Back with a vengeance

I've been quiet for a very long time.
There are excuses galore. And they are all good.
But there is only one reason. And it's all bad.

I got sidetracked by work and travel and missed a week and then another. And by the time I had the opportunity to write there was so much to say. Too much to say. And I choked on my own anger

But really, I've had so much to say that I have been virtually silenced.
But as ever, something happens that is too much to bear. Too funny. Too ridiculous. Too bad.
In my case, it was a televised debate on pension reform on American TV.
The TV was on in the back ground while I was unpacking my bags during yet another business trip (and let me tell you, the glamour wears off fast).

Now normal people start dozing when pension reform is mentioned but not I. The geek within pricked its ears and I kept it on, half listening as I was settling in. The debate was civilised, considering, but I was struck by the single-sidedness of it all. 'no democrat on the panel' I thought to myself 'that's just ridiculous'. So clutching a pack of jumpers to my chest I stood trying to figure out how they could get away with having no democrat on the panel.

It is preposterous to expect to retire before the age of 75, said one panelist.
Republican, thought I, and put the jumpers away.
We should tax unearned income at the same rates as earned income, says another panelist. Ah finally, I think to myself as I pull out skirts and jackets, speaking of taxation as redistribution, not punishment.
Oh how wrong I was.
The unearned income the lady was referring to was not inherited millions and trust fund security. It was pocket money given to children for helping grandparents with the groceries and baby sitting money handed to a young cousin on a Saturday night.

I stopped dead on my tracks, shoe bags in hand.
Income? Did we really just refer to pocket money and an pretext for a bit of help being passed around families as 'income'?
Republican, I thought. Of the worst kind.
Assuming all money is fair game. As if money for bread and money for diamonds has the same value. As if 'taxing unearned income' in this context didn't just mean double taxing the poor. And the Mexicans.
Bloody racist, right wing, self-righteous pigs who always think that poverty and misery are diseases afflicting other people, I thought to myself.
Not my finest hour. Rather uncharitble. Not all that nuanced.
But give me a break. I was jet lagged. I was tired. I get all worked up about social policy. And things were only going to get worse.

As anger is bad for my karma, I decided I had had enough but as I reached out to turn the TV off I heard the offending panelist extolling the virtues of President Obama.
Oh the horror.
She is a democrat.
A. Democrat.
A DEMOCRAT.
Unapologetic. Unaware.
I felt cheated. I got angry. Seething. And I stayed angry.
That was fun for my colleagues, let me tell you. But they got over it, whereas I didn't.

When exactly was it that we stopped believing that things can change? When was it that we, the human race, collectively resigned ourselves to the fact that the way things are is the way things will always be, apart from the times when they just get worse?
'We need to be realistic' said the panelists. And what they meant was: we need to give little, care little, change little.
'We need to be realistic' say the coalition of the damned in the UK. And what they mean is dare little, probe little, concede little.
'We need to be realistic' say the Greek authorities. And what they mean is we refuse to take responsibility for the violence that ravages our society and the misery that has come to define us.

Well sod that.
If realistic means resigned, cowardly, settled then count me out.
If realism entails ditching all your dreams and just sitting out the game then realism is the enemy.

I've said it before and I will say it again: citizenship is not a spectator sport.
Society is not other people.
The future is not written.
Citizenship is made up of caring, acting and turning up.
Society is you.
And the future is what you make of it.
And if we are to stand a chance, people, 2011 had better be the year of unrealism.

We need not be realistic any more – let's face it, we've been realistic for so long now and look where that got us? We need to dream, we need to hope, we need to dare.
2011. Brand new year. As good a time to start as any.

New Year's Resolution

Dear Readers. Dear Friends.
You have faith. You have patience.
I have no excuse.

No that's not right.
I have many excuses.
But no reasons. None good enough anyway.

So thanks for bearing with me. Thanks for waiting for me.
I will be back in the New Year. I shall blog.
With the same anger and renewed intensity.
With the same indignation and increased frequency.

I shall blog.
In the meantime, merry christmas everybody.

Economics for dummies aka us

I don’t know why we bother with government and the IMF in Greece.
The sort of policies we end up with could have been devised by a 7-year old who read the back flap of an economics textbook while waiting for his mum to take him to school.

Ignoring the complicated charts, omitting the long words, leaving out the hard bits involving money supply, employment statistics, growth, sustainability and other such luxuries that Greece has no time for anyway, our industrious 7-year old understands the basics and proceeds from there.

The first idea he grasps is that governments need cash and cash comes from taxes so let’s increase those because we need loads of cash. And since he’s only 7, he can’t be expected to come up with convoluted systems for establishing how taxation is to be calculated and collected. He can’t be expected to assess equitable burden sharing or sensible collection timings. He can’t be expected to ponder on the free rider problem or tackle tax evasion. He’s 7 for crying out loud. He has realised taxes are needed so he shall collect taxes by extraordinary collections. It’s simpler that way. I need, I take.

The second idea he grasps from the blurb at the back of his ‘economics for dummies’ book is that any economy needs people to spend money in order to keep going. Stimulating consumer spending is indeed a vital parameter in overcoming a recession so our 7 year old has done well here. But how can you make sure people spend? Especially when times are hard, salaries low, basic goods expensive and the financial insecurity of the job market is exacerbated by 7 year olds imposing extraordinary tax collections?

Well, how does mum make sure you brush your teeth before bed? She makes you.

So, our 7 year old has sensibly concluded that, if you need people to spend in order to stimulate the economy, then you make them spend. And if they don’t spend enough – ‘enough’ here being determined on the basis of what the state believes you make and what the state believes you should be able to ‘spare’ – then you get fined.
It’s neat, it’s simple, it works. And if you are 7, it also shows rare acumen.

Only the Greek Prime Minister is not 7.
And he should know that increased taxation, extraordinary collections and fines on under-spending based on income assumptions made on the basis of tax return figures simply squeezes one segment of your population dry: The ones who pay taxes already. The ones who declare their income already. The ones that are doing what they can already.
In a country where tax evasion is an epidemic, the government’s tax policy penalises those who fail to tax evade. The government is punishing the good guys.

What would my 7 year old have to say about that?
He’d say that if you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, then you might as well not and at least stand a chance of not getting caught. But he’d also tell you that his mummy never taught him that. His mummy taught him to be good. His mummy taught him that being good is never punished.

And although, given his age, he’s doing a decent enough job at understanding the bare bones of economics 101, which is all he is going to need if he chooses to go into government, his mummy is really doing a lousy job preparing him for his subsequent career as a Greek citizen and taxpayer.

Citizenship is not a spectator sport

Let me start by outing myself: the title is not mine. The line is Robert Putnam's but it's so good, so succinct and so, well, true that I am stealing it and stealing it with pride. I dare say he'd approve.
So.
Democracy. Citizenship. Voting. And we are done till the next time. Right?
Right. If what you want to end up with is Greece.
No? Didn't think so.

So here's the low down.
Greece has a mammoth fiscal crisis and a deep economic crisis. Money supply issues collide with the net deficit in economic outputs across the board; add to that financial mis-management, corruption and the almost total absence of industry and manufacturing, the decline of agriculture and tourism and the untouchability of shipping and you have Greece in the year of our Lord 2010.
And yes our governments are to blame. All of them, since 1974.
And, of course, citizenship does come in, in as far as we voted for them but really what choice did we have? Lesser evil at best. Devil you know at worst.
Citizenship in representative democracies is not all it's cracked up to be. And whatnot.
Political corruption, venality, patronage, complete lack of transparency and accountability all conspire to make politics a sordid occupation anyway. Good people don't run for office and citizens know better than to take the whole damn mess seriously.

So the economic crisis comes with a deep stateness crisis, profound legitimacy deficits and endemic institutional malfunctioning that is never addressed so it only gets worse with time.
And when real problems hit, delays, poor decision-making and finger pointing are the order of the day. Even though real lives may be at risk.

Take this week, for instance.
Our national outstanding debt to medical suppliers and ill-advised attempts to bring down the cost of medications by 35% meant that the pharmas are simply redicrecting supplies away from Greece leaving the country with a serious shortage in, among other things, insulin.
While the government are negotiating down, stalling and scribbling out figures a suspended death sentence is hovering over the country's 800,000 diabetics. There are no two ways about it. The government is failing us. And there is nothing we can do right now.

So we are victims, really. Of our circumstances and our governments. Of our own choices and our own powerlessness. There is nothing we can do. There is nothing we could have done.
We 'called' it, you know. We saw it coming. We shook our heads at the television screen.
But what can one person do?

The answer to that is unequivocal and simple. One person can do everything. Anything. All of it. Or none of it.
You make your bed and you sleep in it.
Of course our governments are to blame. But so are we.
Not because we voted them in. But because we decided that once that was done, citizenship was over till next time.
So we lived within our concentric circles of home, family, clan and patronage bonds. Never feeling responsible for the butterfly effects of our choices and actions. Never thinking that people we don't directly know matter. That we should matter to them. That community is only real if enough people act like it already exists. And unless you act like it exists then it doesn't. Simple as.
Never stopping to think that 'it's no skin off my nose' is the sort of attitude that sustains dictatorships, allows environmental destruction to go on unchecked and breeds the perfect environment for abuses of all kinds.
We are to blame for everything, because we did nothing. Nothing to stop bad stuff from becoming endemic. Nothing to make good stuff part of the picture.

And before the cynics call me naïve, please do some reading.
Civic engagement and civil society participation are statistically positively correlated with economic prosperity, political stability, personal health and well-being, crime reduction – and the list goes on. Engaging with the community builds trust in human interactions and faith in other people. It creates a shared purpose and the conviction that change is possible. It makes corruption seem less of a necessary evil and more of an unacceptable and unaffordable transaction cost. It makes inefficiency seem less unavoidable and failure less inevitable.
Civic engagement teaches people that the personal is the political and back again.
And it teaches people to take responsibility for their actions and expect others to do the same.

I just heard of someone being mugged at needlepoint in front of the National Theatre in the heart of Athens. Junkie, used needle and fear.
Who's fault is that? Who's responsibility? Who's problem?
No-one's, everyone's, yours. Mine.

Greeks were never ones for civil society.
Civic connectedness outside the home, caring and contributing outside the family, protecting and nurturing outside the clan, that's not how we roll.
And now that our streets are full of the homeless and desperate, every street corner crowded with prostitutes and every step shadowed by beggars, now what do we think of social connectedness? Nothing. We think nothing.
We think foreign mafias are to blame for the increase in crime rates and prostitution. We think the influx of immigrants can explain the rising numbers of rough sleepers. We think successive corrupt governments and continuous bad governance explain the state of affairs.
We think we are victims. We think there is nothing we can do.
So we do nothing. We watch and wait and despair.
Because we are convinced there is no other way. Because we have forgotten that citizenship is not a spectator sport.
Because we have forgotten one basic fact of life: if you want change, you need to make it. If you want things to get better, you need to get up, roll your sleeves up and join the fray.

If you want a future then there is only one way to look at this whole damn mess:
Our country. Our community. Our problem.

Back in business - and it's business as usual all round

About time I broke the radio silence, don't you think?

You will be pleased to hear – one hopes – that I am not dead and neither have I given up blogging. But despite the obvious raw material over the past few weeks, I have found the situation in Greece too overwhelming to write about and the UK election too underwhelming to write about.
So radio silence it was.

Not because I've lost my interest in politics, not because I've lost my sense of profound engagement with, well, everything but because my usual outrage has recently been replaced by stunned disbelief and an ever-spreading sadness.

But I will confess that I have been perking up recently.
Things in Greece are stable for the time being, which is the best one can hope for; this United Kingdom of ours has a government and it's not an all-blue one (thank god for small mercies) and the World Cup is about to kick off. What's not to like?

Well.
Although the French Open is keeping me from switching back to the news channels as frequently as my natural proclivities would demand, there is no avoiding the fact that the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is still not off the headlines, with six weeks of recriminations and environmental horror pushing us inexorably towards a criminal investigation, empty talk and an as yet unknown impact on our life and health as a species.
At least BP's shares plummeted by 13% yesterday. As I was saying. Small mercies.
According to the Guardian this was the worst one-day fall for 18 years for what was once Britain's most valuable company.

But have the mighty fallen?
Will Obama ban BP from operating in the US? For a time? For ever? Will he take the whole industry to task? Will he find scapegoats and allow the industry at large to proceed in a business-as-usual fashion?

Business-as-usual is a powerful motivator.
Keep things ticking over, restore public confidence, avoid dips in the stock-market, work-force contractions and costly regulatory adjustments.
Of course it all makes sense.
Until the next time we fail to prevent bad things from happening because we focused more on functional continuity than systemic soundness.

Big words, fancy talk and yada yada but it's not just oil spills I'm talking about.
We seem to be living in a chicken-and-egg, told-ya-so universe where nothing gets fixed for fear of missing a beat.
Issues big and small don't get dealt with until they explode and then all they get is a band aid.
If Britain had a different electoral system, legitimacy would not be such an elusive concept for its elected representatives but to achieve electoral reform you need to disrupt government business-as-usual for at least 5 minutes and we can't be having that.
If Greece streamlined and cleaned up its state sector then you wouldn't need to worry about having to bail them out again in 10 years or this current bailout going off track. But cleaning up the public sector will delay the implementation of the bailout and we can't be having with that.
And on and on, business-as-usual.

And forgive the cynicism when I say this, but what was Israel's raid on the aid shipment to Gaza other than business-as-usual? They do their thing, counting on the world's obsession with moving on and going back to normal.
Bullets, zodiacs full of soldiers and submarines. Outrage. Riots, Diplomats shaking their heads and the threat of an investigation.
Oh no, now the Israelis are shaking in their wee boots.

Are we missing something?
With at least 9 dead and insane confusion around what exactly the Israelis were thinking, the explanation that Israel is a big bully isn't quite enough to cover the 'what the hell?' moment we all had when we heard the news a couple of days ago.

And my overwhelming sadness threatens to return.

What sort of a world is this?
So we'll get an investigation. And Israel may even get a slap on the wrist. While everything will be moving back towards business-as-usual. And we can't even hope for small mercies.
Hilary Clinton described the situation in Gaza as 'unsustainable'. At last she noticed.
Now what Hilary dear? Now what?
Now nothing. Now, it's business as usual.

And the cherry on the cake of world madness?
Snazzy, cuddly, pretty Apple had to deal with the embarrassing news of a string of worker suicides allegedly linked to horrible working conditions at the Chinese factory where iPhones and iPads are assembled. Oh the irony.
Steve Jobs must be hating the job now, having to comment on the intimation that cuddly Apple is using sweatshops for fabricating its fancy toys.
And?
And nothing. Apple is selling like mad, overtaking Microsoft as the world's largest technology company by market value and iPads are selling like hotcakes. And although the US justice department is making preliminary inquiries into whether Apple unfairly dominates the digital music market through its iTunes store, it's business-as-usual for Apple despite it all.

Well.
If it's business-as-usual for everyone; if all we can hope for is small mercies; if I-told-ya-so is the best we can do, then it better be business-as-usual for me too. Because I may not be able to change a damn thing but I can roll my eyes at the newspapers and shake my fist in anger.
In short, I'm back. Yeah yeah, small mercies indeed.

Home

Greece riots on every TV screen.
3 dead.
And I have no words.
Only silent despair.
And tears.

Election special: vote to change how you vote

Election-time in the UK is fast approaching so get your party hats on and sing a happy song, for it is election time and we have all fallen into the trap of watching the leaders' debate and reading the rankings as if they mattered.
Don't they? You ask.
Of course they don't, I reply – and not, for once, just to be controversial.

The leaders' debate is interesting. It shows you how photogenic your new prime minister will be. How good a debater. How good at repeating or creating sound-bites. It may even give you a tiny little glimpse of what his politics will be like once elected, but let's not get over-excited. These guys are trying to get elected, not give you an insight on how realism and constraints on the ground influence policy-making in real life.

The numbers that we all pore over the morning after each debate are also interesting. But ultimately completely misleading.
So we know who the country, overall, would vote for if choosing a prime minister across the nation was how we voted over here. But it ain't so the figures we look at are no use at all in understanding what will happen with the election. They would and could be useful in another place, one with oh I don't know a proportional representation electoral system, perhaps? But this is not that place and looking at those figures is not simply a waste of time, it is a deeply misleading political proposition.

First past the post, folks.
That means you vote for your MP, not your PM.
Yes, yes I know you often actually just choose a party; often not even knowing what your local MP stands for – although you really should not be doing that because that is not how electoral responsibility works in this country but that's another conversation for another time. And yes you vote 'Labour' but you voting Labour doesn't necessarily help Labour get elected. Or the Lib Dems, more to the point.

Diffuse support all over the country is no good whatsoever for making it into government in this United Kingdom of ours. You need concentrated support in a winning number of constituencies. That doesn't even mean a majority in said constituencies. It just means more than the other guys.
An excellent system for choosing your MPs who will then go on to form a government. A pretty poor system for choosing a presidential-style Prime Minister or which party you want in government.

So cut back to the debates.
You look at the three of them and make your choice. 'I'll have Clegg. I like his politics, I like his wife, I like that he doesn't do God, he's my sort of guy'.
And now what?
In a PR system if you vote Lib Dem, you've voted Lib Dem. Your votes towards both your local MP and the government swing the same way. But what about here? You vote Lib Dem and maybe your candidate gets the seat and you are home free. But if not? You may actually be helping the bad guys (whoever you deem them to be) get into government.
Does that matter?
It depends. If you think you are choosing a government on polling day, it matters a great deal.
And our parties seem to want us to choose a government, to select a premier and only as an afterthought also choose our MPs on polling day.
Which is fine, it is how many countries successfully run their democracies after all. But their electoral system fits the way their election is being fought so at least the numbers add up. Most of the time. All things being equal.

So now what?
We are in the land in-between, where the way we are encouraged to vote by party political broadcasts, manifestos, debates and advertising has absolutely no connection to the way we actually vote, the way our vote counts or is counted. Voters in Wonderland and through the looking glass nothing is as it seems so you don't get what you bargained for.

Electoral reform is needed, my friends. Or a return to fighting a pre-election campaign that is suitable to our electoral system.
Eliminating the disconnect between the choice we are given and the way we can make it is the only way to help democracy remain vibrant and relevant in this country. So. If you want to give me presidential-style debates, if you want me to think of politics at party-level and in terms of sweeping national mandates, give me a voting system that allows me to make those choices without unwittingly helping re-elect the people I wanted out in the first place.

Democracy needs informed, responsible voters or it perishes.
So here we are .
Traditionally the main defense of the current system has been its empowering simplicity.
But the simplicity is outdated and its guardians are making the most of the disconnect between the way we vote and the way those votes are counted. Apart from Clegg. He's honest about the need for electoral reform – especially as he stands to gain from it most of all.
Actually, that's not true.
He stands to gain more than any other party.
But the real victor, that would be us. You. The voters. The people.
So power to us, damn it. It is a democracy after all.
And although we tend to forget all about participation between elections, let's at least remember on polling day.
And make it count.
If not in the grand scheme of things then let's at least make the numbers add up.

Eyjafjallajökull is a bit of a mouthful. So is globalisation.

Can't pronounce Eyjafjallajökull?
Fret not my friend for you are not alone. None of us can. But you don't need to be able to pronounce it. Everyone is talking about 'it'. Any mention of 'ash' or your auntie being stranded and you are immediately and perfectly intelligible without twisting your tongue. The effects of the volcano are so pervasive that you don't need to be able to name the culprit to get your point across.

Airplanes have been grounded for days.
People are stranded for an ever-lengthening string of days in places they had visited for a long weekend or for a couple of meetings. Because that's how we have come to expect things to be. Hopping from place to place is not a miracle of science. It's a mundane fact of life for the globalised era. Only now, thanks to Eyjafjallajökull, people, mail and goods are going nowhere fast.

Goods are taking the scenic route, by ship, while the 'Armada' is setting sail to rescue stranded Brittons on the continent.
'Operation Volcano' is, according to the Daily Mail, 'a rerun of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation'.
Easy on the drama guys.
Or, come to think of it, pile it on because this is as dramatic as drama gets.
Yes it's a bummer that holidays were missed, return dates pushed back, shipments of this and that and the odd parcel have been delayed. But it would not be excessive to suggest that this incident, these last few days have been an alarm bell for the fragility of our entire civilisation model.

Maybe Eyjafjallajökull is Icelanding for 'how could you not have seen this coming?'.
First with global banking. Now with globalisation.
First cash and now ash. Thanks lads. Much obliged.

Can't pronounce Eyjafjallajökull? How about 'globalisation', can you manage that?
We have long lived with the assumption that the world is getting smaller. That you could pop over to New York for a weekend, take a day trip to Paris, nip over to Dublin for a meeting.
And now we are grounded. Literally.
63,000 flights canceled since Thursday – and counting.
1 million people stranded.
Not to mention the millions of trips that did not take place at all and flights that never got booked.
The cost to the airlines is astronomical.
The overall cost of the crisis is even higher.

And the real crisis is yet to be thought through.
Because while we are waiting for the ash to clear and trying to figure out how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, our entire civilisation model is on hold and none of us have voiced what we should all be thinking.

Everything from international sporting events to business, from leisure to high-value goods deliveries and mail, relies on thousands of airplanes criss-crossing the ether every day. It's not simply a matter of convenience. Our entire civilisation is based on the assumption that people and goods can move freely and speedily. That is the premise of globalisation. Without that, the entire system hollows out.

Don't celebrate the end of the global era quite yet. For now, no systemic change is thought about For now, we just wait. But we don't know how long this will last or how long we can physically be kept waiting for. Or when we may need to start waiting again.
When the volcano last erupted in 1821 it remained active for 13 months. There's a sobering thought.
You may not be able to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull but you can surely say 'oh dear'.

So what does this mean in real terms?
It means you may have to go without mangetout and mangoes for a while. Forgive me if I don't weep for you.
You may have to go without supplies for engineering and IT hardware needs. Or wait until a boat or lorry brings them over. Delays will cost money. But they will be absorbed in the end.
Arms supplies may be affected. As may, possibly, the drugs trade. Not so sad now.
But it will also mean shortages in pharmaceutical supplies. Unless a plan for road and sea supply routes is implemented soon, before the shortages come near.

Carbon emissions will go down. Although there is talk of severe melt-down (no pun intended) around Eyjafjallajökull which is not good news. But then again it's part of the bad news we already know. And then there is the sister volcano that may still erupt and if that goes, we have no way of knowing what that will mean, for us, in real terms.

But what about the bad news that we haven't yet thought about?
For now we are all waiting for the volcano to stop and life to resume.
We expect this disruption to last however long it lasts – although we hope it won't last as long as last time – and then things will go back to normal. Mail, goods, drugs and people will cross continents with speed and reliability.
Amen.

But until then?
Until then we are left staring at the face of a civilisation that was kicked in the gut and is panting on the floor. For all our triumph over nature, our commercial giants and the leaps of science, there was no real plan B in place. And there isn't one still.
Our over-reliance on planes is mental as well as practical. Our planes are grounded and we wait. Because we cannot fathom that other ways of doing things are as valid. Or essential.

The newsflash is simple: you can't say Eyjafjallajökull but surely you can say 'nature' and remind yourself we don't actually run it. Even though we often pretend we do.
Our entire civilisational paradigm is based on a massive assumption: that we can fly. Freely. Frequently. At a moment's notice.
And while we can't, maybe we could have a think about what our over-reliance on the airline industry means. What our over-reliance on shipping goods and people across oceans and continents super-fast actually means and how we can live and live well when, for whatever reason, that can't go ahead as planned.

Now, while we wait, we are just waiting. We are not doing any thinking.
We never do any thinking.

But what if Eyjafjallajökull is Icelandic for 'suckers, the system has a massive weakness, how did you fail to spot it this time?'
Oh hold on. It wasn't just this time. It was also last time.

So maybe Eyjafjallajökull is icelandic for 'our arrogance is our worst enemy'.
The money markets. The global nexus. Our 'small world'.
Maybe Eyjafjallajökull actually stands for 'we will never learn'.
Even when we are forced to wait and all we can do is think, we still don't.
Meanwhile nature is doing its thing, despite our plans.
Inconsiderate thing that it is.

The future is what you dream of it

'No future' sang my beloved sex pistols. Maybe they had Greece in mind. Maybe they had the world in mind. Maybe they were talking of us all. This country is also going to the dogs, say my English friends. Seriously guys, get in line.

Yes our economy (let's not forget, I am a UK tax payer after all) is still not showing signs of recovery. Yes the budget was a bit of a joke. Yes the upcoming election is scaring me (Brown or Cameron? It's a voter's Sophie's choice). Yes I am slightly bemused by the eviction of an Israeli diplomat and the nursery school language used to describe it: 'the Israeli government promised never to do this again' ('this' being the forgery of UK passports) but the UK government stomped its feet because 'they told us the same thing the last time' (they forged passports) and this is a major blow to our 'friendship' so no kissing and making up.
One diplomat gets kicked out, Milliband doesn't go to the Israeli Embassy party (I kid you not) and we are all very stressed about 'what it all means' about the future of British-Israeli relations, about whether forging traveling documents is common practice among spies and international men of mystery and about whether sending the diplomat away was excessive, appropriate or inadequate.

And the Greek in me goes 'seriously folks, you call these problems?'.
And the rest of me (the adult, the political scientist, the voter, the tax payer) thinks 'these are serious problems. They are serious enough without being systemic. They are serious without marking the demise of the entire socio-economic edifice of the state'. That's the sort of thing that should be worrying the media and citizens in a civilised, stable, European democracy.
Not whether there is a future, but how to make the future better than the present.

Not 'how do you deal with your select troops (see SEAL equivalent) who decided that a national holiday parade was a good locus to shout out racist abuse of the worst kind?'
Not 'why did a 15-year-old Afghan refugee die of what sounds scarily like an IED hidden in a rubbish pile in downtown Athens?'
Not 'how do you stop gunmen from robbing diners at point blank in fashionable Athenian restaurants?'

With shouts and screams of 'we will spill your Albanian blood' and 'we will sew ourselves suits made of your skin' Greece's select troops have waltzed into a massive inquiry at the end of which, I trust, heads will roll. But will the damage be undone?
Will the people who watched these soldiers perform hate chants in unison, chants that had evidently been practiced, sporting weapons and the insignia of the state: flag, badge, uniform, will these people ever forget the fear? The shame? The anger? The horror?
Is the damage to the future to be undone by a committee?

And only days later a young boy, running away from the random death meted out on the streets of his native Afghanistan, dies of an unclaimed bomb/IED on the streets of Athens. Was he rummaging through the rubbish to find food? That in itself is heart-breaking. That in itself deserves a million posts. But that in itself is not the full story. Was he simply curious to see what lay in an abandoned bag? He had fled to safety, after all, to a place where curiosity doesn't kill the cat. Only it does and it did.

And it's not an isolated incident.
Random violence has been on the news and on our minds since the day Alexandros Grigoropoulos died. It's not all connected. It's not continuous. It's not all part of one story. But it is now constantly there. Be it police or anti-police violence, random gunmen, random explosions, stray bullets.
Be it armed men relieving people of wallets and jewelery in Athens restaurants.

What are we dealing with here?
It sounds like law and order is suspended, expectations of mutuality and social self-healing are irreparably breached and fear reigns supreme. Add to that a thick lather of financial insecurity, shame and fear at what the future holds, poverty and grim fiscal prospects and what have you got?
A country that has long since gone to the dogs and sees no way out.
Which is what many Britons think is happening to their country at the moment.

'Don't compare Greece to England' is the rejoinder I get from everyone. And I understand why they say that but, by the same token, it's the fact that we can't compare these two EU-member states, these two European democracies, that holds all the answers to our current predicament.
Why can't we compare them?
Because despite the crises, the problems, the corruption (don't forget Britain is currently in the midst of a new scandal whereby key Labour figures were busted trying to 'sell' their influence to the highest bidder and, on the back of the expenses fiasco, British politics is beginning to look distinctly continental all of a sudden) there is an expectation that the institutions will hold. Disintegration is not on the cards. Over here, the 'country going to the dogs' does not entail a genuine fear of complete lawlessness.
Going to the dogs does not entail the fear of 'shutting up shop' that underlies Greek political discourse over the past few months.

But why not? Are things really that different?
Corruption, poverty, unemployment are plaguing both countries.
Violence too.

A boy was stabbed to death in Victoria station a few days ago. In plain daylight.
A boy died of a rogue bomb in central Athens a few days ago. In the middle of the night.

Bad news all round.
Maybe we are all going to the dogs.

Yet in Greece we are rolling our eyes and shrugging our shoulders and saying 'what can you do' and 'oh it's bad, isn't it' whereas over here people have an unshakeable faith that they deserve more. Where the Greeks expect worse to follow, the Brits demand that their representatives pull their socks up. 'We are going to the dogs' they say 'and we won't be having with that'.
Where the Greeks sing along with the Sex Pistols, the Brits demand Annie.
'The sun will come out tomorrow' to our 'no future for me'.

Maybe that is the main difference after all.
Maybe we have forgotten how to believe in better, how to hope for more.
Maybe we are going to the dogs because we don't know how to think up a different future. Maybe we should start by hoping again. And believing.
For now, the Greeks proudly think that hope is for wimps and small children.
And we despair with our heads held high.

What change should look like

This is what change looks like. Said Obama.
Yes we can. Said the Democrats.
And lo and behold, the healthcare bill passed.
Was it simple? No.
Was it fast? No.
Was it everything we had hoped for? No.
No. No. No. But it was something. Both a practical solution to America's oldest social responsibility deficit and a symbolic move that change is not always for the worst. And many had said it can't be done.

That made me smile.
I haven't smiled at the news in a while.
But the smile didn't last long.
A text message flashed up on my phone a few minutes ago 'factions fighting on the streets, tourist organisations declaring Greece unsafe'. Thanks for shattering my zen. You know who you are.

'It is unthinkable that Europe won't support us' said the Greek prime minister.
No 'this is what change looks like' grandeur in our neck of the woods.
'We consider it unthinkable for the European Union not to give us the assistance and political support we are asking for' said our Premier.
And that is the extent of his policy.
And although it is most probably true – joining the euro didn't come with a withdrawal clause as such, you didn't keep your old currency in the attic 'just in case things didn't work out'. Failure was not an option. That was not the general idea. We were in this together from now on and whatnot.
So of course Europe will help. But Europe will be bitter and difficult about it every step of the way. In the middle of the current crisis, on the back of Germany's strop, the last thing Europe wants to do is help the destitute relative. The last thing they are prepared to do is be gallant about it.
And if the extent of our policy is 'sit back, have another mushroom vol-au-vent, they'll help us, what else can they do' then we need to be prepared for quite a bit more abuse from Germany.

Not that I think that the German press's puerile hate campaign is ok. But then again I don't think the way we've been running our affairs is ok either. And as two wrongs don't make a right, I wish the global press paused long enough to realise that the people mopping up the mess, picking the tab, suffering the cut backs, shouldering the extra tax and suffering the shame of this prolonged press campaign actually have no way of changing their fate. Never did.
And spare me the crap about democracies and the responsibility of the electorate. Procedural democracies with entrenched party systems tend to be stable Polyarchies with limited choice for the electorate whose participation only occurs every five years and in-between civil society is dormant, transparency wanting and accountability faint. Add to that Greece's deep-seated paternalistic venality, favouritism and clan mentality and what you have is a system of extremely qualified access and representation by numbers. Short of a revolution, there is very little 'the people' can do and the Commission wouldn't want a revolution within the eurozone now would they?

So go easy on us because we don't like our leaders any more than you do but we are the ones who have to pay the bills and live with the corruption and the shame.

And before you quote myself back at me, I know that I always bang on about public responsibility and I do not intend to go back on that now or ever. We are responsible writ large for our own society. And we are responsible for our lack of collective action, for the lack of civil society mobilisation. And for the lack of revolution damn it.
But one thing we cannot be held responsible for is our inability to get ourselves out of this bind right now. Social change does not occur fast enough. And global fiscal systems are interlinked with corporate power structures and government, not civil society actors and citizen associations.

Pointing out the obvious? Perhaps.
But as I keep telling my students at the university, the one thing that most political theories forget is real people. As I keep telling my colleagues in the City, the one thing most fiscal systems forget is real people.
But it's real people who die in wars and real people who represent that strange and wonderful animal that is 'consumer confidence'. And it is real people that are living in fear, insecurity and shame in Greece now. And none of them are in government or in a position to do anything right now other than suffer.
And what good is that doing anyone?

If the Commission went straight to the culprits I'd scream off with their heads and accept any stringent regulations that were thereafter imposed on our society. Do we need to up our game? Absolutely. Us the people need to do more. Need to be more.
But to do that we need to be able to stand up. If our backs are broken we are no good for growth and future prosperity.

News coming out of Greece at the moment is the exact opposite to the wonderful feel-good victory feel of news out of the USA. Yes they can and they did. And we cannot and did not. But we could.

Bear with us, is what the Greek government is telling the EU.
We will tax the Church (at last). What else will we do? We don't know. But bear with us.
The EU need to see more.
Damn it. We need to see more. Because we are tired of paying and being mocked by everyone, our government included. And there is little we, the citizens, can do right now. So.

That's what change looks like said Obama.
And why did that matter?
Because he made things happen. Because not only did he remember the real people. He actually made policy for them.

Mr Papandreou, it's your turn to show us what change looks like or face the consequences. Real people are watching.

Selling off the family silver

My mother was right.

'Are we even a country any more' she asked me, after the EU Financial Salvation Army made clear what the price of salvage was actually going to be.

At the time I made some vague noises around conceptual issues and the idea of statehood but as it turns out, she knew what she was talking about and I can just stuff my statehood notions. After explaining to my mother that countries are not businesses for whom bankruptcy can well mean selling off assets and shutting up shop and that borrowing and lending at the state level carries a different set of caveats than corporate lending does, I may just have to eat my words.

You must have heard of the two Germans, an MP and a finance expert, who suggested during an interview that Greece should sell off a few islands and maybe the Parthenon to pay off its debts?
Crazy? Possibly.
But yesterday the article was reprinted in the Guardian. In the Business section. Not the funny pages. Not in the spirit of 'comment is free'. And although it was treated as preposterous, it was still printed. In the Guardian. In the Business section.

So get in line guys.
Crete and Mykonos are already spoken for and me and a couple of mates are clubbing together for Santorini but the rest is available so have a look at the map and take your pick.

Now Josef Schlarmann and Frank Schaeffler didn't actually suggest we sell off the good islands, they are economists after all and this is a practical solution for them: Greece keeps the islands that bring in tourist revenue and the ones that are inhabited at a push – the logistical nightmare of relocation is just not worth it – and uninhabited islets that currently generate no revenue go up for sale.
Oh and the odd antiquity goes up for sale too.

"Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors. Greece owns buildings, companies and uninhabited islands, which could all be used for debt redemption" Schlarmann told the Bild.

Buildings? If the country's debt would be settled by selling the odd building we wouldn't be where we are now. As for Greece's state-run businesses, again, if they were appealing prospects for private investors we wouldn't be in such dire straits. So. Islands and nuggets of history it shall be, decree our German friends.
Great.
Gotta love economists. A problem demands a solution and all assets are ultimately for sale. Ergo.

Now granted, I know that these statements are made against the backdrop of a German populace that is against a Berlin-funded bailout for Greece and I can't blame them. But not helping may not be an option within the confines of the euro-zone and although they EU and its powerful members retain the power – and on some level the right – to demand austerity measures, cut-backs and tightened belts, surely there is a limit to what can be asked of us.

Or is there?

Because, let's face it, this is no joke.

Of course the Bild headline Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too! was, one would hope, tongue in cheek, the idea is out there. Granted, in the UK at least it has been printed and reprinted as a preposterous idea that is now on the table.
Preposterous. And on the table.
And Merkel is meeting Papandreou, in Berlin today. And she is not going to suggest that we sell off the Acropolis. Or antiquities. Because I am hoping her advisors have filled her in on the EU's legal and moral stand on matters pertaining to the trading in civilisation and cultural artifacts.
But uninhabited islands are real-estate and the idea is out there.

So could future maps show a bit of Austria in the Aegean? A bit of Malaysia in the Ionian sea? Could school-kids in future generations learn that Greece shares borders with Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania and Unilever since their purchase of the island of Evoia?

Of course Evoia is populated – not to mention massive – so it wouldn't be an obvious candidate for sale but the underlying concern is the same: when a distinct and contiguous piece of land – however small – is sold to an individual, company or foreign government what jurisdiction is there on that island? Logically the pre-existing national jurisdiction remains because what you sell is a plot of land, not sovereignty.

So what's the big deal? Land is bought and sold in Greece all the time.
And what the Germans don't know is that there is a law in Greece that protects public access to all beaches. So if Mr Schlarmann buys himself an island, I can always paddle out there and sun myself on his beach whether he likes it or not.
So what difference does it make, if the plot of land sold to an individual, company or government is on the beach or in the middle of the sea in the shape of a tiny little island?

Is it just that we resent being told what to do?
Is it that we resent the symbolic power of selling off islands rather than the odd field? Chunks of homeland, rather than plots of land?
Is it that we resent the implication of what was said: you are finished anyway so you might as well sell the family heirlooms and the house because you'll be out on the street whether you like it or not.
Or do we resent being told by the Germans who, after all, were the guys who most recently tried to take those islands away by force, and are now seemingly trying a different route? The echoes are deeply unpleasant. That, of course, is a facile criticism but that doesn't make it any less true.

Not that the Greeks would have enjoyed being told to sell by anyone else. The implication of selling distinct chunks of land and antiquities is too stark: you are finished, you are through, the vultures are circling your body and the heirs are already squabbling over the silver. Not a pleasant image and of course we are upset. But let's be honest with ourselves.

We are not upset just because two very practical teutonic economists found very practical teutonic solutions to a practical hellenic problem without consideration for our feelings.
We are not upset just because two lone voices in Germany told us we are finished.
We are not upset just because the world press is discussing that we are finished, as if we couldn't hear, as if it didn't matter we can hear.
None of this would matter as much, if we weren't all actually convinced we are finished. And if every solution didn't ultimately feel like selling off the family silver because there's nothing else left to do.

So onto the auction block. And don't forget. I've got first dibs on Santorini. You lot squabble over the rest.

The problem with Greece

If I had a penny for each time someone asked me 'so what on earth happened in Greece' I could be retiring to an exotic destination round about now, with funds enough to sustain a life of leisure and several pina colladas a day. I don't even like pina colladas. But anything would be better than having to explain to people that the only viable answer to 'what on earth happened in Greece' is nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing happened in Greece.
And that means two things.
It means, nothing happened in Greece – from a fiscal and economic perspective. Nothing was done to fix any of the pre-existing fiscal and economic problems and that is the problem.
It also means nothing new has happened in Greece. Things have been bad for a very long time. But now you noticed. The global markets noticed. And the moment they noticed, confidence – what little there was of it – died and with it died Greece's obscurity. You are no longer an embarrassing relative that can't keep their house in order. You are the problem child that needs to be chastised, disciplined and brought to order.
Well.

We should have seen it coming.
We always knew we were a problem child. Did we think we'd never get grounded?
That's what people had in mind when they were saying 'join the Eurozone, then Europe will be responsible for saving us. We won't be able to hurt ourselves too badly any more'. True words. But I am not sure what type of rescue they had in mind. Galloping stallions, gallant princes and pats on the back? Not a stern warning and instructions to cut spending and pull our socks up.

The Greeks are shamed. Why us and not the Irish?
The Greeks are angry. Demonstrations protesting salary cuts, demanding investment.
And the moon on a stick.

The Greeks are afraid. Are we still our own country, after we've been bullied, made to buy military equipment we neither need nor can afford only to be given money to buy it with? Are we still a real independent state, after the big boys have stepped in, settled in, changed the wallpaper?
We are to be kept under observation, now, of course. Of course.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.

If this was a lecture, this is where I would introduce the idea of a 'failed state'. But it's not a lecture. And it's not an account of a far away land. This is my homeland we are talking of and objectivity goes out the window as my heart breaks every time I hear Greece mentioned on the news.
The news.
Some times sympathetic. Some times outrageous. Always bad.

The Observer wondered out loud a few days ago whether Greece is up for a coup. Seriously. Sack the idiot who wrote that and the idiot who hired them because if you don't know Greece's military is emasculated and largely rudderless – and therefore incapable of political action, at last – then you should not be allowed to publish your drivel. One thing we learned over the last century is to keep the generals out of politics. With hindsight, we should have kept the politicians out too.

Because let's face it, this is several decades' worth of financial mismanagement catching up with us. And yet we've learned nothing. And the Greek government is still acting as if tricks will fix this.
Encourage consumer spending, say the economics textbooks, I know what I'll do, says the Greek government: I will make things like eating out tax deductible, then I will both tax and fine people who don't hit a certain level of spending. That should do it.

That's so perverse I can't even laugh about it.
Or maybe I can't laugh because after years of teaching development policy to keen-eyed students, I know how the mechanics of international debt work. I know what good governance standards entail and I know what happens next. Which is invariably nothing.
Nothing happens. Things don't get worse. Things don't get better. Things don't slide but they don't improve either. Purgatory for the fiscally irresponsible.

And this will be soon the problem with Greece.
For now, the problem with Greece is Greece.
The problem with Greece is that to the world Greece is the problem.
The problem with Greece is that to some of us it's home. And our home is on fire.

Collateral damage

'What the hell are you doing to the Euro?'

That is how a client greeted me on arrival at a meeting last week.
You can imagine my confusion.
I was pretty sure I hadn't done anything to the euro.
Not recently, anyway.
I was pretty confident that my company had done nothing to the euro either – suspecting we would have noticed if we had gotten mighty enough to destabilize the supreme European currency.
The meeting I had just arrived at was decidedly not about the state of the euro. Nor was it about European fiscal policy. But it was taking place in a country where the euro is indeed in use so I suspected my client of wittily referring to something that had hit the news that day, implicating our industry and the fate of the euro.
But no.
None of the above.

Seeing my confused look he elaborated: 'what are you Greeks doing to the Euro?'.
Ah.
That one.
Yes.

What the Greeks are doing to the Euro is hitting the news hard all over the world. Apart from Greece. And I seem to have to personally answer for it wherever I go in Europe.
Thanks guys.

'Was being back home for Christmas really depressing?' asked an Irish friend whose own credit crunched homeland showed signs of wear and strain over the holidays.
But the answer is no, being back in Greece was really not depressing because the vast majority of people have not fully appreciated how bad things are.

How can that be?
'How bad things in Greece are' is on the news all over the world all the time, how can the Greeks not realise?
Are we just unfazed because we are so used to being in trouble?
Are we just serene because our government seems to suggest this ship ain't sinking?
Or are we still calm because we believe in some comforting conspiracy theory: maybe the EU is picking on us but, really, Ireland, Spain and – wait for it – France and Germany are in exactly the same pot and we are just being made an example of. And before you mock me, I didn't make the last one up. I heard it. From a Greek banker. Nuff said.

So. What are the Greeks actually doing to the euro?
In some ways, they are doing no more to the euro than they have been doing to the drachma since time immemorial. Only now they are not on their own, this is not their own little gig – theirs (ours) to mess up to their hearts' content – others are watching and suffering overspill from the Greeks' mess and, to be brutally honest, they don't much like it.

In some way however, we have to ask ourselves, whether this is different to other times because, well, those 'times' have lasted so bloody long that something will eventually have to give. There is no system, no economy, no society that can survive being in a perpetual state of crisis without something either being fixed or ending up irreparably broken.

So which will it be in Greece?
Those of you who have been reading this blog regularly know that optimism is not my strong suit.
And much as I try, I don't see a solution on the horizon.
And I mean this in both senses: I do not see what the possible solution could be given the magnitude, depth and complexity of the problems facing Greece and their multiple interconnections with other problems, in Greece and abroad, that all point to the need for a whole host of radical, visionary and above all rapid solutions to be kicked off at once and, let's face it, when did that ever happen within a state bureaucracy?
But neither do I see a solution (of whatever magnitude) being put on the table by any domestic or international agent, political or regulatory.

So if no solution, then what?
We can hope that things will carry on ticking over.
But for how long?
And when they stop being able to tick along – there is only so much you can do with string and scotch tape and there is little else holding the Greek economy together at the moment – then what?

And to be honest, it's not the euro I am worried about.
At the end of the day, money, the economy, fiscal balance are all semiotic exercises and big boys in big offices will work out a way to stabilise things in the end.
It's the people I'm worried about. The people of Greece who had the euro thrust on them with no protection and after watching their salaries shrink and the cost of their lives soar, after being left with few options and little cash, after being taxed for everything and anything to make up the national deficit, now they are being asked 'what have you done to the euro'?

Well.
On one level, we did back to the euro what the euro did to us.
It's not big, it's not clever but there was little else to do and there is even less to do now other than hope that whatever crisis ensues doesn't end up breaking the backs of Greek wage-earners. Because at the end of the day, it wasn't them who messed up the euro. It was a string of useless governments and although democracy comes with responsibility for those you voted into power, give us a break, already.

So. We know something's gotta give.
I just hope whatever gives, stays in the realm of banking. I hope it stays in the big offices. I hope it stays out of people's homes.
I hope, but I do not trust.

Happy new year. But just how new would you like it?

Happy New Year to All and to all a good day.

Sadly, I have to report that my pre-festive determination to leave the world at my mother's doorstep largely failed.
Partly because my father is a news junkie (I had to take after someone in my family and I could have done a lot worse, trust me).
Partly because politics is what the Greeks discuss at table. Always and without fail. Ok maybe not all Greeks. But all the ones I am related to do which made all the difference as I was trying to stick to my no-sadness-no-aggravation Christmas diet.
And finally because some of the news is so random that even the dry-cleaner cannot resist offering you his theory on how the police should go about apprehending the Athens sniper (done now, maybe he called the authorities after failing to get the right reaction out of me).

So I failed.
Even though I barricaded myself behind mountains of confectionery, the world with all its despair and madness filtered through.
Christmas-day despair, poverty and desperation reached me as I had feared it might.
And the new year celebrations were no different.
I got to hear about the first casualties in Afghanistan for 2010 – if there could ever be a stronger reminder that the old adage holds strong: different year, same ole crap. People still dying way too young, fighting an un-winnable war, following a bankrupt policy in someone else's ravaged country.

But I've been here before. And I guess that's the point.
As I look through the news – no longer pretending to try to avoid it – I feel more than ever that Christmas is just a time in the calendar. A time during which you put things on ice, maybe, slow things down, perhaps. But Santa never leaves solutions under the tree and goodwill and love don't go beyond our TV screens.
Fine.
Maybe I spent way too long watching made-for-TV American movies in which 'it's Christmas after all' was the line that resolved a seemingly unsolvable problem. 'It's Christmas after all' is what melted the heart of the most hard-nosed unrelenting mean-spirited bastard.

What a thought.
If only we really had a window of time when we could hope to appeal to inner goodness and do what is right on a higher plain. But then again, if that was possible for two weeks a year, it would be conceivable for the rest of the year and where would that get us?

A very nice place, is where it would get us. A fairer, stabler and altogether more livable place, is where it would get us. But it would dent P&L accounts, it would weaken power-holds, it would shift our priorities, the things that make our world go round. It would make our world less like the mess we currently live in and more like the sort of place we pretend we want to live in in Christmas movies.

Well. Sign me the hell up.
I want to live in a place where 'it's Christmas after all' justifies altruism, goodness and a kind gesture. Because I believe that what goes round comes round. And I believe in goodness as a way of life. And if it means I get to live in a more humane world, then I'll believe in Santa Bloody Clause if that's what it takes.

So as I read about Obama facing a mass exodus in the Senate, Brown facing demands for early elections, young boys accusing the Greek police of torture on the island of Patmos, war risks rising in the Sudan and a drive-by shooting at a Coptic church killing seven innocent people in Egypt on their Christmas, what I try to hold onto is my faith. That what we have is not all we can have. That all there is is not all there can be.

That, although it's not Christmas any more, if you are capable of goodness once you are capable of goodness always. That we are capable of goodness once.
Because it is our life and our world and our future, after all. Christmas or not.
So happy new year to all.
Let's see what we can do with this one.

Hell's bells a-jingling or 'sod this, I'm going home'

The Greek financial crisis made the BBC news. That's how bad it is.

And by that I don't mean that the BBC's nod bestows significance, or strictly come dancing dance-offs and wheely bin face-offs would be events of global import. What I mean is that the financial crisis in Greece got serious enough to be global news, where the Athens riots of last year got a passing mention and the national election of a mere few weeks ago, none at all.

And although normally, when I tell people in London I'm going home for a few days, their eyes glaze over and the croon 'oh lucky you, big blue sky and sandy beaches' even in February (and no, I never let them down by saying Greece is not on the equator and it's cold in winter). Now they shake their heads. My Greekness is cause for concern. 'Oh' the say. 'Oh'. 'Things are bad out there aren't they?'

Yes. Things are bad.
Things have been bad for as long as I can remember and yet still manage to get worse quite regularly. Astonishing really. But not in a good way.

New taxes appearing right left and centre in a desperate attempt to refill the empty state coffers with the massive twin holes in the bottom, deficit on the one side, corruption on the other. New taxes for everything, till the only thing left untaxed is thinking rich thoughts. And if anyone else is reminded of the Sheriff of Nottingham, let me know, because I can't get the story out of my head.

So what is to be done?
There are no jobs and those that exist are tragically underpaid.
Unless you have one of the government or party-related cushy jobs in which case you are not lucky, you are simply part of the problem.
There is no infrastructure, no growth, no fiscal policy.
There is little hope, limited enterprise, no silver lining.

Corruption in government and business alike. Venality. Paternalism.
Violence on the streets, sex on TV.
People living at home till they are 40 and using their meagre salaries as lavish allowances – what is not enough to live on becomes excellent pocket money when all it needs to buy you is over-priced coffees and the latest mobile phone.

Something's gotta give.
The parents who will eventually need to retire, the adults that will eventually need to stand on their own two feet, the flimsy bridge between soaring prices and plummeting salaries.
Something's gotta give.
Will it be riots again? Will it be the EU and the IMF stepping in and sorting us out? Will it be a Christmas miracle like in the movies? I know not.

I know not and, I confess, that for the next few days I will seriously try to care not.
I'll keep my head down and try not to think about any of this. I'll use my euros – bought with pounds that I have earned by myself, living in a home I am paying for myself, sustained by goods and services I am paying for myself through a job that, if nothing else, allows me to be financially independent as people my age should be. Paying predictable, if high, taxes. Living with occasional annoyance but not with despair. That's right. Living away from Greece and only visiting occasionally. As I will tomorrow.
A visitor.
And I'll use my euros to pay for over-priced coffees and exorbitantly priced glasses of local wine. I'll look at the Christmas tree and not the TV screen. I'll read a good novel and not the newspaper.

I'm going home, damn it.
I am going home, not to the crisis, not the crumbling state and social entropy. Not to the violence and the despair. Not even to the hope of a new start.
I am going home to my mum and like so many Greeks before me, I am leaving reality at her doorstep and cocooning myself for a few days. Only for a few days. Then I'll be back to being an adult, a worker, an analyst, a political animal. But not now.
Now I'm off to mum's and with any luck they'll be cookies on the table and cartoons on TV and I may even write a letter to Santa for that new pair of shoes I really want. And peace on earth. And a financial miracle for Greece.
It's Christmas, after all.

Just another Athens Sunday

Shoot-outs in Athens last night.
And all I hear you say is 'what's new then?'

A man and a woman shot at policemen in Metamorphosis, an Athenian suburb. The story goes that they were flagged down for a routine check, they duly stopped and when the policemen got out of their patrol car the pair, on a motorcycle, opened fire before speeding away and disappearing.

The motorcycle was later recovered but, surprise surprise, it had not been properly registered so we don't know who the Metamorphosis Bonnie and Clyde were, why they were armed and why they were so keen to flee.

And as nobody was injured, this is almost a non-story, buried in the back pages of the few newspapers that deigned to report it. And I am only mentioning it here as a backdrop to the main news: the fact that yesterday Nea Dimokratia got a new leader, a man who will spend the next few years trying to persuade us he is better, not only than his predecessor, but also better than the current prime minister at governing the ungovernable jungle that has become Greece. As of today, he wants to make the Metamorphosis shoot-out his problem. He wants to make the ailing economy his problem. He wants to make all our problems, his problem. So here we are. The scene is set and our great protagonist makes his entrance.
Antonis Samaras.
You cannot be bloody serious.

What's so bad, I hear you ask? Wasn't this man once hailed as the greatest hope for Greece's future?
Yes he was. But that was a long time ago. When we were all waiting for Samaras to save the day with bated breath, I was still in high-school and the New Kids on the Block still had a career.
And there has been nothing but water under the bridge since then. Dirty water under a rickety bridge, to be precise.

But let's be fair.
In many ways, Mr Samaras is a definite upgrade from Mr Karamanlis: he has as strong a pedigree being the son and grandson of famous and respected scientist and artists, he has an excellent educational background with degrees from Amherst and Harvard and, quite unlike Mr Kramanlis, he has experience in government. And that, in many ways, is where the problems start...

Mr Samaras served as Finance, Culture and Foreign Affairs minister throughout the 80s and 90s but, if you ask people what they remember him for, no grand policy initiative or genuine substantive change drive springs to mind. People remember him for one of two things:
they may remember his inflammatory and populist 'hard line' approach to the macedonian question that completely failed to take into account geopolitical realities, international treaties already signed or the sheer laws of probability...

Or they may recall the fact that, in 1993, he single-handedly brought down the government he had until the previous year been a minister for by creating his own party and encouraging the defection of an MP that tipped Nea Dimokratia's precarious majority. And all because he had been removed from his post for pursuing a misguided and pointless 'hard line' policy on the Macedonia question.

Mr Samaras' new party, with the comedy name 'Political Spring' and an ideological positioning that largely overlapped with Nea Dimokratia but was decidedly more conservative on a number of issues, was an excellent vehicle for vocal, sweeping opinions and grand dramatic gestures – made safe in the knowledge that the party would never be in government.
And of course it never was. In fact, the party was hardly in parliament as the joke grew tired soon enough. In fact, much sooner than Mr Samaras had anticipated and, after a fairly good run in the 1993 general and 1994 European elections, the party lost support and failed to be reelected. Ever. Then in 2004, mr Samaras rejoined the party he had beached a decade before.

I just want to make clear we all know who we are dealing with here.

And while he's back, with a bang and a vengeance, what I cannot quite decide is whether we – the Greek people, the electorate, the tax payers, the voters – are ridiculously good-hearted and forgiving or just plain dumb, forgetful and criminally indifferent.

And it's not Mr Samaras' victory alone that makes me wonder that. It's the nature of the campaign, the vendetta-style opposition between Samaras and the defeated Dora Bakoyiannis and the populist undertones that drove the voting: rewarding Samaras somehow for his 'stand' against a man that now everyone has learned to hate, the then Premier K. Mitsotakis.

Forgetting how politically irresponsible and devoid of substance Samaras' defection was in 1993, his supporters within the party chose to view it as 'resistance' to the man the entire party now hates, penalising Dora in the process for being mr Mitsotakis' daughter. Despite her solid record in office. And the fact that, regardless of whether you agree with her politics, she was the only contender for the conservative leadership with an agenda, a portfolio of genuine policy initiatives while in office and some political substance. But never mind all that, right? Cos we don't like her daddy. And her last boss. Which brings us back to Mr Samaras whose hands are clean of the failures of the last government. Because he was simply not in it. And why was he not in it? Because he rejoined the party he had brought down a decade previously in 2007 and he never got round to holding serious office, serving as minister of culture for a mere few months following a late-term reshuffle in 2008.
And now here he is, top dog.

Despite accusations of bullying leaked by other candidates. Despite the technical melt-down at the start of the election process that caused ripples among journalists who suspected Florida-style tampering and got momentary illusions of grandeur a la 'first Bush, now us'. And despite a populist campaign of assorted sound-bites, completely devoid of content.

Despite it all, he's back in black. And despite it all, the top dog promised he'll play nice and will 'wipe off with a sponge' (I am not making this up, check today's Eleftehrotypia for the original quote) all that he heard during the succession race because party unity is now uppermost. Let's all be friends, he says, and together let us 'lead the party in new struggles for the country's progress and young children's right to hope'.
No, it's not a bad translation, it made no sense in Greek either.

So here we are. And I am already dreading the next election. Already. Because it will be just another big pile of 'same old'. In the context of the same old corruption, the same old violence, the same old inefficiency, the same old poverty for the many and same old cushy set-up for the few.
It will be just another Athens Sunday when we go back to the polling booths in four years time and I am getting sick and tired. But at least Olympiakos won both the footie and the basketball yesterday. So thank God for small mercies. Because for once corruption, inefficiency and cushy set-ups gave me something to cheer about and given everything, all you can hope for in Greece is small mercies.

Afghanistan: does defeat go away if you refuse to accept it?

'The key is knowing when to call it a day' said my great uncle.
Although he was talking about drinking and not troop deployment to treacherous war zones, the rule applies. And the rule is this: if you set out to achieve something within a given time frame, and the time frame has elapsed many times over, and what you set out to achieve still eludes you then you have failed and the one thing that is guaranteed to not make the situation any better is a determination to carry on doing what you have been doing because, well, that's the bit that failed.

Modern warfare is nothing like old school sieges. Battering the wall until it cracks worked against medieval citadels but doesn't take you very far as a parable for modern war tactics.

What am I talking about?
I am talking about the front page of yesterday's Times.
I quote: 'President Obama is to ask members of NATO to provide up to 4,000 more troops to help break the deadlock in Afghanistan'. And a good morning to you too.

Although Obama's appeal is expected to go largely unheeded, 35,000 additional US troops are expected to hit Afghanistan before long with supplementary units from Britain and Turkey possibly joining them before long. Possibly.

Talk, of course, is around credibility: the credibility of the alliance if no troops are forthcoming... the credibility of President Obama himself, if his request is ignored... the credibility of the AK party government in Turkey if they send a few hundred more troops... and of course the credibility of our own superhero, Gordon Brown, whose willingness to send more troops is going down with the voters like a proverbial lead balloon. As is his explanation, that he's staying in this war to keep Britain safe.

The war rhetoric has no mileage in it any more.
Democracy for the Afghans peace for the world. Nice idea. Pity about the outcome.

Democratisation sounds good. But after last month's election debacle, I am surprised world leaders still mention democracy and Afghanistan in the same sentence without dying of shame.
'Indelible ink that washed off, voters walking home with whole ballot boxes, election monitors who didn't dare leave their NATO base'. You don't believe me, fish out your back copy of the Guardian (20.10.09) and see for yourself.

Is this our fault? I hear you ask. Hell yes. Have you forgotten the rhetoric? The promises? The democracy banners we waved the world over to justify the invasion and continued presence of allied troops in Afghan provinces up and down the country? Democracy is what we were there to give. Allegedly. Elections were the West's idea and were supposed to take place under our tutelage and protection. Go us. And by this time round the Afghans were supposed to have picked up a few tricks, willing and able disciples of worthy tutors.

As it turned out, the election was not exactly a showcase of democracy in action.

I am not suggesting the allied troops had anything to do with rigging the election. Karzai and his cronies did that all on their own – although their ineptitude even at that suggests they could have used some help, with hindsight. But then again, Karzai could not have had any more help, realistically: from being hand-picked and propped up every step of the way, to being given trust he had not earned as he repeatedly refused there was a fraud problem of any real magnitude on American TV. Not to mention the international community simply not intervening at any point during proceedings, trusting, cowering. Stalling. Failing to pre-empt, failing to prevent, failing to end the abuses.
Failing.
Failing at delivering democracy to the Afghans and peace to the world.

And while the democratisation experiment is clearly not working (yet), more troops are needed in the name of peace, we are told.
Only UK voters are not buying any of this any more.
According to a poll published in yesterday's Independent '4 out of 5 of those questioned do not believe that British involvement in the conflict... is keeping the streets of Britain safe from terrorist attacks'.

So. If by being in Afghanistan we are not helping them and we are not helping ourselves, why exactly are we there still and how will 35,000 additional US soldiers and another 4,000 allied troops help achieve what we are failing at?

Put it this way: How will more troops prevent future killings from corrupt Afghan police officers? I'll tell you how. By taking patrolling away from them and putting it back in the hands of allied troops. By entrenching their presence even further.

But what else can you do? When you have failed but cannot stop doing the same thing... partly because you have no other ideas and partly because you have unleashed forces you cannot control and have managed to leave yourself no way out. What else can you do? Because when you went in, it did not occur to you that an exit strategy may be needed. Because it never occurred to the leadership that it may just be essential to call it a day at some point.

More troops then.
Because we have worked our way clean out of options. More troops.
Because we have ran out of ideas and need to be seen to be doing something.
More troops.
Even though that does not change the fact that refusing to admit defeat doesn't mean you are winning.

When 'every little' doesn't help

'May you live in interesting times'.
That, says my beloved Terry Pratchett, is not a blessing. Rather it's a bit of a curse, if you think about it. And there is no denying that we are now living in interesting times. And there is no denying that's not all that great. But that's no excuse for totally losing all sense of perspective.

We are scared.
Of terrorism. Of pedophiles. Of swine flu. Of the E coli 0157:H7 virus and other pathogens carried in poorly packaged or poorly cooked meat. Of Nick Griffin and hate preachers. Of racists. Of Islamic fundamentalists. Of sounding racist. Of our own shadows.

We are scared at the citizen level and we are scared at the government level. And what do we do about it? If you look through the papers of a day, you may well come to the same conclusion as me: what we do about it is kick frantically to all directions, keeping clear of the heart of each issue but making enough noise to look like we are doing something. When all we are doing is making noise. And noise is rarely a good thing.

Now as you know, I live in Britain so my examples are local yet I fear that, no matter where you are, similar things are happening every day: a sense of impeding hysteria, an overwhelming sensation that we really do not know what to do to prevent bad things from happening so we'll just try to allow few things to happen full stop and thus play the numbers game.

We all laugh when we see airport security staff putting children's plastic sandals through the scanner. Laugh but don't stop them because you never know and better to be safe and late than sorry and dead.
But what is the outer limit of caution?

Britain's tabloids have gone wild this week as parents in Watford are no longer allowed to supervise their children in playgrounds unless they have undergone criminal records checks. Vetted 'play rangers' are to supervise children instead of mums and dads.

Why? Because the case of Vanessa George has sent shock-waves through the nation. She is a paedophile. She is a woman. She is a mum. That means the demographic of potential dangers to children just widened to include absolutely everyone, so absolutely everyone is banned from playgrounds and here's to hoping that whatever tests play rangers are subjected to are the right kind and perverts don't creep through. I would still personally prefer to know that each kid was looked after by his or her parent. And that parents are keeping an eye on each other. What the hell. I would like to know that when I have kids I will be allowed to keep an eye on them myself.

But with a recent case of suspected rape of an eight-year old girl by two ten-year-old boys, stunning us all into silence, the only truth is that we really don't know how to keep our kids safe and putting them in a glass jar may well be the only way forward. Because if our children are not even safe from other children, then what is safe?
A glass jar. Safety through separation.

Now, I don't have kids. But I'm guessing, in light of recent events, if I had kids and was not allowed to keep an eye on them in the playgrounds, I'd just keep them away from the playgrounds and be done with it. Was that what the council was going for? I'm guessing not. But that's what they'll get. Because a blanket policy of considering everyone guilty until proven innocent is never going to bring about good things. Still how can we expect Watford council to maintain a sense of perspective when everyone else has lost it?

A woman in labour asked for 'ethnic minority' staff to leave her bedside, at a hospital in Milton Keynes earlier this week. It is not clear what particular minority she objected to (although according to reports, it was one group in particular she objects to) and it is not clear why she objected to them being present. What is clear is that the hospital refused to accommodate her. So the hospital acted as they should. Her request was racist, unreasonable and by the sounds of it unreasoned. The hospital overruled her and she went home a while later with a healthy child.

Now she could be facing action in a county court on grounds of discrimination. And although I object to her racism and find her ability to demand racial segregation between contractions faintly amusing, I can't help but think that the thought police are on the prowl. I disagree with what she stands for. But she didn't act on it because the hospital did not let her. So what would the trial be about? And why is there a threat from the Equality and Human Rights Commission that the hospital may be under suspicion as well, when no discriminatory act was perpetrated by hospital staff?

I fear the answer is simpler than we are comfortable with: this is the sort of problem we can deal with, be outraged by, 'handle', judge and close. Only it doesn't solve a thing. If anything, it exacerbates the situation. The likes of Nick Griffin can spin the whole 'no place for Britons in Britain' tale and the bottom line remains that we have lost perspective because the big issues are just too big for us to deal with so we contend ourselves with the contained little issues thinking it's better than nothing. Only it isn't. It's actually worse than throwing hands up in the air and going 'this is too big and I can't fix it the way I've been fixing things hitherto. I need to think, I need to change'.

If you are not sold yet, here is another example:
An elderly lady in Norfolk wrote to her council to complain about a gay pride march in her vicinity. I personally enjoy Pride and everything it stands for and tend to join when I can although I am not, myself, gay. Nobody cares. Pride, as I know it, is inclusive and open and most participants would welcome elderly ladies from Norfolk if they wanted to join in the festivities. But they would equally accept her right to refrain, even to disapprove of them. Each to their own and all that.

And a letter to the council is a rather innocuous – if pointless – form of protest that will not have any real effect on Pride. On this occasion, however, it may have a real effect on the person complaining as the council wrote back to the homophobic old lady warning her that she may be guilty of a hate crime. The matter was passed on to the police and I expect it to be dropped but the point remains: with real hate crimes committed every day, why is a narrow-minded pensioner exercising a democratic right to free speech targeted? It could be because a council employee was not thinking or was misguidedly over-zealous. It could also be that she is simply an easier target than say the thugs who still engage in gay bashing in the centres of our towns. The same way that a bigoted mother in labour is an easier target than the police officers whose routine racism victimises young, black males as a matter of course as the Guardian recently revealed.
And I use 'revealed' very loosely here.
Because we all know.
We know racism is a violent reality for many people in our communities. Homophobia is spectre in many lives. Real, physical dangers to people's bodily integrity and sense of safety.
And yes we do know that child abusers of all genders and all ages are also abroad.
We know all that.

The question is what do we do about it?
And all I'm saying by pooling together three largely unrelated examples is that we are currently doing NOTHING. Because bashing soft targets and imposing blanket bans is not making our society more tolerant or safer, it is just making it more hypocritical, harder to live in and less likely to resolve the real issues underlying the violence and sense of threat that seems to hide in every dark corner.
Making every person a suspected paedophile does not make children safer.
Punishing unsavoury opinions does not make hate crimes less likely. Making opinion - however unpalatable - a crime makes us the bad guys. It makes our democracy shambolic while race and homophobic crimes - actual acts, the stuff the law should target - carry on occurring because they are not properly prevented or followed up.

And creating a society of division, mistrust and fear will not make anyone safer.
So no, ladies and gents, every little does not always help. Particularly when we are trying to navigate through 'interesting times' without throwing everything we have achieved through decades of social struggle, democratisation and liberalisation overboard.

What fearing Nick Griffin tells us about ourselves

Why is everyone so scared of letting the leader of the British National Party speak during tonight's Question Time show? Why is everyone so worried about what it will signify, to take a seat on a panel next to him, in obvious opposition to him?
Don't give me that crap about legitimising him. What additional legitimacy does a democratically elected representative of the people need?

Tell me what's really on your mind people.

Are you afraid that cool, articulate, unflustered, racist Nick Griffin will get his despicable point across better than the representatives of the political mainstream?
Because that is what I am afraid of.
I am afraid he will be calmer than the other guys.
Less arrogant in the eyes of the average viewer.
I am afraid he will be more articulate and more convincing, keeping things real and relevant, never using abstractions and generalisations. I am afraid he will manage to reduce big issues to small, personal fears in a way that is non-patronising and almost self-evident.
I am afraid he will do all that without insulting any of his fellow panelists while they will be struggling to hold back cries of 'begone you disgusting racist slug'.
And I am afraid that the other side, the non-racist side, our side damn it, will be left speaking in generalities, attacking his racism but offering no coherent answer to counter his concerns and offering absolutely no counter-solution to his own objectionable measures.

So the problem is not him. It's us, folks.

Let's call a spade a spade.
Immigration is not a subject most parties are comfortable with. Invariably, even parties on the left are in favour of controlling the borders and not throwing the gates open to all and sundry. Increasingly centre and left-of-centre parties grudgingly accept that freedom of speech will not deal with radical Islamist preachers in our midst 'organically' and a bold fresh look is needed asking where their liberty infringes on someone else's – not on a community basis but on an individual basis, you know, the way we used to apply the law all these years before this became such a 'hot potato' issue. And then there is the issue of building community, and living together in all our multi-colour, multi-faith, multilingual splendour.
And many left or centre-left politicians are not comfortable with immigration debates because they rightly consider these three issues distinct and separate and find that more and more people don't and in fudging the debate these people confuse the matter, create panics and allow concerns over hate preachers to poison community relations.
Nick Griffin is one of those people.

He is not afraid to talk about immigration. For him the distinctions are distracting and the problem boils down to what moves and scares the individual citizen. And his solutions are stark, simple, bold. And racist.
But what is the other side counter-suggesting?
A convoluted narrative of freedom, multi-culturalism and necessary border controls, constant reminders that the problem is multi-faceted and many-tiered and above all not simple. All solutions offered are halting, nuanced, complicated, careful – because one should not confuse the issues. And rightly so. Still, I fear that Nick Griffin has this one wrapped up if 'straight talking' is what the audience are after.

Holding a contradiction in his mind is not a challenge for Mr Griffin who is both articulate and clever. He understand the contradictions and in them he sees the weakness his opponents most suffer from. This contradiction, in his hands, stops being innate in the subject and becomes a weakness in his opponents' political will and solutions' agenda.

What do we have to counter that? I am using 'we' in the loosest possible sense here, siding with the people who disagree with Nick Griffin even if that is the only thing we agree on.

What have we got?
Don't forget Jack Straw is sitting on our side.
Griffin is articulate, confident and confidence-inspiring. He sounds like he commands the issues and can effortlessly pare them down to their essence. Even though that essence is tainted, one-sided and heavily nuanced, he appears to be offering common sense summaries and bold solutions. Jack Straw is not and does not.

So why are we so scared of letting him speak tonight?
Not because we disagree profoundly with what he has to say – that, if anything, is reason to take him on, thrash it out, expose him to the public, ensure the other side is heard.
Not because we fear what his effect might be on the polity – because he is already in the polity so it is too late, plus we already know that enforced isolation and silence creates heroes and not villains.

It is because we are afraid we can't match him, blow for blow, for the hearts and minds of the viewers. And that is terrifying.
It's because we know Nick Griffin is as popular as his opinions are objectionable. And we know we have all the good arguments. But we don't have a Nick Griffin on our side to deliver those arguments in level, even-toned, convincing, populist nuggets.

So we are scared.
Of course we are scared.
I, for one, am terrified.

And I don't know about you. But I will be glued to Question Time tonight. Munching pop-corn, mumbling to myself and hoping against hope that Griffin will have a bad day, that he will lose his cool, that he will sound to all tonight as offensive as he sounds to me all the time. And that Baroness Warsi, Chris Huhne or Bonnie Greer will pull an ace out of their sleeves explaining why a world where Nick Griffin's opinions are not put into practice is a better world for all. And that Jack Straw stays silent. Wishful thinking but what the hell, while I'm at it I might as well.

I just hope that the arguments for our side go further than 'Nick Griffin, you are a racist' because he will slam them down and go for a home run before anything else has been stated. Not because he is not racist. But because pointing out the obvious in a petulant way is not good debating.
Telling him his policies are wrong because he is a bad person is a non-sequitur that makes us look like fools with nothing else to say and gives him the moral high-ground.
And that's the last place you want to concede to your neighborhood racist. He is already self-appointed defender of home and hearth, hand him the moral high ground on a platter and what have you got? A populist, playing on everyone's most closely guarded fears, articulating their concerns about safety on their streets, jobs for their children, a culture they call their own, who is victimised by the very same people who don't address the people's worries, the very same people who have no counter-argument to throw his way than an insult.
Attack him on who he is rather than what he says and you've driven people into his arms in droves.

You do see where I'm going with this right?
The urge to slap Nick Griffin lurks in us all. But that is not what is called for today.
We need to take him on the issues or go home. Blow by blow, line by line. Address the same questions, counter his conclusions, offer alternative solutions.
Speak to the same people he is speaking to on the same issues.
He claims he is of the people, for the people. Do we all realise what that means?
If he is addressing a struggling, white manual labourer in Bradford, we cannot be addressing a professor of ethics at Edinburgh. If he speaks about protection against radical Islam, we cannot be addressing comparative theology scholars who understand that the Islamic Umma is a community of peace ergo Griffin is wrong.
Take him on, damn it. Being more highbrow than him is how we lose this battle not how we win it.
Surely, career politicians can do this, right?

So what are we afraid of?
Are we afraid of 'the people'? Their inability to see through him and know better? Then we should all go home because no democrat is afraid of the people. You either trust in the people or join the populists a la Nick Griffin.

So if not that then what?
Could it be that although we disagree with Griffin we have absolutely no ideas on the matter he is about to challenge us on that we are comfortable with? I sincerely hope not. But I can see no other explanation that makes sense. We are afraid of Nick Griffin because he's calling our bluff and, other than grand ideas, the political mainstream have nothing to suggest that makes sense to their voters.
In which case we should be afraid of Nick Griffin. Very afraid.