PIIGS > stable > stability pacts.
(If voters consistently elect free-spending hucksters who promise they’ve found a cure for boom & bust etc etc, then isn’t moaning about a democratic deficit as the bailiffs move in ever so slightly pathetic? They had their democracy, but they traded it in for pizza and the X Factor.)
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- Barcelona debt
“Clos!” mutters a wealthy neighbour every time it rains, confident that doom is imminent for Barcelona’s dentally salient mayor. In fact - How many votes did it take to elect your councillor in the 2011 Catalan municipals?
The answer’s somewhere between 11 and 5,016. Time to merge small ayuntamientos? - Tripartite's secret studies
Governments use studies to find out if they’re doing the right thing, but in democratic countries I think there’s a consensus - Tripartite’s secret studies
Governments use studies to find out if they’re doing the right thing, but in democratic countries I think there’s a consensus - Is it the fault of the Greeks that the Germans are the way they supposedly are?
I sense potential for reparations claims citing
So obvious, how could that have been overlooked until today! No Orwellian pigs, Juvenalian ones. Nice twist.
Speaking of what’s in a name, how do you like the one of the new Greek prime minister? Loukas Papademos sounds ever so caring and promising, especially because he’s been vice-president of the ECB and the bull is associated to St. Luke.
They’re all fucking mad. I love the release from Barroso and Rumpy Pumpy: “The agreement to form a government of national unity opens a new chapter for Greece. We have long stressed the need for a broad political consensus around measures to lift Greece out of this deep economic crisis.” Curious description for a government to be led by an economist with absolutely no party political support who has promised to be even less touchy-feely than his predecessor, who himself may well be strung upside down from a lamp-post one of these days.
Papademos is the candyman. Coz the candyman can. And the “two presidents” only mix it with love and make the world taste good.
So you’re in on Barroso’s spliff too.
All the EU’s a stage. It has practically been created with the movement of capital and goods in mind, not that of people. I do not deny that many have been idealists, but fact is that the control over the EU institutions by the people has never happened.
Barroso is just another apparatchik.
The Greeks deserve to be treated like naughty children: Juvenal delinquents, that’s what they are.
@Mother Teresa: We’re heading towards the Flann O’Brien gag about Nero and his beloved dog, Byrne, who disappears one night. The neighbours rush round to help Nero overcome his distress and are amazed to find him calmly playing the violin. “And why shouldn’t I fiddle while Byrne roams?” he enquires.
@Candide: I first tried to get my degrees validated in Holland years ago, at which stage there was one (1) civil servant dedicating some of his time to this for all the foreigners in the country. Last year a Spaniard I know enquired of the Spanish ministry of education whether a generic British master’s degree would satisfy requirements for lecturers on bachelor’s courses in Spain. Both of those responsible said they had no idea, and that the best thing would be to do it and then find out. In Spain in particular, the abolition of national restrictions on foreigners has been accompanied by the invention of new regional obstacles. The whole mobility of labour thing is a complete joke. If you abolished the EU tonight, does anyone seriously think it would become more difficult to get public sector jobs in other countries tomorrow?
Mobility of labour is only required under very specific circumstances. It’s a nuisance more often than not, but I’m sure that we’ll get the full load of it the day the administration will want to save money obliging us to move great distances or else lose our unemployment benefits.
If there’ll still be such thing around by then.
Part of my story is that I could not stay on my home country’s medical insurance instead of the Spanish one. Single market my ass.
And there are still policemen who are insisting that I get a local driver’s licence. That’s apparently been solved on the EU level, and next time they stop me I’ll have them call my embassy.
Peanuts, but they add up.