[Damian_ir]

Originally Posted by Kaiser2000

Well (to use a recent Boards example), take the recent campaign against Sean Sherlock's new internet legislation. People engaged, wrote their TDs and so on - only to be fobbed off with generic auto-replies (and poorly written, and spelled, ones at that!) and in the end he signed it through anyway.

The problem is politicians in this country face no personal consequences, regardless of what they do. If they misbehave they get a slap on the wrist (if even that), and sure you can say "well you can choose not to vote for them at the next election" but how well does THAT work either?

Take FF - sure they got decimated but most of the top echelon took their fat pensions that they will get now and for the rest of their lives (20-40 years maybe?) despite what happened to the country under their watch! Sure Bertie has made a nice retirement out of lecturing others on how to replicate the Irish Miracle that was the Celtic Tiger years

Why WOULD they do anything beyond serving their own interests? And who's going to change that? - it'd be like asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas.

"Democracy" (at least the Irish version) just doesn't work!

I agree with every word. This could have been a conversation between two mates in a cafe or a bar in Greece, in regards to the puppets of Athens.

[djpbarry]

Originally Posted by Kaiser2000

Well (to use a recent Boards example), take the recent campaign against Sean Sherlock's new internet legislation. People engaged, wrote their TDs and so on - only to be fobbed off with generic auto-replies (and poorly written, and spelled, ones at that!) and in the end he signed it through anyway.

If people really were "enraged", I think they would have done more than send emails.

Originally Posted by Kaiser2000

Why WOULD they do anything beyond serving their own interests? And who's going to change that?

The electorate. If people keep voting in the likes of Lowry, there is no incentive for TD's to clean up their act. Accountability won't come about until the electorate demands it.

[Sponge Bob]

(NOT the other way around)

http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/54679

Iran has blocked oil sales to two Greek companies, Hellenic Petroleum (Elpe) and Motor Oil Hellas, after they failed to make payments, Iranian state television reported on Thursday.

English-language Press TV reported that the two companies, the country's largest refineries, were barred from purchasing Iranian crude after they defaulted on their orders

I think Greece was Irans largest customer in Europe.

[Voodoo_rasher]

Originally Posted by murphaph

Should we expect the Italians to retake Abysinnia any time soon? Or should we in the RoI be fearful of the bould Brits retaking their former possession?

Turkey has no intention of invading any EU member state.

ever heard of gradual colonising? *sniff*

Peanut


Quote:
Originally Posted by Voodoo_rasher View Post
Who's ruling Tur right now? But an Islamicist party!
Peanut: "Who wouldda thunk it !

I can still buy alcohol at 2am on a Saturday night in Istanbul without restriction.

If this does change drastically I may get back to you."

Its not so long ago since Turkey had S E C U L A R governments. Shows what little Peanut knows on this topic

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by Voodoo_rasher

Its not so long ago since Turkey had S E C U L A R governments. Shows what little Peanut knows on this topic

Sorry... don't see your point? The government is not the State.

If the State does turn significantly Islamist I could agree with you. (Not that Ireland or Greece are exactly models of secular states either..)

Anyway what is the ultimate point of all this FUD?

Should Ireland be lobbying the Troika more for a loan of a few billion to prevent the British invading the RoI?

They did it in the past right, why shouldn't they try again? Gradual colonisation and all that...

[Sand]

Interestingly, Greece has managed to issue new, very short term bonds just last month. Whilst not in itself significant, it does call in to question the often posed view that investors would refuse to ever invest in a sovereign that had previously defaulted on its bonds. Which was similar to the view that investors would refuse to ever invest in Icelandic sovereign bonds if they didn't cover all their banks debts.

As always, investors will invest if they think the risk and the return aren't out of alignment.

[maninasia]

If there is money to be made people will be interested and willing to invest. End of.

[Damian_ir]

Since there was a serious disagreement over my view about the impact of Greek military budget to the financial instability of Greece,
i would like to mention that about 400 used M1 Abrams tanks, hundreds of heavy armored vehicles(Hummer) and Blackhawk chopers will be "given over" - no charge from USA to Greece.

Arms that are needed to sustain independence and to try to support oil interests of the country in the eastern mediterranean sea. I have no illusions. They will demand drilling rights over the national wealth of the country as a reward. They will earn many pieces of the maintenance cost pie against German interests.

Oil games applys to Cyprus as well. Since Cyprus will drill oil and gas between them and Israel WITH Israel, against Turkeys intentions and Germany wants to have a bite from that. Germany ,after decades of apathy about the greek-turkish dogfights and the small naval incidents inside Greece s borders, remembered to send 3 German battle ships to effect common military operations for testing reasons along with the navy of Cyprus...€

Meanwhile , Germans and French are promoting(on high political level)their military products in different fields of defence, by using again Siemmmmens type briefcases to the corrupted puppets of Athens. Germ-Europe at its best.

What an irony .... Ziiimensssss wants to effect seminars to the Greek public servants of how to avoid .... corruption . !!!!

I wonder what they will do in Berlin with the spare audis BMWs(and their workers) when southern countries will go out of Eurozone.

[Monty Burnz]

Originally Posted by Damian_ir

I agree with every word. This could have been a conversation between two mates in a cafe or a bar in Greece, in regards to the puppets of Athens.

The Greek people did it to themselves - Greece is a joke of a country, even more so than Ireland.

If anything, these politicians are the puppets of the Greeks who gave them power. Who voted these 'puppets' into power for the last 20 years? Who benefited from the generosity of these puppets? Surely not the Greeks?

Oh wait:

Tax Collector No. 1—early 60s, business suit, tightly wound but not obviously nervous—arrived with a notebook filled with ideas for fixing the Greek tax-collection agency. He just took it for granted that I knew that the only Greeks who paid their taxes were the ones who could not avoid doing so—the salaried employees of corporations, who had their taxes withheld from their paychecks. The vast economy of self-employed workers—everyone from doctors to the guys who ran the kiosks that sold the International Herald Tribune—cheated (one big reason why Greece has the highest percentage of self-employed workers of any European country). “It’s become a cultural trait,” he said. “The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes. And they never did because no one is punished. No one has ever been punished. It’s a cavalier offense—like a gentleman not opening a door for a lady.”

As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true.

Oddly enough, the financiers in Greece remain more or less beyond reproach. They never ceased to be anything but sleepy old commercial bankers. Virtually alone among Europe’s bankers, they did not buy U.S. subprime-backed bonds, or leverage themselves to the hilt, or pay themselves huge sums of money. The biggest problem the banks had was that they had lent roughly 30 billion euros to the Greek government—where it was stolen or squandered. In Greece the banks didn’t sink the country. The country sank the banks.

As he finishes his story the finance minister stresses that this isn’t a simple matter of the government lying about its expenditures. “This wasn’t all due to misreporting,” he says. “In 2009, tax collection disintegrated, because it was an election year.”

“What?”

He smiles.

“The first thing a government does in an election year is to pull the tax collectors off the streets.”

“You’re kidding.”

Now he’s laughing at me. I’m clearly naïve.

On he went, describing a system that was, in its way, a thing of beauty. It mimicked the tax-collecting systems of an advanced economy—and employed a huge number of tax collectors—while it was in fact rigged to enable an entire society to cheat on their taxes. As he rose to leave, he pointed out that the waitress at the swanky tourist hotel failed to provide us with a receipt for our coffees. “There’s a reason for that,” he said. “Even this hotel doesn’t pay the sales tax it owes.”

I walked down the street and found waiting for me, in the bar of another swanky tourist hotel, the second tax collector. Tax Collector No. 2—casual in manner and dress, beer-drinking, but terrified that others might discover he had spoken to me—also arrived with a binder full of papers, only his was stuffed with real-world examples not of Greek people but Greek companies that had cheated on their taxes. He then started to rattle off examples (“only the ones I personally witnessed”). The first was an Athenian construction company that had built seven giant apartment buildings and sold off nearly 1,000 condominiums in the heart of the city. Its corporate tax bill honestly computed came to 15 million euros, but the company had paid nothing at all. Zero. To evade taxes it had done several things. First, it never declared itself a corporation; second, it employed one of the dozens of companies that do nothing but create fraudulent receipts for expenses never incurred and then, when the tax collector stumbled upon the situation, offered him a bribe. The tax collector blew the whistle and referred the case to his bosses—whereupon he found himself being tailed by a private investigator, and his phones tapped. In the end the case was resolved, with the construction company paying 2,000 euros. “After that I was taken off all tax investigations,” said the tax collector, “because I was good at it.”

I recommend that anyone who is feeling sorry for the Greeks should read this excellent Vanity Fair article on how they destroyed their own country with corruption and greed.

[Irish Aris]

Damian ir, everyday people couldn't care less about tanks and bombs. And by everyday people I mean people that live on salaries and pensions, people who paid the taxes because they couldn't avoid to. These are the people that get the biggest impact on the austerity measures, when the people who were stealing for years keep stealing. Because we are a mess of a country.
Instead of giving away our drilling rights for tanks and choppers, maybe we should give them away in exchange for new job positions and country's development. Forget the big picture, because if we continue on this path. . .there will be noone left to pay taxes. . .

[Damian_ir]

Originally Posted by Monty Burnz

If anything, these politicians are the puppets of the Greeks who gave them power. Who voted these 'puppets' into power for the last 20 years? Who benefited from the generosity of these puppets? Surely not the Greeks? [/URL]

Who gave power to the people that were passing zimens type briefcases with money FROM Germany to Greece ? Do you blame all Germans for being responsible for corruption in Greece ?

When you have a corruption offence in the so called "European Union" you must have get caught two people and their associates. There are two sides to blame.

[srsly78]

Stop with the smokescreens and just pay your taxes already. It's Greece's fault, not Germany's.

[Damian_ir]

Yes pay taxes that then through the same people, in Germany and in Greece that never getting caught, will become pools, holidays in a pacific island or exotic car in a well hidden house near a lake or a coast.

[srsly78]

Germany is not known for corruption and tax evasion, quite the opposite.

[Monty Burnz]

Originally Posted by Damian_ir

Who gave power to the people that were passing zimens type briefcases with money FROM Germany to Greece ? Do you blame all Germans for being responsible for corruption in Greece ?

The Greeks are to blame. That's how democracy works. They voted for people who promised them loads of (borrowed) cash. Now they've got the bill, and they've already gotten away with stealing 100 billion euros of someone else's money. Are you not embarrassed that your country could become a failed state like Afghanistan because your society is so thoroughly corrupt?

Originally Posted by Damian_ir

When you have a corruption offence in the so called "European Union" you must have get caught two people and their associates. There are two sides to blame.

On a scale of one to ten, the EU scores about 2 on corruption. The Greeks are top of the class with 10 out of 10.