Infamy!

“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” So goes Kenneth Williams’ classic punchline in 1964’s Carry on Cleo, on discovering the dastardly plot to murder his character, Julius Caesar… or was it Biggus Dickus? I forget, but there’s always a plot, isn’t there? According to ‘divers sources’ the word plot can be a noun or a verb and it can mean, variously: ‘the main events of a play, novel or film’; ‘a small piece of ground marked out for a purpose such as building or gardening’; ‘a graph showing the relationship between two variables’; ‘a diagram, chart, or map’; or ‘the making, in secret, by a group of people, a plan to do something illegal or harmful’.

Shakespeare had Hamlet say “the play’s the thing” but of course it’s the plot which is the thing. It’s the plot that makes the money shot, after all. When it comes to global domination of national economies the idea that foolish people naively entered into commitments they could not fulfil is too mundane, too ordinary, too much like real life to ever make it to the silver screen. What we need to satisfy the full-on conspiracy nut-job is a driving logic, a subterranean imperative for extreme prejudice to be levied against the unsuspecting herds of human cattle to compel them to stampede toward a cliff of their own choosing. Oh, it is so clear now, in hindsight, how the evil bankers, in league with the royal heads of Europe and the lizard people manipulated the very laws of the financial universe to create chaos.

But wait a minute; a theory is defined as: ‘a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something’; ‘a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based’; ‘an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action’; or ‘a collection of propositions to illustrate the principles of a subject’. If it is to have any validity a theory should not only account for a historical series of events, but it should also be capable of predicting the outcome of future such events. Thus, ‘what goes up must come down’, ‘if it sounds too good to be true, etc.’ and ‘pride comes before a fall’

Forgive me, then, for not having much truck with those really big global conspiracy theories which only surface after the action. Much as with religion, when such ‘theories’ are revealed before the events they purport to explain I may begin to take notice. Ah, but, say the tinfoil hatters, that’s exactly what they want you to say, conveniently deflecting the burden of proof from their own goal line. To which I respond, but what’s the point? Really, what is the point?

I mean, owning all the money in the world is a ludicrously meaningless end game; once you have all the money the game is over, the money becomes worthless and what happens next? Deliberately putting people out of work and into poverty is equally pointless – you’d surely have far more to gain from a billion cheap workers doing your bidding than a billion pissed off workless folk with sharpened sticks heading your way. It absolutely makes no sense, smacking more of a need to have a complex fictional reason rather than accepting a more mundane and simple chain of events. Again, like religion… or left-wing politics.

I don’t doubt that some people conspire to corner markets, to gerrymander elections and to fabricate statistics in their favour. And undoubtedly there are conspiracies among we mere rabble to best our rivals, but in my experience successful people often turn out to be annoyingly normal, frequently quite dull and refreshingly frank about their good fortune; right place right time and all that. Not evil overlords at all. Given the choice of the Greek debacle being engineered from the outset by masters of dark arts or being the result of human frailty and Mr Fuckup, I’ll go with fuck-up every time.

More on Oxi...

The ‘meeja’ has been falling over itself to publish bad puns about the impending ‘Greek tragedy’ and the open hostility displayed by the massed ranks of the EU’s bully boys. They want to punish Greece whichever way the referendum goes. Me? If it isn’t already abundantly clear, I want fair Hellene to stand up for itself and vote no. Not no to further austerity because it really has no choice, but no to forever being in the pocket of a class of bureaucrats who have a lust for power that really must be curtailed. If Greece falls to Brussels it sends the message that Euro-power is omnipotent.

I’ve only been to Greece once; a sailing holiday way back in 1980 and I was charmed by the simple rusticity and dazzling light. Everybody seemed to smile and the pace of life was admirably leisurely. Why would you want to trade that for mere material riches when the price is to sell your descendants into the treadmill existence of trading on the global stage for the enrichment of a very few? The EU project, if it ever had such a mission, has long forgotten its aims of peace in Europe. Instead it is all about power, and controlling a half-billion population is how it exercises that power.

As the hours tick away people are hyping up the hypotheticals; what if, what if? What if Greece just took a holiday from the Euro? Seriously, there are suggestions that people be paid in IOUs, acceptable by business to buy goods and services. They argue that this way, the population can still trade among themselves, sort out their day-to-day needs and then re-enter the Euro when the waters are calmer. Maybe it’s just me but if an IOU can become currency, so can the Drachma. And if this non-Euro money is the way to salvation, what reason would they have to use it for recovery and then return to the ruinous common currency; who wants to be common?

It’s as if the bankers have forgotten that humanity survived before money and it is quite possible that satisfactory lives may be lived without it. In fact Greece could become pioneers for new ways of organising how money is used. And here’s a novel idea; how about everybody starts to live within their means? After all, if you only spend what you earn, you don’t run up debts. If you have no debts the banks become mere safe depositories. And if you teach your kids not to desire what they can’t afford who knows, being thrifty might once again become the new normal.

Much has been said about how true socialism has never been tried. Maybe that’s because it has only ever been tried in populations crushed under the boot of industry and the daily grind, with rich pickings for those who controlled the economy. But how about getting all hippy on the IMF’s ass and going full commune? Seriously, if nobody is getting paid and there is bugger all else to do, why not get the 25% unemployed working for their keep and pay for it by smiling once more at the lovely tourists who will stuff their pockets with cash, if only as a way of sticking two fingers up to the EU?

Remember Metaxas - Vote Oxi!

They say money can’t buy you happiness and you can’t take it with you. What are the creditors actually going to do, short of sending in the jackboots and revealing the true ideology behind Euroland? Remember the sayings ‘it’s only money’ and ‘easy come, easy go’? Let’s add to that ‘fuck the EU!’ Come on Greece, show us the way out of this mess. 

Update:

As of 18:30 UK time the voting stands at 60.3% NO!

Greeks bearing left...

So Red Ed’s ever helpful colleagues have decided in the wake of the not very surprising Greek election outcome to lurch further left and lead a popular people’s revolution. Really? Maybe they have forgotten that Greece is not the same as the UK. For instance, our economy is not utterly borked. Furthermore it is our economy and that of Germany and France that is, as always, paying for the mistakes of ‘junior’ partners in the EU debacle. Anti-austerity Party? It’s laughable because it is largely the misguided pursuit of socialist dreams that unbalanced the UK and made it necessary to engage in the minimal levels of so-called austerity we have lived with for the last few years.

Nobody is starving, nobody is neglected – at least no more than they were under Labour, under any government, in the last fifty years. There has been class-war-based strife in every decade of my life and no matter who was in power, the other side – the last election losers – have claimed they are ‘destroying’ the country. This is the sequence as I have experienced it: Labour get in, borrow and spend, bribe the electorate, promise them the earth, then run out of money, at which point the Tories return to Westminster, tell some unpopular truths and grab hold of the reins again. Meanwhile Labour activists bleat and moan and agitate about austerity until, just as we are getting back on track they have managed to convince enough people that the medicine is nasty. Repeat ad infinitum.

The Greek election outcome is not exciting because it heralds any new (golden?) dawn for Greece. There will be no resurgence of the proletariat; there is little but trouble ahead for the beleaguered country. But what IS exciting is how the next few months will play out as Syriza discover that the schoolboy politics of revolution do not impress the adults of the EU who dole out all the pocket money. Where will Greece end up when they forego their next bailout? When they renege on their debts will the EU expel them? And if not, will they come to an accommodation? Either way it will cost us all and Labour will be cheering on the little man who won’t pay his way – try refusing to pay tax and see how they react then.

None of that cold reality matters one jot to Labour who love to shout about Tory ‘ideology’ while all the while supporting dogma so dog-eared even the communists abandoned it years ago, along with the millions of people they butchered in the name of progress. Countries like Greece joined the EU so that they could benefit from sharing the prosperity of sensible mature economies, not so that those economies could reject their restraint in favour of a socialist free-for-all. Birthplace of democracy? Graveyard of civilisation, the way it’s going.

Well, if Russell's backing them...

So for me it’s grab the popcorn, pull up a pew and sit back to watch how some proper mental, not-joined-up thinking can grind a country into the dirt far faster than any level-headed government. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, they say – this may just be the gift that keeps on giving.