Sharing crumbs

There is a beggar I sometimes see near Syntagma Square in Athens.  He sits on the pavement, knees drawn up, face hidden on his knees so all one can see is the back of his curly head and an outstretched hand.  Sleeping or too embarrassed to show his face, it's hard to tell.  I sometimes give him something--when I can I prefer to give food rather than money.   There's a McDonald's nearby where I sometimes buy a snack or a hot coffee for him or others like him I come across, but the other day when I had seen him in his usual spot I happened to have more time so I went some distance to buy him a proper hot meal: roast chicken, rice, a bar of chocolate for dessert.
As I returned to the square with his meal I saw him from the trolley window.  He was sitting up, eating some bread.  He had broken some of the bread up into little crumbs and was tossing them to the pigeons that had gathered at his feet.  I was moved to see that despite his poverty he still shared the little he had with other hungry creatures. When I gave him the bag with the meal I told him that God would bless him for his kindness.  It was true on that day at least, he gave breadcrumbs and got a hot meal in return.  And I was more blessed than words can tell, privileged to have been used by Providence to repay a poor man's big-hearted gesture.

The darkest places in hell...

'The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.'
This prefaces Dan Brown's Inferno, which I am currently reading.
Brown's books are entertaining but not academic, so I did an internet search for the exact source to check the implication that this comes from Dante's La Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy).  Although this has been quoted often, most notably by President JF Kennedy, I have not found the precise canto in Dante's masterpiece this supposedly comes from.  So until I re-read the original I am afraid I cannot vouch for its accuracy.

During my search I also came across another unauthenticated quote along similar lines, this one attributed to Edmund Burke:
'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.'

And of course in a similar vein are the famous lines by Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, but also ascribed to Evangelical Theologian Martin Niemoeller (I've conflated various versions below):
'First they came for the Communists
but I did not speak out, as I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists/Trade Unionists/Catholics/Jews
but I was silent, as I was not a Socialist/Trade Unionist/Catholic/Jew
And when they came for me,
there was no-one left to speak out for me.'

All the above by way of reply to well-meaning friends who have warned me to be careful about what I blog about, lest GD or others retaliate.  

900 attacks on immigrants in two years

It is sad that it took the murder of a Greek before the media and public opinion finally were galvanised into serious discussion of the Golden Dawn movement.
Over the years there had been occasional reports of their most outrageous attacks, such as overturning stalls and trashing merchandise of immigrant vendors at open-air fairs and markets as well as the other incidents I had described in my previous post.  Now it comes to light that in the past two years there have been 900 documented attacks serious enough to cause injury.  A few of the victims were brave enough to show their scars or broken teeth on camera.  Some said they were attacked by packs of 15 - 25 men wearing GD T-shirts.  There are likely to have many more attacks that were not reported because the immigrant had no papers and was afraid he would be deported, or because he knew there was little point in doing so since the assailants were likely to go free and retaliate.  Some say they went to the police but were discouraged from lodging a formal complaint against the assailants.
In my previous post I had mentioned how one reason GD have been able to act so brazenly, without regard for repercussions, is because they are supported by a significant proportion of the police force.  Two senior police officials have resigned, two more suspended, and seven police officers have also been suspended.  And that is before the Supreme Court completes their study of the 32 case files that involve GD members.
Recent opinion polls had shown GD popularity (intent to vote for them at next elections) at 8.3% before the murder.  Yesterday polls showed them at 5.8%.  Media commentators made a great deal about this drop of 2.5% within a week.  I am concerned that it is still as high as 5.8% after one of their members confessed to murdering the singer.  

Golden Dawn goose steps over the red line

I had promised to write about Golden Dawn and unfortunately it did not take them long to give me an extreme incentive to write.  Yesterday in the middle of the night a member of GD stabbed to death Pavlos Fissas, a 34-year-old singer who was considered 'leftist'.  This followed an argument about football but was probably politically motivated.  The 45-year-old murderer (he admitted his guilt to the police) received a mysterious phone call and rushed to the café where he, along with about 15 other GD members, ambushed the singer and killed him.  The perpetrator phoned his wife to get rid of his Golden Dawn party card, GD leaflets, a taser and a folding truncheon, but the police found them in the rubbish bin near their home.  The GD spokesperson Kassidiaris appeared on TV last night to dissassociate the party from the murderer, but photos are emerging showing him at GD events,
This is the culmination of a recent series of increasingly outrageous stunts by GD this month, such as preventing a female member of parliament from laying a wreath at Vitsi civil war commemoration, a torch-lit display of power at Thermopylae which this article compared to the Ku Klux Klan, 50 Golden Dawn members beat up a group of 30 Greek Communist Party members who were putting up posters at midnight, hospitalising eight, and disrupted another civil war commemoration at Meligala, where they attacked the mayor and elderly survivors (in Greek, but lots of photos).
426,025 Greeks voted for GD at the last elections in June 2012, giving them 18 Members of Parliament.  Recent opinion polls (before the murder of the singer) gave them 15% popularity.  In 2009 they only received 19,636 votes.  This enormous rise in popularity coincided with the growing number of Greeks losing their jobs in the recession.  Immigrants were seen as taking jobs from Greeks--never mind that these were menial jobs that nouveau-riche Greeks had grown too proud to do.  The immigrants became the easy scapegoat, and GD's anti-immigrant rhetoric exploited this to garner votes.
Immigrants are easy targets, especially when they are children, like a 15-year-old Afghan boy.  Gangs of members, wearing black T-shirts with the Golden Dawn insignia, roam the streets in packs on motorbikes, attacking immigrants.  As many immigrants are illegal these attacks are not often reported unless they are fatal (Greek reports at the time said that Golden Dawn pamphlets had been found at the home of one of the murderers).
Now they are widening their attacks to include Greeks whose political orientation they do not agree with, such as the Communists and Civil War memorials I described in my second paragraph.  Women are another favourite target, most famously last year when two left-wing female politicians were attacked on live TV by Kassidiaris, a GD Member of Parliament.
According to the Human Rights Watch report attacks are on the rise, but the police do not do much about them.  This may be because many police officers support GD--I've seen figures estimating them at between 40% and 60% of the police force.
If you would like to read more about this, there is a detailed article in Pandora's Box, an overview of their last 33 years, and an entire blog about them.  I hope that the murder of the singer will open the eyes of some GD supporters who possibly did not realise how dangerous these people are.
Once again Greece is in international news headlines for all the wrong reasons.  Personally, as an expatriate I am growing increasingly afraid of living in Greece.  Will I be attacked by GD members in the street because I do not look Greek, or even because I wrote this blog entry?  The serpent's egg has hatched, I do not know where this will end.  The frightening rise in popularity of a neo-fascist party with swastika-like insignia, black shirts and other nazi trappings is unconscionable in a country that suffered so deeply at the hands of the German army during WWII.  God help us.

Cruelty to animals

Yet another incident of heinous, senseless cruelty to animals.  A dead dog was found by children and teachers on Friday morning in Amaliada, hanged from the school fence of the 3rd Junior High School.  It had probably been tortured first, as the wall of the school yard was covered in blood.  Warning: graphic photo. 
The crime is double: firstly to the poor dog, and secondly to shock the pupils and teachers as they arrived at school at the start of the school year.  The very public location suggests the perpetrator(s) were making some kind of a sick statement.
When I first came to Greece I was struck by the number of stray cats and dogs.  Many pet owners think it is unnatural to sterilise their pets, it goes against their nature etc.  But these same "animal lovers" then leave the unwanted kittens and puppies to die in cartons by the roadside, tied up in plastic bags left on the road to be run over, or dispose of them in other ways.
Incidents of poisoning are not uncommon.  Someone is annoyed by barking or mewing and leaves some poisoned meat lying around.  Death is slow and painful, and does not discriminate between strays and pets--in my old neighbourhood, a neighbour lost a beautiful pet dog to a poisoner.
Beasts of burden are overworked, beaten, left to stand in the hot sun for hours with the saddle or load strapped to their backs.  The same goes for those cute donkeys and ponies for tourist rides, and the horses who pull the carriages in some tourist areas.  Guard dogs are chained or locked up in yards, underfed and unprotected against the elements--one particularly cold winter a chained dog was found frozen to death.
Also, now with the financial crisis more and more grown pets are being dumped to fend for themselves.  I saw several elderly dogs roaming my old neighbourhood, legs stiff with arthritis, searching for food when they should have been pampered after years of affection and service.  Several years ago I found a younger dog with two broken fore legs which had knitted askew.  The vet fees must have been too much, so her "master" took the cheap way out and turned her out, still wearing her collar.  I tried to take her in but my landlady was adamantly against it and I ended up taking her to an animal shelter.  My son and I still remember her with guilt.
The weekly magazine with one of the Sunday newspapers has a page each week with stories of animals rescued from negligent owners, or plain stupid owners who leave their dogs to bake in a car with closed windows, or strays, with photos of animals in need of a loving home.  I've seen classified ads of owners who want to give away their pets, in some cases pedigreed (meaning expensive food and vet fees).  I guess at least they are trying to find homes for them, not just driving to an area far from their home and leaving the animal there so it can't return to them.  But I cannot understand how one can share one's life with a living creature for several years and then just abandon it.  I once found a very large tortoise in a dumpster.  Luckily it was on top of the rubbish, I heard it scrabbling and found a shop nearby to buy a zipped bag so I could transport it to a park and release it.  Was it so much trouble for the owner to do this if they got tired of caring for it, or to take it back to the countryside where it had been taken from?  This was a live animal, not potato peels.  If the rubbish had been collected it before I (or any other animal lover) happened to walk by, it would have been crushed to death by the compactor.
All these stories, and I have come across far too many of them over the years, pale before deliberate torture of a defenseless creature.  The dog at the beginning of this post looks small in the photo.  It would not have been able to put up much of a fight against its executioner(s).  I hope they are found, but there are so many crimes being committed against humans, such as old pensioners beaten to death during burglaries, or gagged and left to die, that this little dog is not likely to be high on the list of police priorities.
I have chosen to write about this incident before writing about the crimes against humans (which will come in another post) because I was so shocked when I saw it on the internet news today, and because it indicates the fabric of society is unravelling.  In the words of Gandhi, 'the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated'.  

Back to School

Today schools opened again in Greece, after nearly three months (!!!) of summer holidays.
The Greek Orthodox priest came to my son's school to bless the school, teachers and children.  So much for separation of Church and State, or freedom of religion.  Then the children were sent home.  No new books, not even a list of their stationery needs.  Luckily I only work part-time so I was home when he returned--imagine how parents in full-time employment manage this.
Children in our old neighbourhood did get their books today, so I hope it's just a matter of time before the books arrive at my son's school.  After all, they only had three months to get them ready...  I guess they started distribution at the more privileged northern suburbs and the books will eventually trickle down to the working-class south-western suburbs.  At least it looks as though there will be books this year, unlike two or three years ago, when children got CD-ROMs or were told to go online, download and print them.
I was just watching a brief report on TV, summarising the main changes implemented by 27 Ministers of Education in about 35 years.  Sometimes a Minister's successor from the same political party would cancel the previous decision.  A pupil who starts Senior High School cannot be certain the system will be the same when they graduate three years later.
You may recall my friend the teacher who was in limbo.  Today she was finally informed she will be teaching on a small island.  At least she still has a job, although a large chunk of her salary will have to go on rent, while her own flat will stand empty in Athens. Tonight she is travelling to her new posting to present herself at her new school, find accommodation, then return to Athens, pack and move as quickly as possible, as proper lessons will probably start on Monday.  But as I said, the Ministry of Education only had three months to get the lists of appointments ready.  Or did they return to work on 2nd September and then suddenly remember that they had to do this?

Teaching English in Greece

Sorry I haven't written for a while.  I had planned on writing something on Golden Dawn's disruption of a Civil War commemoration, had opened up half a dozen sources to quote, when someone in the family shut down my computer and the following morning I did not have the time to search for them all again, then life just got in the way.  I'm afraid they are likely to give me another opportunity to write soon.
Yesterday I went to a foreign language coursebook publishers' exhibition. In addition to keeping in touch with new books, attending talks and getting ideas for teaching, it is a great opportunity to meet old friends, trainees and colleagues.  I have been teaching English in Greece since my arrival in the early 1980s.  In 1990 I was Chairperson of TESOL Greece, a professional organisation for English teachers.  Since then I have been a teacher-trainer at CELT Athens, so I have come to know hundreds, perhaps thousands of English teachers.  It is one of the rewards of teaching to be remembered years later, to know one has made a positive impact on some lives.
Back to the exhibition yesterday, I was moved by several people commenting on my blog.  I had received several kind Facebook likes and comments, but had no idea other people were also reading it.  So this spurred me back to the keyboard after a week's hiatus.
What impressed me most at the book exhibition, as well as last week's ELT News forum, was the number of dedicated professionals giving up a precious weekend to develop professionally.  Most were English teachers, but a few stands also catered to the main other languages being taught in Greece: German, French, Spanish, Italian.  One publisher also displayed Russian and Chinese, the emerging languages in Greece due to sizeable Russian tourism and Chinese investments.
Alongside the publishers of course books were several stands by some of the most popular public examining bodies in Greece.  Certification of foreign language level is useful in Greece for employment, and knowledge of up to two foreign languages can earn extra salary points in the public sector.   Over a dozen public examining bodies for the English language are officially recognised by ASEP (please click on the first doc icon--this site is in Greek but the certificates and examining bodies are listed in English).
I was impressed by how large the field of language teaching has grown in Greece in the three decades I have been living here.  My earliest English teaching jobs in Japan and Greece were obtained on the strength of my first degree in English Literature--most people thought that being a native speaker of a language was enough to teach it.  Since then the more conscientious teachers and employers have realised the need for methodology training.  Many teachers attend language awareness courses to improve their command of English, and methodology courses to obtain certificates and diplomas in teaching, some even go on to Master's degrees, even though there is no guarantee this investment will result in higher income.  Some enlightened employers subsidise membership fees to TESOL for their teachers, realising they will get these returned in better teaching, but even when this is not the case teachers are willing to pay this from their small wages.  Forums, conferences and publishers' exhibitions are always crowded, some talks are standing-room-only.  Of course there are still some neighbourhood language institutes which employ young, inexperienced (i.e. low-paid) teachers without any methodology training, because in Greece people can still obtain an English teaching permit with a Proficiency certificate.  But as their pupils' examination results are understandably disappointing I hope that market forces will eventually drive them to change this if they want to compete against schools with better pass rates.
When my son was in third grade at a Greek state primary school, English was introduced as the first foreign language.  I believe that this now happens in first grade.  In fifth grade he was given the choice of German or French.  Any other languages have to be learnt outside the state school system, so every few blocks in every neighbourhood one can see private language institutes.  Some belong to larger franchised chains but most are still family businesses.  Greek children usually start with English, to give them a head start since until recently this wasn't taught in state schools until the third grade, and many parents believe it isn't taught well.  This is changing with the financial crisis, more parents are unable to pay the neighbourhood language institutes despite their lower prices and special offers such as second language free.  
This is just a fraction of the information I could share regarding teaching English in Greece.  If anyone is interested in this please leave a comment and I'll try to answer any questions.
Update on my previous post, Education Uncertainty.  My friend the English state school teacher is still waiting to know whether she will teach or not, and if so, where--I met her yesterday at the exhibition and there is no news yet.  The school year starts in three days...  

Education uncertainty

A friend of mine is a teacher at a state school.  After many years in the private sector she was appointed after sitting national examinations (meaning she demonstrated her own abilities, it was not through connexions).  Her first year was on a small island.  This is customary in Greece, where over 35% of the population live in Attica (basically, in Athens, Piraeus and their suburbs) so the main way of getting enough teachers and doctors to staff schools and hospitals in the provinces is to require them to do their first year there.  Since her return to Athens she has taught at three different schools in three years.  This is to be her fifth year.

Unfortunately, as part of the Troika-imposed requirement to reduce the large number of public sector workers, all "new" teachers who have worked fewer than five years in the State system will either be a. laid off, b. offered a position in the Provinces or c. be appointed to Athens/Piraeus again.  Two days ago the list of "new" teachers for the provinces came out.  Those on the list have less than a fortnight to go to the new town or island, find accommodation, return to Athens to pack, and move to their new post in time for the new school year.  Some of these teachers are likely to be married, with homes in Athens, who now have to leave behind their families and fork out additional rent in a new town, or uproot the entire family to resettle elsewhere.

My friend is not on the Provinces list.  So she still does not know whether she will have a job this year.  If she is unlucky, it is too late for her to look for a job at a private school.  If she is lucky she will teach again at a state school, but does not yet know where.  The school year starts in nine days, and daily attendance at their school is required from the beginning of the month for all teachers to prepare.  Thousands of teachers are not yet participating in this preparation.  How can anyone plan their lives this way?  Why does it take so long to make these lists?   Thousands of teachers and their families are in limbo, uncertain of their future.  

Oh, and just to keep things even more interesting, the teachers' union OLME have not yet decided whether to call a 48-hour strike, or an indefinite strike, starting the day after schools open.  Imagine being a parent, having to go to work, not knowing whether your children will be safe at school while you are working, or whether you need to make babysitting arrangements for them.  If you cannot afford a babysitter and have no grandparents or other relatives handy, these kids may be roaming the streets.  And of course, there will not be enough time to cover the year's syllabus if the strike drags on indefinitely.  Several years ago primary state school teachers were on strike for about six weeks.  Luckily at the time my son was in private school so he was not affected.  Then the financial crisis hit us too and we could no longer afford the private school.  

Acropolis from the air

Amazing panoramic aerial photographs of the Parthenon, Acropolis and surroundings.
We need to remember the beauty of Greece.

Highest unemployment in Europe

Greece had two unenviable firsts in the latest Eurostat unemployment figures for May 2013, with the highest unemployment rate in the entire Euro area, 27.6% (it was 23.8% in May 2012).  Among women, it's 31.3%.  Also, by far the highest youth unemployment rate: 62.9%.  
These are not statistics, these are human beings who can no longer pay the rent, buy food, warm their homes in winter.  There are families without a single breadwinner, who may be relying on a grandparent's pension to feed the whole family.  More than one fifth of the nation was living below the poverty line in 2010, the most recent figures I can find--I fear the figures are far worse today.  

Suicide

Sorry this is my second consecutive post about death, but this incident shocked Greek public opinion yesterday.  A German expatriate woman drowned her seven-year-old daughter in the bathtub, then hanged herself.  Very little else is known so far.  
The fact that they were on the popular tourist destination Corfu leads me to speculate.  Was she a tourist who met a local man, fell in love and stayed?  There are many such cross-cultural unions.  But a holiday romance can lose its sparkle when reality sets in.  Winters on islands are certainly less exciting than summers on the beach and in the clubs.  Life in a village is nowhere near as glamorous as the seaside resorts, and can involve hard physical labour in the fields.  Even locals chafe at the scrutiny, the gossip, which is the norm in villages.  A foreign woman would have been subjected even more harshly to this.
Life is doubly hard for an expatriate, who has to learn a new language, eat and cook unfamiliar foods, conform to local traditions, perhaps even religion.  One may not be able to readily find familiar foods from home, hear and speak one's own language.  In-laws may be unwelcoming.  There is a Greek saying, 'papoutsi apo ton topo sou, kai as einai balomeno'--'a shoe from your own place, even if it is mended'.  In any disagreement, and these are inevitable in any relationship and in any family, it is easy to blame the problems on the foreigner, the outsider, and to tell them to go back to where they came from.  
All this and more, is dubbed culture shock.  On Corfu there is a large expat community.  I happen to know of a club for English-speaking 'foreign wives'.  Perhaps the German mother did not know English and could not get support from this club.  
Perhaps because she was German, the woman was shunned or spoken badly of in her village.  Many people in Greece blame the Germans for the debt crisis.  Some journalists have been reminding us of the horrific crimes perpetrated against Greeks by the German occupation during WWII: deliberate starvation of the population, decimation of entire villages in reprisal for any loss of German soldiers, looted archaeological artifacts, and of course the forced loan, which has not been repaid.  Any compensation from Germany has been incommensurate, and some wishful calculations suggest that the amount Germany owes Greece is enough to wipe out the debt.  Many Greeks resent the fact that Germany is now telling Greece how to put its financial house in order, seeing this as a new occupation.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel is often depicted in cartoons with Hitler moustache and swastika armband.  
Perhaps the unemployment statistics, the likelihood of a bleak future for her child, made this woman want to return to Germany, but her partner would not hear of it because of his love for his fatherland, an established business, his doubts about making a new start in a foreign country at the age of 58, or elderly parents to care for.  So in desperation she took this tragic way out.  
We may never know her reasons, but the fact is that in a country that once prided itself on one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, the figures have hit a fifty-year high, and since the Greek Orthodox religion views suicide as a cardinal sin, I suspect that the actual figures are much higher, as relatives try to cover up the suicide as something else in order to ensure burial in hallowed ground (although apparently the rules are less strict now) or to avoid social embarrassment.
Many of these suicides are very public, such as that of the retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas, as though making a political statement.  His suicide note referred to the wartime collaborationist government Tsolakoglou and was a call to arms that was reproduced in a marble plaque set up on the spot where he died, but which was soon taken down by the authorities.  Unlike the dramatic self-immolation of the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Buazizi, which started the 'Arab Spring', this did not spark a 'Greek Spring'.  Of course I am suggesting Greeks should take up arms and revolt, but that was the pharmacist's expressed hope in his suicide note, and the parallels are evident.  

Died for a EUR 1.20 ticket

Two weeks ago a 19-year-old Greek jumped off a moving trolley bus to avoid paying a fine for not having a validated ticket.  He struck his head on the pavement and died.  There are mixed reports: he struck the ticket inspector and a passenger who tried to intervene, or the inspector tore his T-shirt to try to restrain him, or in trying to save him.  How did the door open while the trolley was in motion?  How did the young man strike the back of his head--was he pushed, or did his foot get caught in the door as he was trying to flee?  Here and here are just some of the theories.  We won't know what really happened until the inspector and the driver are tried.
This incident caused a flurry of analyses in the local media.  Was the lad a fare dodger?  Was he one of the many unemployed youth of Greece who cannot afford even basics such as transportation?  Some witnesses said he claimed he and his parents were all unemployed, perhaps to gain sympathy from the inspector and the passengers.  But his parents later said they both had jobs, and they hired a lawyer to be their spokesperson in the media.  Some passengers supposedly offered to pay for his ticket, but the inspector insisted on fining him.  
Ticket inspectors in Greece are not all employed as such.  Some are bus/trolley drivers who volunteer to do this additional "work" after hours or on their days off, because they can keep 40% of any fines they collect.  This may explain the zeal of this particular inspector.  It can, of course, not justify driving a person to their death.  
The phenomenon of not paying one's transport fare is on the rise, or at least the inspectors are catching more dodgers.  I have seen inspectors fining well-dressed people and people carrying shopping bags from boutiques, and this has been going on even before the financial crisis, so it is not always a case of a poor person who cannot afford the fare.  I think in these cases it is part of the general mood of tax evasion.  According to some reports the youth in the fatal incident actually had a ticket, but had not validated it.  In fact it struck me that before the debt crisis I had only seen Greeks being caught by inspectors.  The immigrants usually had tickets, perhaps because they were afraid of being asked for their papers.  Now I also see immigrants without tickets.  
Earlier this month I happened to be on a bus when a Greek man who did not have a ticket started shouting and running up and down the bus, then he tried to open the doors to jump off the bus, but luckily in his case they did not open.  The inspectors let him off, when I asked them why they said he had a letter saying he had just been released from a mental hospital.  But they did not let an immigrant get away with it even though he was waving a EUR 20 bill at them, saying he was on his way to renew his monthly pass, which he also showed them.  I said to the inspectors that it was just the first of the month, surely they could give him the benefit of the doubt since they had just let the mental patient off, but they retorted that otherwise why should I be the dumb one who renewed my bus pass before the end of the month.  I guess they were right but it seemed rather unfair.
A month or so ago they announced that all passengers would have to get on at the front of the bus, so the driver could check tickets or monthly passes.  Other passengers would not be able to disembark until all new passengers had been checked.  But this measure was only introduced on some bus lines, not all, so passengers were confused.  And many drivers just waved people on without checking their tickets, either because they were opposed to the measure as just one extra duty added to an already difficult job, or because they saw that it would delay transport schedules even more.
I think the best solution would be to reintroduce bus conductors.  When I first came to Greece they sat at the back of the bus, so everyone had to buy a ticket as they could not board the bus without going past the conductor.  This would ease the unemployment situation, and the additional salaries would be more than covered by the additional tickets sold.  If this is not feasible, then introduce an electronic ticket which beeps when valid, to speed up the check by the bus driver, and enforce it on all lines.  
Already one person has died because of not paying a bus fare.  How many more deaths will it take before the system is modernised?  

The Debt

Greece woke up one wintry morning in 2009 to be told the country was in debt.  More than EUR 260 billion in debt.  That corresponded to nearly EUR 30,000 per man, woman and child.  I know someone who had that kind of credit card debt, who withdrew cash from one of a dozen cards to pay off the minimum monthly payment on another card, hoping like the ostrich that the vicious cycle would not catch up with them.  But this was an announcement by the country’s newly elected Prime Minister George Papandreou Jr., the same person who during the election campaign had said the now infamous ‘lefta yparxoun’—'there is money'. 

Now suddenly the state coffers were revealed to be empty, and Greece was beholden to foreign banks who held billions in loans.  It did not take long for Fitch to downgrade Greece's credit rating, with the other agencies following suit.  Every few days headlines announced new lower ratings until Greece slid all the way down to Junk.  Every few days new scenarios were debated by the media pundits: default, leave the Eurozone, return to the Drachma.  Then the IMF were called in for help, and along with the European Commission and the European Central Bank, were dubbed the Troika, which imposed swingeing austerity measures in return for bail-outs.  

I am not an economist, though since the debt crisis was revealed I have read so much that I could probably understand an undergraduate Economics textbook.  Fear not, I will not bore you with this.  If you want to understand the background in a nutshell you can read about it here (BBC) and follow a Guardian timeline  and second Guardian timeline .

My purpose in starting this blog is not to add yet another economic analysis--I will leave that to the experts.  What I hope to do is to put a human face on these statistics: latest figures for May 2013 show nearly 1.4 million unemployed, over one quarter of the overall Greek working population, with nearly two out of three in the 15-24 age group jobless according to Reuters and The Telegraph .  

As I said, I'm not an economist.  So why do I think I have something to say?  Well, although I'm Australian I have lived in Greece for over 30 years--I arrived just weeks after George Papandreou Jr's father Andreas Papandreou swept into power in October 1981 with his PASOK party on the slogan of 'allaghe'--'change'.  I am fluent in Greek.  I've been married to a Greek for 25 years and have a child who goes to a Greek school.  We live in a working-class suburb of Piraeus, and I work near the centre of Athens.  I don't have a car, so I use public transport and walk.  I have seen a great deal of human misery close-up, and I want to give these people a voice.  I know this won't change the Troika's austerity measures, but perhaps someone reading this blog may be moved to help.  You don't need to be in Greece.  Unfortunately there is human suffering everywhere.  Greece is just the example I am personally familiar with, so that is what I will be writing about.