So far as I can follow, the Greek electorate now have the choice between voting Yes and agreeing to the IMF austerity package, and voting No and having their leaders agree to any “face-saving” variation, however miniscule, before accepting the IMF austerity package. You can be quite sure that the international elite will thoroughly humiliate Syriza by making abundantly clear that if they offer any change at all, it is absolutely miniscule. A change of nominal leader of Greece may result from the referendum, but nothing that changes the life of anybody who is not a politician. Either way in six months time we will be exactly back where we are now, only with opposition to the IMF broken as the next wave of pillage of the public sector comes.
The Euro project will continue to be extremely strong. New money will be funnelled into the pockets of bankers. It is important to recall that 100% of these bailout funds go to bankers, none of it goes to the Greek people and none of it stays in Greece. The same bankers will become the beneficiaries of servicing of new loans provided to vast corporations to buy up Greek public assets, cheap.
It would require a particular heartlessness to be indifferent to the demise of the idealistic hopes that backed Syriza. But in the end it proved they did not offer any actual choice of any significantly different outcome. There is no real choice on Sunday, no difference in outcome from which way people vote. Beware Greeks bearing rifts.
Well done Greece.
We knew the EU was a scam years ago. The Booklet “Common Market Fraud”by C. Gordon Tether was blacklisted by mainstream publishers and the author was sacked from his job at the Financial times.
Graig’s confidence in the Eurocrat banksters appears somewhat dented…
The Greek situation is something for anybody in Scotland to consider if they thought they might join the friendly socialist Euro and spend their way to freedom. An independent Scotland should have an independent currency. Quite possible, of course, but that should be factored into the independence calculations rather than just assuming they’d either keep the pound or join the Euro.
Sorry – Craig, not Graig, of course.
The Greek situation should not have too much bearing on the EU referendum in the UK, however. The UK is lucky enough to be a member of the EU but not the Euro. Long may it stay that way. Other countries may be wishing they’d been allowed to do the same as it’s only now becoming clear with Greece just how much a country gives up in it’s own currency if that country happens to vote for a government with a program so much at odds with those controlling it’s currency. By contrast, the issues Britain has with membership of the EU are more resolvable.
Daniel 11.44pm Yes Madame Jowell does not approve. She was attempting to sound statesmanlike. She was also defending the BBC against Gideon’s proposed raid vis a vis the funding of free TV licences for those over 75.
She is bidding to become London Mayor. Also back with her husband following the scandal ref Berlusconi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mills_(lawyer)
Her husband’s sister in law was Dame Barbara Mills, a one time DPP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Mills
Another web.
PS A Labour Friend of Israel too. A visit to Israel recorded in this extensive list of sponsored foreign visits, coaching and mentoring, speechifying, media appearances and the like. A huge donation of £54k from Price Waterhouse Cooper by way of provision of a research assistant is also recorded. What’s that all about?
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=10326
Fedup Ref street lighting. In 2009, Surrey CC entered into a £80m PFI scheme with a consortium Skanska Laing for a term of 25 years. Lighting levels are centrally controlled by computer. Goodness knows what the real costs are. Local newspapers need decent investigative journalists. Here the Trinity Mirror effort is mainly an advertorial.
Street lights bring ‘cost and environmental benefits’ http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/street-lights-bring-cost-environmental-4821498
Robinson’s warm up act for more war.
Door to RAF strikes in Syria opens
Nick Robinson
Political editor
1 July 2015
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33358262
as announced on his twitter, slipped in between cheering for Heather Watson at Wimbledon.
Nick Robinson @bbcnickrobinson · Jul 1
Why the Defence Secretary thinks there’s a fresh case for airstrikes inside Syria. My blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33358262 …
The banality of evil personified.
The Greeks were indeed brave. Good on them.
Reading this bunkum as “Telegraph view” made me laugh out loud! The spiteful derision of the “short working hours” which is reflective of the long long working hours in UK as the paltry pay just won’t make ends meet, and food banks are only accessible three times, and for that there is a need from social services (poor verification and vetting organisation) to endorse the fact that one is poor and cannot afford to buy feed oneself!
Early pensions, is the other gripe, because as we know work until one drops dead ethic (sensibly there will soon appear legislations for the notice of death to be handed to the relevant employers and governmental departments at least six weeks before the death of the individual) is the only way to live one’s life.
The magic of technology is not to afford the humanity a better quality of life, and work to live ethics. In fact technology is the yard stick that humanity has to be competing with, and the only possible reason for any of us to be alive is to work and then drop dead!
How else can the oligarchs and plutocrats swan about their massively expensive cars, eating at massively expensive restaurants, and attending their exclusive and massively expensive clubs?
The rearguard action has began to maintain the fallacies and principles of the debt and creditors!! Evidently the principles of markets regulating themselves naturally only extends to the prices of the commodities and our wares/time/effort/work that we are selling. The same principle cannot be extended to crippling debts. Debtors walking away and telling the creditors get stuffed is not a market regulating itself.
Mary, very true, the same is the case here, twenty five million pounds seems to be the magic number here too. The local authority handed over the department of the lighting etc. to the relevant privateers lock stock and barrel and then started renting back the stuff! How is that for a fraud?
Those lickspittle pontificating in various cafs and committees about the “light pollution” got a better package with the new owners for their commission in selling the borough/county down the river.
As an aside I was present in one of these committees when the chap was waxing lyrical about “light pollution” and I asked him which observatory in our vicinity had complained about such a gross pollution (we have none)? Needless to point out I was never invited to another committee meeting. This is the democracy brand in action in our septic isles; if you don’t like to hear a different point of view, just stop letting anyone in opposition to turn up or be heard during any decision making process.
The BBC’s reporters may have been stunned by the Greek vote, but their tactics haven’t changed. It’s all Business as usual this morning (pun intended). I still await anything resembling a serious, full scale interview with someone who represents the anti austerity point of view. The BBC is full of obviously hostile, pro free market Greeks connected to the opposition, to right wing think tanks and to bodies like the IMF.
Agent Cameron is to hold an emergency meeting with Gideon and Carney ‘to protect our economic security at this uncertain time’ in his spin doctor’s words, ie Craig Oliver, who replaced Andy Coulson. LOL
Oliver-‘Previously, he was Controller of English news output for BBC Global News, responsible for commissioning the news content for the corporation’s English-language global services, including the BBC World Service, BBC World News and BBC News Online.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Oliver_(British_journalist)
Coulson replaced one Simon Lewis whose CV reads –
‘September 2010 Chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe[4]
2009 Director of Communications, 10 Downing Street[5]
2004 Group director of corporate affairs, Vodafone[6]
2004 Director of comms and public policy, Centrica
2000 MD Europe, Centrica
1998 Comms secretary to the Queen (secondment)[7]
1996 Director of corporate affairs, British Gas/Centrica
1992 Director of corporate affairs, NatWest Group
1987 Head of PR, SG Warburg Group
1986 Head of PR, Social Democratic Party (UK)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Lewis_(public_relations_officer)
See how it works and how they are ALL in it together.
Fedup Interesting. Perhaps the whole dam shooting match is privatised, or will be.
btw Surrey’s street lighting PFI was £80m.
Nice to see so many people extolling the virtues of democracy.
It makes a pleasant change.
What a shame. I like the man.
Yanis Varoufakis
thoughts for the post-2008 world
Minister No More!
Posted on July 6, 2015 by yanisv
The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage.
Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.
I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.
And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.
We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government.
The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning.
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/minister-no-more/
I think the impolite word is ‘shafted.
PS Is Gideon capable of writing essays found on this blog in perfect Greek? Probably not. http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/essays/
Chunky Mark is giving it laldy this morning.
From Mondoweiss, 6 July:
“Lysias July 5, 2015, 6:45 pm
Speaking of colonialism, Greece has just struck a blow for national independence from European colonialists. Latest results show 62% No in the referendum
μπράβο, Έλληνες!”
From this thread, 5 July (from Lysias):
“μπράβο, Έλληνες!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Even the accents are in the same (corrrct) place.
I wonder if Lysias would still claim that the Lysias who posts on Mondoweiss is not the same Lysias who posts on here?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++=
Have I misheard or is there trouble at t’ Mondoweiss mill?
Coming from a prominent and well-heeled family he was educated at an expensive UK public school (St Paul’s, in London) and then went on to take a degree in PPE at Oxford University.
David Cameron? You’d be wrong. Lay down your acid and wrathful pens.
And step forward…..Mr Euclid Tsakalotos, the new Greek Minister of Finance! 🙂
Another update from Greece:
“Hegemony” comes from a classical Greek word meaning to lead. Hegemony is another word for leadership. It doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with you on everything or has joined your political force or movement in society.
It means that the majority is prepared to follow your lead on the vital questions, or some of them, of the day. The No camp, anchored on the radical left and in the working class of Greece, is hegemonic across the country.
Every single area, including the political equivalent of Tunbridge Wells and the Tory Home Counties in Britain, voted No by a majority.“
The hard faced ‘leader’ of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson, puts out an early spin on hard hearted Gideon’s £12m welfare cutting budget.
The leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, Ruth Davidson, says it was hard for small businesses to meet the cost of paying higher wages.
“You’ve got to make sure that it’s something that fits for all. The last thing you want to see is that small businesses can’t expand.
I understand that there have been lurid headlines and that is frightening for some people, but this is about making sure that people are less reliant on welfare, and more independent because they have more income of their own means.
So that’s increasing wages above inflation, taking less away in taxation and making sure people have a higher standard of living.”
I get it. The people will have less in their pockets but they will be ‘more independent because they have more income of their own means’.
http://news.sky.com/story/1513826/workers-fears-of-taking-brunt-of-welfare-cuts
Davidson is the ‘leader’ of precisely:
1/59 Scotland MPs,
17/129 Scotland MSPs,
1/6 Scotland MEPs
and 111/1,223 local councillors in Scotland.
Pinketty nails it.
https://medium.com/@gavinschalliol/thomas-piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-7b5e7add6fff
DIE ZEIT: Should we Germans be happy that even the French government is aligned with the German dogma of austerity?
Thomas Piketty: Absolutely not. This is neither a reason for France, nor Germany, and especially not for Europe, to be happy. I am much more afraid that the conservatives, especially in Germany, are about to destroy Europe and the European idea, all because of their shocking ignorance of history.
ZEIT: But we Germans have already reckoned with our own history.
Piketty: But not when it comes to repaying debts! Germany’s past, in this respect, should be of great significance to today’s Germans. Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem. There have been many ways to repay debts, and not just one, which is what Berlin and Paris would have the Greeks believe.
” Later they were told, with the connivance of Brussels, that they could enjoy all the benefits of the EU and its single currency, but without submitting to the economic rigour that euro membership was supposed to require. ”
Sounds pretty much spot on. The warning signs were there from the start but as usual with the EU politics overruled common sense.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1095783.stm