Members and supporters of Golden Dawn Photo: AFP/Getty |
Unlike the British foreign minister, I am not about to apologise for calling some Greek woman writing out of London for the world’s most boring newspaper stupid — mind you, it’s a bit unfair, the International Herald Tribune is a better read than Double Glazing News, but life is, after all, unfair — but please, oh Lord, protect me from female Greek lefties seething with revolutionary fervour and banging on about inequities in the home of feta cheese and olive oil. The stupid one raged against the closing of the state broadcaster ERT, as leftie as the BBC but ten times as bloated and patronage-ridden.
ERT embodied where Greece went wrong. Lifetime jobs for people who hadn’t bothered to show up for years, pensions ditto, and other such outrages handed out by successive governments in return for votes. The two parties now in power were the ones that nurtured the rotten system, but Greeks forget easily and then tend to go to the beach. When I speak with my countrymen and women, they all complain about the EU’s harsh terms for bailing out the country. But when I tell them Greece should never have got into the macabre business in the first place, and should have left the euro the moment the gun was pointed at our temple, they say no, we belong in Europe and the euro is our only hope. It is a typical Greek reaction. We want both our cake and so on.
Well, I haven’t lived in Greece in some 70-odd years except for long visits, so I tend to see things differently. What Greece needed back in the Forties was less communism and more electrolysis. What she needs now is less EU and more private enterprise. The public sector is what sank the Greek economy. That and corruption by the two main parties, the very same two parties now putting the squeeze on poor people in order to satisfy the EU crooks. But the voices one hears whining about the loss of jobs are the voices of those who played a big part in sinking the country, those of civil servants crying over the loss of their sinecures. (Like that stupid woman writing in the IHT and warning against a fascist takeover of Greece; no such luck, I’m afraid.)
About four or five years ago I was cheered at a meeting when I walked in accompanied by two young women, and I thought it was because of something I had written. Not at all, as it turned out. They cheered because I’m old and the two companions were young. Very politically incorrect, but very Greek, I’m afraid. Polly Toynbee, Maureen Dowd and other old hags would have been appalled. Too bad, young women enjoy older men with boats, especially during the hot summer months. And I did mange to see some of my old karate students at the convention. They are all still in security, but very, very poor. So the next time you read some leftie old hag banging on about the fascist evils ready to take over in Greece, use their newspaper writings in the smallest room in your house. You know what I mean. If only my buddy Jeremy Clarke had had some of those columns with him while suffering from dysentery in the Serengeti, they would have finally been of some use.
But to more serious matters. Until the shutdown of ERT, not a single government employee had been fired by the present government: 128,000 had been retired, with their benefits intact, which is not the same thing. The government lies, the austerity terms get harsher, and the loans have failed to turn the economy around. See you on Paxos.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/life/high-life/8964451/taki-golden-dawn-came-into-being-because-of-pc/
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