα είναι σε θέση να μείνουν, ή εάν φύγουν, θα επιστρέψουν για να συμβάλουν στη ζωή του χωριού. Υπάρχουν χωριά στην Αγγλία που παρότι έχουν μετασχηματιστεί, εν τούτοις έχουν οδηγηθεί σε μια νέα ισορροπία, με σημαντική συμμετοχή σε αυτό, των σχετικά νεοφερμένων, που έχουν βρει την αρμονία τους με τους εναπομείναντες παλαιούς κατοίκους και πίεσαν για το κτίσιμο «φτηνής στέγης» ώστε νεότεροι άνθρωποι να μπορούν να παραμείνουν στο χωριό...]...and some thoughts from an earlier entry in Democracy Street which draw on the experiences of Geert Mak in Jorwert - reported beautifully but without the 'aren't they quaint and eccentric and charming' tropes of some commentators on villages (from a review)...The point is made, and reinforced by research carried out by others around the world that villages divided by space and time have more in common with each other, than they do with their nearest urban neighbour. Villagers are proud of the small differences. Jorwert is very special to Jorwerters. They are proud of tradition, and cling on to the facets of it that survive the changes in technology and bureaucracy as best they can. They believe in the future and in the family. And that is what the country, and therefore the village, life is all about. It is not about being an individual. It is not about making money or acquiring stuff . It is all about survival. Making sure that what is outlives you, and that your children are there to take it on and take it forward and protect it as you have done. This is true of every village, everywhere. What is also true of every village in northern Europe is that since the end of the second world war, the local people have had to cope with the Europisation of regulation. The disaster of the Common Agricultural Policy played out with the best of intentions and the worst of results. This is as true for the dairy farmers around Jorwert as it is for the sheep farmers of Wales. The lure of education, of easy money, of city life and hedonism affected the children of Jorwert, just as it did those of the French mountain youngsters or those in the Spanish plains. Schools struggled and then closed. Shops followed them. Churches remained the focus, but in protestant northern Europe they didn't have the hold they had in the catholic south – which isn't to say the whole Jorwert didn't put aside their personal faiths the day the church tower collapsed and set about figuring out how to rebuild it! Mak examines all of the issues in true journalistic fashion, supporting his arguments with academic study and local example...Simon & Linda Baddeley   (http://democracystreet.blogspot.gr)ΣΗΜ.:θα ήταν πολύ χρήσιμο αν είχε κάποιος υο χρόνο να μεταφράσει αυτό το ωραίο άρθρο για την Κορακιάνα.... *** *** ***

But to continue the disposal of our mother's estate, I'm not sure I shall come to the Highlands again. My walks there...not a yard that does anything but remind me...I shall be missing mum all my latter life. I shall not grieve much longer. This place is inextricably connected with the unalloyed happiness I've enjoyed here - and joy is not forgotten. Catching the edges of the swift passing scenery from the car - farms, woods, shallow peat brown icy banked rivers wandering through frosted alluvial plains, cattle and sheep with different concerns, not seeing the winter landscape or the dying trees. Here for ever. We left Brin Croft at 1.00pm, Lin driving as ever, Oscar in the back or in my footwell; ice and frost at first, the mane of the Boar of Badenoch creased with snow rising like a prow into low cloud as we crested Drumochter Pass and left it behind slipping into milder landscapes; on past Perth and Stirling, the edge of Glasgow, hurrying through the Lowlands...

...by Lockerbie, Gretna and Carlisle, through the Lake District, Lancaster, Preston, Manchester - the darkening landscape receding until we're running amid streams of lights, red and white, snaking north and south.
On Friday morning I was up before 6.00 to cycle into New Street to catch the non-stop express to London for a day with Hounslow - my final day of work on the scrutiny coaching project there. My colleague Andrew Coulson met me at the Civic Centre so we could exchange batons. Later we travelled back to Birmingham.

I'm working on the train

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In the blessed village:
A day to celebrate at Ag.Arkoudena, an event, if I understand it, takes note of an ancient dispute that severed Eastern and Western christians. In the local church of Arkoudena (or is that the other one at Episkopi - the village just north of the Trompeta ridge above us?) there's a picture of St.Arius at the great Council of Nicea - first ecumenical council - Α’ Οικουμενική Σύνοδο - in the year 325AD. Arius - is he a saint? - hm - probably not. He argued that Christ, though the most perfect of creations, is a creation of God the Father, in opposition to the belief of St.Alexander who held that Christ is of the same substance as the Father and co-eternal with him. Their debate became so heated that Nicholas of Myra - one day to be known as 'Santa Claus' - slapped Bishop Arius for, as he saw it, belittling Christ.

Preparations for the 'midnight oil' «Ολονύχτιο» have begun early in the afternoon...A few yards away, outside the building of the Philharmonic Society, the decoration of the Manger  - της Φάτνης - has already begun by Yianni and (his son) Angelo Spingo, assisted later by Epameinonta Kentarhos and Fokionos Mandilis. In one way or another the festive atmosphere will affect the operation of olive mill in the Co-op that grinds at dawn today. Traditional dumplings - λουκουμάδες - arrive (from Jonah and Dina Katerina Fakiolas) to treat workers and those who grind the early olives - the first milling after they have made their home in the village of Antony Prentoulis and his wife Tula. A bottle of olive oil from the final milling will be sent, shortly before midnight, to the church, for "good" - για «το καλό»
The traditional supper is held, between Vespers and evening function in the home of Yianni Savani; they, this year, having general 'responsibility' for the feast. The church is "filled" with people again: three priests, chanters quite a few old and younger, mostly women in the congregation. Close to midnight, Aristides Poulimas assisted by George Kendarchos, read the Life of the miracles of the saint, while a small stove in the corner to lessen the cold ...
Note: But the unexpected loss of the "shrine" of the Saint (a small image) overnight will cause confusion and frustration to the founders of the small church.
A note is added: Apart from this suspected theft, ten chickens have been 'expropriated' from a busy poultry coop in Mourgades (the western end of Ano Korakiana).

Παραμονή τ’ Αγιού, εορταστική όπως πάντα, μέρα για το χωριό μας, λόγω της ομώνυμης εκκλησίας στην Αρκούδενα. Οι ετοιμασίες για το «Ολονύχτιο» έχουν από νωρίς το απόγευμα ολοκληρωθεί και ο εκ των επιτελούντων Κώστας Σαββανής θα εκφράσει την ικανοποίησή του στην ιστοσελίδα μας. Λίγα μέτρα πιο κάτω, έξω από το κτίριο της Φιλαρμονικής, ο στολισμός της Φάτνης έχει ήδη ξεκινήσει από τον Γιάννη και τον (γιό του) Άγγελο Σπίγγο, συμβοηθούντων αργότερα του Επαμεινώντα Κεντάρχου και του Φωκίωνος Μάνδυλα. Το εορταστικό κλίμα θα επηρεάσει τρόπον τινά τη λειτουργία του Συνεταιριστικού ελαιουργείου, που σήμερα αλέθει από τα χαράματα. Παραδοσιακοί λουκουμάδες καταφθάνουν (από την Ντίνα Ιωνά και την Κατερίνα Φακιολά) για κέρασμα των εργαζομένων και όσων αλέθουν. Ο Αντώνης Πρεντουλής και η σύζυγός του Τούλα, κάνουν το πρώτο τους άλεσμα, μετά από την εγκατάστασή τους στο χωριό. Ένα μπουκαλάκι ελαιόλαδο από τις τελευταίες αλεσιές θα σταλεί λίγο πριν τα μεσάνυχτα στην εκκλησία, για «το καλό». Κατά τις δέκα, έχει ολοκληρωθεί το καθιερωμένο δείπνο, ανάμεσα στον Εσπερινό και τη βραδινή Λειτουργία, στο παραπλήσιο σπίτι της οικογένειας Γιάννη Σαββανή, που έχει για φέτος τη γενική «ευθύνη» της εορτής. Η εκκλησία «γεμίζει» ξανά από κόσμο: τρεις ιερείς, κάμποσοι ψαλτάδες παλαιοί και νεώτεροι, κυρίως γυναίκες στο εκκλησίασμα. Κοντά στα μεσάνυχτα, ο Αριστείδης Πουλημάς συνεπικουρούμενος από τον Γιώργο Κένταρχο, διαβάζουν από το συναξάρι τα θαύματα του Αγίου, ενώ μια μικρή σόμπα στη γωνία «καίει» ασταμάτητα, λόγω του κρύου… Όμως, η αναπάντεχη απώλεια του «προσκυνηταρίου» του Αγίου (μιας μικρής εικόνας) θα προκαλέσει ολονύχτια σύγχυση και εκνευρισμό στους κτήτορες του μικρού ναού. ΣΗΜ.: εκτός από την απώλεια του προσκυνηταρίου, ξημερώματα της Παραμονής σημειώθηκε και «απαλλοτρίωση» κοτετσίου μετά του πολυπληθούς περιεχομένου του (πάνω από δέκα πουλερικά) στην περιοχή Βασιλικού, της Μουργάδας.

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Nick Malkoutzis on 15 December writes on his blog Inside Greece - one I read as avidly as the Athens News and Kathimerini:

.... Thursday proved to be quite a day for Samaras’s morale as the long wait for the eurozone to approve Greece’s next loan tranche ended. Euro-area finance ministers agreed the release of €49.1 billion, which, along with another €3.4 billion, means Athens is due to receive €52.5 billion by the end of March 2013.
Of this, €34.3 billion is to be disbursed next week: €16 billion will go toward bank recapitalization, €7 billion for budgetary financing and €11.3 billion to finance Greece’s bond buyback program. French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici insisted this was no 'Christmas present' for Greece but recognition of fiscal and reform efforts that had been made over recent months and come at some cost for the Greek people....

"They will live with what they choose"

On the 28 May, just before we left Greece I said goodbye to Sally

"There'll have been some water under the bridge by the last week of August?" I said
"Greeks will decide" she said in her matter-of-fact way "If they vote for SIRIZA they mean to go back to the drachma and take the consequences; if for New Democracy they will have chosen more austerity. They will live with what they choose."

Key points at 2239 GMT ... with 80% of votes counted, interior ministry projections put New Democracy on 29.9% of the vote (130 seats), Syriza on 26.7% (71) and the socialist Pasok on 12.4% (33).

• A pro-bailout party, New Democracy, seems set for victory by a slim margin in Greece's election

• New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras has called for a national salvation government

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• New Democracy's likely main partner, Pasok, has called for radical leftists Syriza to be included

• Syriza came second on an anti-bailout platform and seems unlikely to join a new government

• Germany continues to insist Greece must abide by the terms of its international bailouts

All times in BST (GMT: -1 hour, Greek time: +2 hours

So it look as if a majority have rejected the Tsipras gamble and voted for continued austerity. This will please other European leaders. Despite wobbling, the famous first domino hasn't fallen - so there's breathing space for Spain and those just behind her. There will be the opportunity - if the current mood continues - for leaders at the next EU summit on 28th and 29th June, to work directly and indirectly on banking union and pooled sovereignty and anything else to improve the stability of the Eurozone.

In Ano Korakiana:

Kafeneio Kefalloniti in Ano Korakiana

«Στα ίδια  μέρη…» συναντιόμαστε μετά από ένα περίπου μήνα, για τη δεύτερη προσπάθεια επίλυσης (?) του πολιτικού προβλήματος της χώρας, που φαντάζει εξίσου σημαντικό  με το οικονομικο-κοινωνικό. Βουλευτικές εκλογές για μία ακόμη φορά σε σύντομο  διάστημα, σε ένα καλοκαίρι με πυκνό πολιτικό χρόνο, που δεν μοιάζει με κανένα  από τα σχεδόν ανέμελα, προηγούμενα… Αναζητώντας τη λύση «στο παλιό ή στο νέο», με οδηγό «το φόβο ή την ελπίδα», με «εκείνο ή με το άλλο», με όλα τα διλήμματα μιας διαλεκτικής, που και αυτή μοιάζει ανεπαρκής να εκμαιεύσει το μέλλον.

Έξω από το καφενείο Κεφαλλωνίτη, θα συγκεντρωθούν από το πρωί παρέες, στις συζητήσεις των οποίων θα κυριαρχεί η πιθανολόγηση του εκλογικού αποτελέσματος και η δυνατότητα σχηματισμού κυβέρνησης. Βέβαια, λόγω του ζεστού καιρού, αρκετοί άλλοι θα προτιμήσουν να περάσουν το πρωινό τους στην παραλία...

Ραντεβού, το βραδυ, αντιμέτωποι με την αλήθεια, που από αύριο, δεν θα την μάθουμε απλά, αλλά θα την ζούμε...

“Here we are in the same place…” meeting again after roughly a month, for a second attempt at resolving (?) the political economic and social problems of the country via Parliamentary elections, once more in a short interval in a summer charged with intense political activity unlike any of the previous almost carefree times...… wondering if solutions lie with the 'old or the new'; with 'fear or hope'; with 'one or the other', amid every puzzling argument, without any confident sense of the future. Outside Keffalonitis' Kafenion, people will gather from early morning debating and conjecturing the outcome of the election and the prospects of forming a government. Of course, because of the heat, many will prefer to pass their Sunday morning at the beach…meeting again in the evening to learn not only what's happened but the reality with which we will live..."

...and a storyin the New York Times from another village Touthoa Τουθοα in Arcadia, Αρκαδία - I saw it once long ago...

a quiet hamlet, which sprang to life on Election Day as descendants of the 30 or so grandparents and parents still living here gathered to participate in the latest expression of democracy that they hoped would deliver the country from its troubles....Far from the grim atmosphere gripping Athens, Touthoa teems with silver-tipped olive groves, sun-kissed vegetable gardens and flocks of sheep, living testaments to the centuries-long natural wealth of this resilient nation....

Election results - Ministry of the Interior

The poll in Kerkyra where SYRIZA was ahead - 34% to ND's 24%
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Earlier in the day....

Yanis Varoufakis (2.30 on the clip below)"The negotiating card is not either we have a deal that is workable or we get out of the euro. No no. It’s very very simple....Don’t threaten the Europeans with an exodus. Simply say guys I’m not going to take the next instalment. That’s it...and sit down" 

Polling day musing. If Greeks vote for continued austerity Samaras style, the bail-out which follows this August involves paying it all back to creditors, rather than into what remains of the declining Greek economy. Threatening to leave the euro is crazy...well think about it. This is like saying "If you don't do your homework, my daughter, I will stop breathing until I die."
If as a result of a Greek rejection of the bailout planned for mid-Aug 2012, Greece is thrown out of the Eurozone, then the Eurozone goes down too. Yes? No? This is the Tsipras gamble he's shared pre-election. This is like 'prisoners' dilemma' but with only the lose-lose and win-win options. If Europe and Greece can co-operate in some way not yet explored there might be a win-win, or the start of a win-win solution to what has for a good while looked like a seriously lose-lose one. Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis seems to be saying that the win-lose, or lose-win options of the dilemma aren't available. Is he just playing Ulysses, the crafty? If Greece votes for continued austerity she loses, but no-one else wins - indeed the whole world may lose. If she votes against austerity she also doesn't win, but nor does anyone else. This is one of SIRIZA's advisors explaining himself. PSI, by the way refers to the theory of  Private Sector Involvement in the problem.

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  Alec Mally Simon I just can't take his "Europe will save us because it needs us" and "its not our fault" attitude anymore. He really isn't that smart. Other comrades that have dealt with him in the blogosphere call him arrogant and closed minded. I rarely post anything on his page.
  

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  Simon Baddeley Historians now show us how the first world war began with mistake in a highly charged context. The murder in Sarajevo and the subsequent July memo from Austria-Hungary to Serbia called in all sorts of treaty agreements between different European states which ended up taking sides, and mobilising their armies. That what was initially a diplomatic exchange between governments became a devastating war had much to do with people's ignorance of what war involved, and predispositions to nationalistic fervour. Why the Tsipras gamble is safer now is that the sociological conditions do not make specific incendiary incidents anything like as inflammable. It's not just Europe will save us because it needs us, but more like 'if you go on doing austerity you may create the conditions in Greece and further afield that you fear" No population is more aware of how austerity and humiliation can drive civilised peoples to madness than the Germans. All the Greeks I know admit a great deal of fault, Alec, but how far do you think it's safe to press the punishment? Only a few people are near starving so far and the suicide rate has increased a little (a lot by Greek standards). AT present the main starvation is of expectation, but after that...??
  

  4 hours ago · 
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  Alec Mally Simon, its NOT punishment. To ask a country to live with the aggregate output it generates is not cruel and unusual, and the repayment for Greece's debt has been cut way back. So what do they want? Total debt forgiveness, budget support and no reform commitments? They have got to deliver some kid of reform or they will be abandoned by Europe. An angry no is not the answer.
  

  2 hours ago ·  · 1
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  Simon Baddeley But the whole school *is* being punished for the crimes of an identifiable few. I don't necessarily agree with Tsipras or this economic adviser and I fully agree (with many many Greeks) that the corruption, patronage and nepotism that the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms addressed in the UK in the 1850s must be exorcised from Greece. The corruption around medical attention in Greece is obscene. The radical Ilias Zervos who campaigned for Ionian Independence failed to prevent enosis and in 1880 wrote of connection with Athens ‘the pollutant of political corruption, which has brought this miserable nation to its present deterioration and produced as many unscrupulous exploiters as a decaying corpse produces worms." You don't have to say anything to convince me of this. I know of no European country in which corruption is so endemic, so normal. That has got to change. But I disagree with you about the target of blame. I'm not even arguing for compassion. But Justice is another matter. Have you seen that brilliant Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross in which a bunch of realtors are being bullied into selling sub-prime loans? It came out long before Katerina and the sub-prime scandal in the US tipped all of us into recession. Greece's political class has been a portal for just this kind of predatory money lending and it's not just or wise to insist on claiming back the ridiculous interest now impossible to repay from people who didn't ask for these loans in the first place. (cue an argument about human nature? They didn't ask but they sure went mad with the plastic 'money' that became available from the mid-80s on...etc ..to which, continuing the justice argument, I will reply "who was corrupting who?").

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Yesterday after a walk with Lulu, I drove my mother down to the Farr Community Hall on the edge of Inverarnie where all ages were having a good go at celebrating the Diamond Jubilee, she greeted friends, some she'd not seen for ages, and had look at the various images of the Queen she, with help from Richard, had chosen for a display inside the hall

Strathnairn celebrates Jubilee.

On another wall was a projection of the 1953 Coronation procession. I watched it in black and white between helping with a village fête while my mum and Jack sat soaking and chill on a stand in the Mall "I've never been so cold" said Mum. The weather now wasn't different from the weather sixty years ago, but then I expect this in the Highlands along with the midges that keep tourists at bay.

[Back to the future - 9 July'12: Story in the Herald Scotland about the advancement in Scots' support for keeping the Union - it resonates with Greek popular support for staying in the Eurozone]
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Circular from Linda to other members of the Handsworth Helping Hands 'team':

Hi All. I've completed the accounts from when we took over the finances. Current bank balance is £14,539.76, which tallies with my balance brought forward on sheet 4. The 14th June cheques are still to go through. I've asked for places for Denise and I at the Midland Heart 'Meet the Buyer' open day next Friday. If anyone else has a burning desire to go, please let me know asap.
I suggested next Thursday or Friday for the Church Vale cleanup. Friday is now out, as there won't be enough volunteers if we get the Midland Heart places.  Do we want to do the Church Vale work on Thursday 21st June or would it be better to leave it until the week after? Please let me know what you want to do asap. Lin

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From last December's blog - Marylebone Station pub: I maintain vigorous hope for a revival of sustainable communities - clusters of villages and smaller provincial towns; a global trend to be observed if sought in India, Australia, Canada and much of Europe including Greece.
 To survive and even thrive in villages it is neither possible nor feasible to revert to the past whose grinding conditions so many sought to escape; nor is it possible in some straightforward way to revert the attitudes and values of a globally urbanised world to villages. The ideas, techniques and values essential for survival and success in these small linked communities have not yet been assimilated or in some cases even invented. The new ideas and practices exist but only in certain places unique to particular critical clusters of people. Every small community is different and unique and there is so simple generic set of guidelines on how to make villages or clusters of villages work for their inhabitants. The ideas are out there - hardly realised, evolving, their originality, difficult, even impossible, to distinguish amid the suffocating noise of present crises  and current understandings of the world. There are communities dotted around the world which seem to be working (some we know, some we don't and wouldn't know what we were seeing of they were evolving in front of us because of our urban globalised preconceptions). I very much doubt if the centralised governments of large modern states are capable of helping such new ways of living too evolve, and certainly the past for all our nostalgia about it has little to teach us in this matter (notwithstanding sources of wisdom in our species that have always been present in, and at, different and unpredictable places and times. The work of Elinor Ostrom (Nobel Prize 2009) is helpful but there are many many other sources of inspiration. We cannot look to Athens. London, Berlin or Washington, nor Delhi, Beijing or Rio for answers and inspiration. Though it may be that men and women who will support and can lead, and are leading, these other ways of living, will come from the heart of great cities - not escaping, not refugees but pioneers
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Right now Professor John Martin and Alistair Walker are cycling 7500km across Canada while doing a study tour of the sustainability of communities including the agricultural finance initiatives that exist across Canada

John and Alistair (more pictures by Annie Guthrie)

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Excuse metonymy, but pornography is getting a bit above itself. In the sensible opinion of Mrs Pat, it's starting to "frighten the horses." It does this, now and then, donning a familiar variety of transparent disguises – the ubiquity of the sexual drive, the harm of repression, freedom of speech, fear of being thought prudish, liberation. Blah. Such altruism! Such enrichment for broadcasters and publishers pitching their tents beneath the current New York Times fiction list…an inexperienced college student falls in love with a tortured man who has particular sexual tastes…"ooh er missus"…the first book in a trilogy…"Phwoah" etc.  This is impudent. In the kingdom of the flesh a degree of hierarchy works rather well, not censorship, suppression, nor 'decent reticence', but a recognition of place...and, just possibly, love

...All day, the same our postures were,
  And wee said nothing, all the day... 

Single malt

Such a pleasure to bring, as a present to my mum, a 15 year old single malt, Dalwhinnie from Lochan na Doire-uaine.
"Whew!" she said after one sip "that goes right through my body. Beautiful."
"The angel's have had their share of that" I said, tasting the warming bitterness, the sun dazzling through the windows, creating long shadows, speckling surfaces, leaking into the house - searchlights showing glistening dust motes. I walked beyond my usual orbit diverting from one forest path and working my way, with Lulu, up an old fire-break strewn with long fallen spruce coming out above the tree line to gaze over the landscape from Ben Wyvis...

...to the north overlooking a patch of the Moray Firth to the greater part of Strath Nairn, Brin Rock, my marker.

Coming down my path dried up and I had to push my way downhill on my back and stomach through the needle bed below close standing spruce, which gradually thinned until I could stand and holding branches, head...

...where the trees were wider spaced, emerging onto a familiar forestry track to walk back to Brin Croft by the Farnack.
Yesterday I cycled a short circuit down to Inverarnie, over the Nairn at Balnafoich, along the road towards Flickerty, but turning east at Tordarrroch to Farr and home stopping often to gaze.

Tordarrroch; by his horns...a Highland Shorthorn cross?

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Lest it be thought I'm engaged in covert product-placement, I'm leaving clues for google-bots, Trojan horses and other malware to see how far despite, various measures to block such surveillance, I'm being automatically reviewed. Fascinating subject. [See also ICO, and Campus Legal Services]
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Thanks to Jim Potts for passing on via Corfu Blues latest news from beloved Greece and the possibility that Lukas Papademos (CV) might become the new PM of the Hellenic Republic:

Greece's political leadership will on Monday name an interim government and end a crisis of confidence that threatens to derail a €100bn bailout agreement crucial to the eurozone's survival. Socialist prime minister George Papandreou and conservative opposition leader Antonis Samaras met for almost 90 minutes under the auspices of the country's president. A communique issued after they broke off negotiations for the night said they would name the caretaker prime minister and cabinet the following day. The new government's agenda would be the ratification of a €100bn bailout for Greece which the eurozone approved last week, and the implementation of an austerity programme attached to that bailout. It would then take the country "immediately" to a new general election, the communique said.  Papandreou has said that he will be stepping down as prime minister in order to facilitate the formation of such a government. His resignation has been the key demand by Samaras, who has reiterated it every day for the past three days. The prime minister's brother, Nick Papandreou, told The New Athenian that George Papandreou took the decision to resign on Friday....

George Papandreou, Karolos Papoulias and Antonis Samaras

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9 November'11 - back to the future - negotiations around the formation of a new government continue and Papademos seems out of the running having set conditions for accepting the position of PM which the others involved could not accept...I should just wait and see...er...Ioannis Koukiadis? Faites vos jeux?

Φίλιππος Πετσάλνικος

ATHENS, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) According to the latest unconfirmed reports in local media, amongst front-runners for the office was former Vice President of the European Central Bank Lucas Papademos and current European Court of Justice President Vassilis Skouris. According to local media, other candidacies included Speaker of the Parliament Filippos Petsalnikos, former Speaker of Parliament Apostolos Kaklamanis, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.

[Back to the future: A player in these negotiations from which he made a display of walking out is Georgios Karatzaferis, Γεώργιος Καρατζαφέρης, leader of the rightist People's Orthodox Rally, Λαϊκός Ορθόδοξος Συναγερμός (ΛΑ.Ο.Σ), with 15 MPs and nearly 5% of the vote in the 2009 general election:

George Gilson, Athens News ~ 10 Nov: The George and Antonis show was upset by Karatzaferis, who stormed out of the presidential palace with the intensity of Maria Callas playing Medea, because Papandreou and Samaras were discussing the new government without him. He demanded that banker Lucas Papademos – who is widely viewed as the best choice to be interim premier due to his clout in EU power and finance circles – be appointed prime minister anyway. The Laos leader’s well-staged scene managed to force Papademos’ candidacy to return to the forefront, and talks were going on between the banker, Papandreou and Samaras as the Athens dailies were going to press. So the ultraright may become the kingmaker that brinks a banker to power.]

The Treaty of London 1864

Thanassis has e-mailed with more information to assist my search for the petition from the leaders of Ano Korakiana to maintain the British Protectorate that we know ended with the Treaty of London in 1864. The following web account gives a feel for the political volatility of the island in the run up to the ending of the British Protectorate - with a strong lobby for union with Greece but also, if the consummate politician William Gladstone was right, wide support among the populace for continuing the British presence. Of course I have no primary sources for this (it's based on the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which I own). Seeing the missing 'paper' from Ano Korakiana would be so interesting.

Dear Simon. Further information about our theme. This time our sources came from a 'historical and more novel' book, written by a Corfiot author named Spiros Katsaros. It is supported in this book - Helio's Story - that the petition was given to High Commissioner named Storks (1859-1864) and Storks attached it behind a report to the British Parliament. According to Katsaros, this theme was published to the national media (newspapers) of that period. Thanassis

I'm about ready to explore the National Archives at Kew for Henry Knight Storks Papers.