Greece has overwhelmingly thrown its support behind Syriza and true to form the establishment has wasted absolutely no time predicting doom and destruction for the country, the Eurozone and potentially the EU as currently configured.

The austerity programme forced upon the Greek citizens has had little to no effect on the oligarchs and political & commercial elite. They still continue to avoid paying taxes and revel in the corruption that has hardly been dented. Instead it is the lower to middle classes but more especially the young who have had the greatest burden. When you perceive you have nothing left to lose, then a radical "solution" becomes more attractive.

The neo-cons and neo-liberals who advocate permanent austerity are the only ones who would ever gain. By refusing to continue to follow the austerity programme, at least Greece may force those holding the purse strings to look to alternatives to austerity. Hopefully Syriza can start to prise financial considerations from those who have been reluctant to contribute for so long. People who have enjoyed the patronage of various regimes from way back in the Metaxas days, may now find that they too must contribute in order to retain their financial advantages.

Next stops: Spain, Portugal and Italy. Unfortunately it looks like we in the UK will just continue to bumble along with our "mustn't grumble" attitude.

Είμαι ΣΥΡΙΖΑ

#IamSYRIZA

I'm sure they'll have a lovely few months of non-austerity, until the money runs out and nobody is prepared to lend them any more.....

I'd have voted Demis Roussos in as Prime Minister.
Long time since I flogged him a load of silk for his kaftans.

The Greeks can vote for whatever political system they like. Hell - I agree with them in principle. But they are no longer an imperial power and so they'll reap the consequences of opposing the mob boss.

In approximately 12 months Greece will have been violently destabilised. The Greek economy will crash because they will no longer be able to draw credit. NGOs similar to those operating in the Ukraine will funnel foreign money to ultra-right wing fascists and their goons will be roaming the streets. Political dissidents will begin "disappearing" in the early hours of the morning. Senior politicians will likely be assassinated by the same GLADIO sleepers which turned Italy into a bloodbath during the 70s and 80s resulting in the death of Aldo Moro.

You'd think the Greeks would have paid attention to what happened to Yugoslavia - another country which figured it could go it alone...

Precisely WHAT do you think we should do? Leaving aside the obvious truism that politicians are corrupt and generally favour business elites - has it ever crossed your mind that the reason the likes of Cameron, Blair, Brown etc. consistently oppose any policies which hurt the interests of trans-national capital is because they fear the consequent retribution?

We're on the cusp of full integration to a globalised economy. The time to man the battlements and protect socialism was FORTY YEARS AGO when these plans were first drawn up. To take a political stand post GATT, WTO and NAFTA with only TPP left to go is like shutting the barn door after the horse bolted, found a partner, had kids and died.



LOL.

If nothing else, I would hope that seeing what happened in Scotland and to a greater extent in Greece, might just mobilise younger, disaffected voters to exercise their democratic right and use the ballot.

Labour has all too enthusiastically embraced the centrist homogeny of modern politics, where only peripherals differentiate betwen the two major parties. What were previously Labour's socialist principles now seem to have been taken on by the Greens and I'm sure they'll attract a large proportion of the <30 vote. Many disaffected Labour voters will also look to vote Green on May 7th, whether that will have an effect on Labour policies post-May 7th is debatable. I rather think they'll revert to Blairism as a "solution".

A globalised economy does not necessarily mean an economy working for the benefit of the few

You don't seem to understand that it DOESN'T MATTER who you vote for. Let's say a miracle happens and somehow the Green party gains significant influence. Even power. Are you so naive to think that they can simply reverse the policies of previous Tory and Labour governments and the rest of the world will simply do nothing?

Again, I draw your attention to what happened in Yugoslavia. Contrary to popular history and the press - the war in Yugoslavia started because it refused to follow the economic policies of the EU and US. Only later when its economy was brought to its knees and people began to starve did ethnic rivalry (cruelly stoked by foreign NGOs) explode into bloody mayhem.

Don't be so foolish to think something similar couldn't happen here.

Damn, you're just too late.
That always happens to me too.

Was that not the scenario at the start of the 20th Century and during the 1920s & 30s?

It may have taken major conflict to bring about something of a new order but something did change post-WW2. A sense of social responsibility prevailed, money was printed to fund infrastructure improvements and the world bumped along pretty well until Reagan & Thatcher decided on a major shrinking of the state and wholsesale sell-offs of state assets, at bargain-basement prices to private enterprise.

The resulting conflicts claimed the lives of over 50 million people. That's a hell of a price in exchange for - at best - fifteen good years from 1961 - to 1976.

So we simply rise up and kill the bastads that caused it, instead of each other

I don't know about you but - I haven't taken any courses on how to bring down an Apache helicopter with kitchen utensils and a garden hoe.

At least he was ahead of the times with his big hit single of '76.
[iForever and Ever[/i.

That's how long it's gonna take the Greeks to pay back that EU bail-out.

With my hearing I always thought that was an instrumental track but then I was told that someone was singing on it too, could never hear them myself.

If some Iraqi farmers managed it, fook it, Im signing up with Corporal Cod'ead.

Unfortunately in austere times people always choose to turn to extremist nutjob parties.

Like tories?

How are they going to pay for all this?

Oh...they are not.

If they default on their debts no-one will lend them any more money. They will have to leave the Euro and start from scratch, which is possibly what they want.

If any company ran its accounts the same way Greece did when it submitted its application to join the Euro the directors would be looking at some serious pokey.

But this is the problem - the EU has taken a group of countries who have little in common and decided to try and shoe-horn them all into a one size fits all economic policy.

Quite how anyone thought there could be a meeting of minds, culture and currency in countries that have absolutely nothing in common save as to approximate geographical location is beyond me.

KPMG did the audit

Go figure

Only as good as the figures they are given.

It is widely accepted that there was some serious creative accounting for Greece to get into the Euro.

Bad taste when he has just died.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

I would expect that the Eurozone's leadership will have by now developed a Plan B (that they will not want to implement) to let Greece leave. If that happens I fear the Greek people will suffer even more hardship than they have to date in the short to medium term. I do not think a military coup can be discounted at some point.

If Greece does leave in a relatively orderly way it will probably over time improve its lot as its currency will be very weak and so it should be able to export, attract mass tourism, etc.

All we are seeing and will continue to see is member states of the EU that have been heavily subsidised have drops in living standards because fundamentally their economies are weak compared with Germany who effectively dictate interest rates. So, in effect the EU serves no purpose.

Boy this is hard to get through but MONEY IS A CONCEPT! It is intangible. I still have on offer the opportunity for people to have 1,000,000 of a Pound sterling or USA dollar or Euro, if they can show me one. Not a metal disc or plastic disc or piece of paper as a representation but an actual one.

Money is what people say it is. Drachmas no longer exist, nor french francs but they could as could greedbuckets if people want to create them.

As for debt, the crazy thing is that the planets total debt is considerably more than than the planets GDP. Are the Klingons waiting for something as they are the creditors? Of course that is absurd but then the current system is absurd.

How can a planet live on GREED? That is what is going on and the situation is getting worse. People are educated, they can think, and eventually enough is enough will happen and the rich will hide in their prisons hoping the masses will not come near. It's happened throughout history and yet people never learn.

There are warning signs and even the armed forces may not come to the rescue in some situations as has been shown again through history.

We live in interesting times

Is it?