Greeks Rise Against the Parliamentary Junta. The first step?

Consider the following wisdom snippets:
There's a 1st for everything,
Better late than never;

Well, Greeks finally got together to remonstrate and demonstrate against the parliamentary junta and the censorship, both of which have been tightened in the past 18 months.

For the first time since the tightening of the screw and the control over media by Greece's socialist government, over 120.000 persons gathered at Syntagma square, outside the house of parliament (Boule) at the centre of Athens -- likewise in other cities -- to express their discontent with widespread corruption, mismanagement & misappropriation of public funds, and control of the media, all of which helped lead the country, literally, beyond the brink of bankruptcy.

Also for the first time, the gatherings were organised in a very novel manner: quite simply through facebook.

The slogans were less original:
"Thieves", "cronies", "traitors", "criminals", "journalists, snitches, liars", "pathetic oafs", and other similarly descriptive expletives.

None of this reached the air in Greece's major channels.But then, who needs television when we've got the internet.
Right?

Putting your money where your Greek mouth is...

The Greek socialist government failed to deliver on its various promises and faces the obligation to actually implement some reform in its back yard. Back yard being, the country's Public and semi-public sectors, encompassing an incredible number of agencies (531), publicly funded organisations (+13000), and the mainstay of civil servants whose number increased by 6,460 in the year since May 2010. Or, paid more than lip service to the amazingly loss-making National Train Organisation, OSE, whose secondary crossings masters have salaries ranging from € 4.5-5.2k and the corporation manages to lose more than its turn-over.

Promises abound.
Among other things, the present Greek government will crack down on tax evasion... as will the previous one and scores of Greek governments before that.

They all will crack down on tax evasion... The present finance minister alleges that he has already cracked down on evasion, and will do more...

(One Greek prime minister has gone down in history as the I/we/he/she "will" man: Mr Andreas Papandreou, father of Geoff, the present prime minister. Thus, tax evasion Will be controlled... in the future.)

Unfortunately for Greece, just as its politicians in power repeatedly fail to deliver on promise, thus they also seem to fail to practise what they preach...


What you see in the picture above is the Socialist government's Finance minister's holiday home on Serifos, an island in the Aegean off the coast of Central Greece. The man's name is George Papaconstantinou.

Swimming pool, nice view, large stone house, newly built, unsurprisingly called "the stone house". Not bad for a guy who never actually held a steady job until recently...

The best part is, you can rent it direct from Elysian Holidays.

You do have to pay a rent for it (scroll down on the same page).

Be advised that your landlord, the finance minister, has never declared the rent in the past. Chances are he won't in the future, either.
So, don't bother asking for a receipt. You'll only embarrass the minster and his wife.


Generally speaking, it seems that in Greece the rules apply to others, not to the vociferous few promulgating them.