Hamlet Old Boy

by Capricorner

The Parliament enacts laws that are never applied.

Party “operatives” are appointed in positions where qualified and competent persons should be.

According to the media : all the programs for armaments are managed in ways that enrich the leading political parties and those who effect their procurement. No wonder, therefore, Greece buys a security system, which has never worked.

: Procurements of every kind, in the public sector are handled in ways that line the pockets of the handlers.

: Public construction projects are invariably handled in scandalous ways, enriching “the powers that be”.

:Grants and subsidies from the EU are routed to recipients willing to “pay the tolls”.

It’s the talk of the town that journalists and media are given incentives to withhold information which “parties” do not want that it be made public; that even the judiciary can be influenced (already two of its members have been convicted and a third was until recently on the lam).

Greece is the country where people build arbitrarily wherever they want, with no regard for zoning regulations, the law and of course without any consequences.

Greece is full of illegal landfills, no concern for public health. That these hundreds of landfills are, in the summer, the cause of fires that destroy woods even homes?

Oh, well …

Toxic waste has been found admixed with other materials that had been used in the making of fertilizers which have then been used in the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. It has even been admixed to biomass used in the production of organic fertilizers which have then been used in the cultivation of organic fruits and vegetables!

Greece is where parking prohibitions do not apply. Cars are parked “anywhere”. Lately municipal authorities, hungering for income, are asserting themselves but the legendary Greek resistance to order persists.

Greece is where one finds catering, even entertainment establishments, on public beaches.

Greece is where even Government ministers disregard zoning laws; where tax evasion is a national sport.

Greece is where pensions are too high compared to the very low pension fund contributions of the recipients and are, in many cases, granted too soon, particularly in the public sector and “forever”. Now that the Government is searching for ways to decrease its outlays it started doing what in other countries is routine, it started checking to verify the validity of the various welfare expenditures, having “only now” noticed that some appear unreasonably excessive. Well! The checks have brought to surface some interesting facts. Greece is the country with the biggest number of pensioners over the age of ONE HUNDRED ! In one particular city there is an Asthma and an Epilepsy epidemic with thousands collecting disability allowances for these two conditions, in fact entire families suffer from Asthma or Epilepsy !

In an island of a few thousand residents no less than e i g h t h u n d r e d of them are blind and receive the disability allowance. When checked they are found having twenty-twenty vision. Speaking of miracles !

The cost of being a certified blind, asthmatic or epileptic? a mere one thousand Euros. Cheating the Government is so easy. Those responsible for the disbursement of the tax payers’ money? They are not accountable to anyone, besides what is wrong with benefiting from one’s “power of signature”? everybody does it.

Do civil servants work? Generally speaking, in between small talk and long breaks they do, but obviously not conscientiously and they are easily “incentivized” to look the other way. Of course there are some who work conscientiously, effectively, but they are the illustrious exceptions to what seems to be the rule. To contain Greek public expenditures is like trying to carry water in a basket.

Greece is where every Union with a protest or a demand will go about it in ways that inflict “pain” to society. They have come to understand that this is the best way to get what they want. All Governments bow to their demands and provide them with impunity from the law.

The Public employees Union is organizing a strike. The Union includes the personnel of the Tax Revenues establishments and so it has asked that, in the days when the Union strikes, they go on a ‘white” strike by not collecting the money people come in to pay! At a time when the country is craving for income the union wants to hurt the country to make its protest felt. It knows that the Government is “under the gun”, has no option but to reduce the number of people on its payroll, so the strike is useless, but the union must strike, what are unions for?

Recently the Public Electricity Enterprise people went on a ten day strike to protest the Government’s intention to sell a part of its remaining stock and thus cede the control of the company to the private shareholders, putting at risk the outrageous privileges of the company’s personnel. This time, though the company’s management decided it is time the Union be treated like the Unions of the Private sector and withhold pay for the days it was on strike. It therefore decided to withhold the pay but at the rate of fifty Euros a month for the next several months, so that it will not hurt! Unthinkable in the Private sector, but then there are two kinds of Greeks : the patricians of the Public sector and the plebeians of the private sector … who generate the country’s income!

Greece is where a major scandal in Soccer football has come to light(!). It involves primarily, not exclusively, two team owners and of course team players, referees and others and it is all about money … bets placed in Greece and elsewhere on pre-arranged scores of games. One of the team owners has been arrested, the other has disappeared (?). UEFA has banned the teams of these two owners from Super league games for a period of five years and the two teams were relegated to the second division with the top two teams of that division taking their place. But the Greek Sports Justice has a mind of its own. It ignores UEFA and overturns its decision by reinstating the two teams to their previous status, thus touting, with this provocative decision, that Greek football should not be cleaned up and should stay as is … a dirty business.

Greece seems to be in a state of moral decay and disorder, with lawlessness rampant. How will this poisonous state of affairs evolve? Will Mafia law and practice gradually replace what little law and order still remain? What hope is there for change? None it seems. Even the Universities will provide a new generation of leaders with an ingrained understanding that everything, in present day Greece is perfectly normal. The Minister of Education is introducing a bill aiming to bring Greek Universities in line with the Universities of the developed world but the senates of the two leading Universities, Athens and Thessaloniki, are vehemently opposed to that and declare that they will not apply the new law (by whose permission?). They want that students can be considered as students for ten or more years, even if they are not attending. They want University professors to be totally unaccountable, even when they refrain from performing their duties, or breach the rules. They do not want to have their work and the academic standards of their schools assessed by a board which includes “outsiders”. They vehemently oppose the abolition of the so called academic asylum, which has come to be used as a safe heaven for anarchists and for the conduct of absolutely illegal acts, in University grounds, by people who have no relation to the Universities. They want to maintain the “freedom” to have University property destroyed by various groups (and repaired with tax payers money) or to set up and operate an illegal radio station in University premises. They want political groups of students to be free to prevent other students from attending lectures or taking exams, thus hindering their progress. They want to maintain the illegal occupation of university facilities by people who, have no relation to the Universities.

Do they have the right to mislead Greek Youth?

Hamlet Old Boy. Nothing is rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark.