Episode 14: Anyone home?

From Under Dark Clouds

From Under Dark Clouds

'From Under Dark Clouds...' is a Gonzo fictionalisation of current events in Greece as seen through the eyes of our unnamed hero as he fumbles from paranoia to public office, under the mentorage of the shady Socrates.

Each episode is based on real events. Readers are invited to share their experiences for the Under Dark Clouds treatment. Many have been included in cameo roles, can you spot them?

See link below for contributions

Wear's the beef?

I was still licking my wounds, dear Blogees after the pasting from the peoples' pitbulls. I had a face like a findus lasagne. The police had not wanted to know and if the truth be told there did seem to be a new fashion of minimalist haircuts down the station house. The people were, mostly, quite horrified about the incident but it had blown over a damn sight quicker than the pain in my noggin and anyway, these guys were actually doing something rather than banging their gums about it down at the city hall. They were, of course, quite right about that but banging someone else's gums is not really the best way to deal with the problem either. 

Since that day their presence in the town had been marked but as they hadn't bounced anyone around since then, since me, I was willing to give them a wide birth and at least let the people get the benefits of their provisions. This was a decision I would live to regret.

We had managed to recover a good amount of my predecessor, Mr. Mayor's embezzled funds but it wasn't going to keep us going for long. Central government had promised to help us out but so far all they had sent was a promise.

I had to clear my head so I kicked the Vespa into life and let it take me on a tour of my kingdom. It took me down streets I barely knew existed and on a number of occasions very nearly bucked me off while swinging into a narrow passage. Apart from the boarded up shops I noted all the unfinished and empty flats and houses. The winter air was cold and my swollen face was beginning to throb, I pulled over to put a bit of liquid warmer into my veins. There, opposite was a block of apartments maybe 6 or 7, completely unoccupied with a big sign outside advertising them being for sale. The name of the developer was familiar but I couldn't place it at all. I noted in my newly acquired filofax, took another nip of Irish and set off. The Vespa seemed to have decided on an early shower that day because next thing I knew I was pulling up outside my house.

Penguin's pants

The wife was as cold as a Penguin's pants but I knew that she cared. The kids assaulted my head with questions and irrelevancies but their sublime sanity was soothing. I read them a story at bedtime and had a glass of red stuff, maybe wine, in front of the telly with the wife. She made one comment about keeping my trap shut and another time she winced and asked me if it hurt; she did care.

The empty properties occupied my dreams. The name I couldn't place came out in a song, it was the mayor, at least the previous mayor, it was his name but more importantly he hadn't embezzled it all, some was in bricks and mortar in the middle of town.

When I woke it was still dark so I crept around gathering my clothes and brushing my teeth in stealth mode. I needn't have bothered. Nothing short of putting a bus stop by the wardrobe would stir this sleeping beauty.

The morning air was icy and my face was a map of numbness and pain. By the time I reached the town hall and realised I didn't have the keys again, I was mute. I did, however have my trusty Swiss army knife so it wasn't long before I was in the building.

The birds were in a bit of a fluster but there was still little sign of the sun making an appearance. What I could hear was a shuffling from somewhere below the entrance level. I had never explored the building so had little idea of its layout but it occurred to me now that not only did it have a basement but that it also had rats. I picked up a plastic leaflet rack that had long since given its last information and made my way to the door by the stairs. The handle twisted in my hand and the door punched me in the nose.

On the other side was Mike, the IT guy looking profoundly pre-corn flakes. “Good morning, Sir.”

I asked him what the hell he was doing here at such an ungodly hour. He offered that he was putting in some overtime; I laughed out loud.

“Overtime?” we weren't liquid enough to cover the undertime! I asked him what IT we had down there but he closed the door and offered me a cup of coffee.

I heard another shuffling from behind the door, “ Mike, do we have rats?”

Where it all began

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Peace Child International builds European network to tackle youth unemployment crisis

Peace Child international, the youth-led organization with over 30 years’ experience empowering the young to make their own change has reached out to organizations from all over Europe in a bid to stem the spread of youth unemployment. Its EU Youth job creation network will draw on experience and knowledge from the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece’s Innovation Farm.

Uncertainty and doubt about the future has always been part of the impetus that drives innovation and achievement. It has rarely been far from most people’s minds but the last few years have seen a period of renewed intensity. After decades of raised expectations for many, the roller-coaster is now the big dipper, the double-dipper, the triple-dip to the point where pundits are running out of euphemisms. There are few for whom this is more terrifying than our young. The thought of a future-less generation fills us all with dread.  

who's to blame

Since long before living memory commercial industry has invested trillions to develop products and services that have satisfied needs, both real and fabricated. 

Trillions have been invested to make marketing ever more persuasive. 

Even more has been spent to create new devices that both address needs and desires and open new lucrative markets for their maintenance, upgrading and accessories. 
 
Trillions upon trillions have been conjured up by financial institutions to enable everyone to acquire them. 

..and we are to blame because we bought too much?

or being punished because we just plain ran out of money

End of the Fakelaki?

On new years eve the wife decided to tackle an outstanding round of paper-stamping. We had to take on IKA and OAEE and although New Year's may seem a masochistic day for such a task we headed off with freshly woken kids to the big smoke of Thessaloniki's public services. We made a quick pit stop at the post office to get the road tax paid which went swiftly and without hitch or hindrance. Next the hardcore, IKA. after about ten minutes. Wifey emerged from the offices with a reserved smile, while she hadn't managed to complete she was pleasantly surprised by the generally helpful demeanour of the public servants. We proceeded to the police station as I required some stamps to prove that I'm not an illegal alien. After trying two previous addresses of the dept of aliens I enquired if the bloody office was on wheels and received a smile, not common from public employees let alone the police. And here lies my point, is it me or are public employees growing some humanity? *

Prime the smart-bomb, corporal!

A chilly October evening and the first of the autumn rains was bouncing off the roads and pavements but from deep in the darkest corners of the town hall came light, small but bright.  Inside the hall all the seats are taken and many more stand around the walls; this is the tip of the iceberg that is the resistance.

Tonight there is a seminar about the new legal commercial entity, the IKE, a talk given by a young lawyer,Nayia Antoniou, then another about the merits and process of establishing a startup in America by two lawyers from San Francisco, Christina Tsakona and Andrew Dimitriades.   All this followed attentively by a crowd (more about crowds later) of young and not-so young optimistics, entrepreneurs and professionals. These are the real patriots, the draughtsmen of tomorrow.  

It's not just Quantity but Quality

Boycott Fuel 21st - 28th October

The resistance is mobilising again. A mass boycott of fuel is proposed from 21^st to 28^th October 2012. The aim is to hit the system so hard that it is forced to address the problem of price.   

Greece is in the top five most expensive countries in Europe for petrol. In fact, top 5 in the world. Looking at the members of this list you’ll see the countries with the highest disposable incomes in Europe such as Sweden, Norway and UK and you’ll see Euro-naughtiest like Italy, Portugal and Greece. 

Is crowd-sourcing really a crowd pleaser?

Welcome to the 21^st century, an age of collaborative working, coworking, crowd-funding, crowd-publishing, a new dawn of communistic creation, an open source world of limitless opportunity. Or is it.

In 1991 a young Finnish student studying in the US released the kernel of a computer operating system that came to be know as linux. Since then it has become the world's largest open-source project. Thousands upon thousands of coders, testers, translators and graphic artists have worked together to create an computer operating system to rival Windows and OS X. Unfortunately, what we now have are hundreds of operating systems that for one reason or another have not even managed to replace each other, much less Windows or OS X.

The Resistance Manifesto

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

Tales from the resistance

Cut out and wear with pride

Greece; you only have to say the word and it conjures up a myriad of images. Sun, sea, ancient civilisation, wonders of the world, economic crisis and moustaches. What doesn't spring to mind is entrepreneurship and business acumen.

Greeks have traditionally fallen into two categories as far as work is concerned; public servant or self-employed. With private-sector employee being very much a consolation prize. A job, any job in the public sector has always been regarded the safe, secure route, not overly taxing with tenure and a reliable pay-cheque. Self-employment, on the other hand hovers around nearly 40% of the workforce, more than twice the UK level and nearly four times the US. Greeks have been running their own businesses for years. From fishing boats to cigarette kiosks, from farming to shipping, Greeks have been doing the business in business. In fact, in spite of the efforts of the country's largest employer, the government, the people of this greatly misunderstood nation have managed to turn a tidy profit and send a fair bit of it to Germany; there are more Mercedes on Greek roads than Fords.

Episode 13:...and the cupboards were bare.

From Under Dark Clouds

From Under Dark Clouds

After a scandalous legal battle with the Vatican and a very public breakdown, a British media celebrity seeks asylum in a sleepy Greek village. But can he keep his head low? Can he fuck! 

Driven by his own narcissism and under the mentorage of the shady Socrates our anonymous hero goes from paranoia to public office.

I need a dollar

The constituency was broke, the coffers empty. I looked through the various accounts and ledgers then got somebody who knew what they were looking at but even though some had enough for a bloody good night on the sauce, it wasn’t nearly enough to run a small town and a bunch or provincial villages. My staff, including the well-assembled secretary had been labouring on hope for well over six months now and my wife was not going to be best pleased with my own chances of bringing in a good salary. The cupboards were bare, dear Blogees and a bone was most definitely out of the question. 

According to some crackpot quack I once saw if I continued to drink everything under the sink I would eventually have no memory at all. Now, memory had never been one of my strong points but realising that from time to time I would need to remember at least some key facts, kids’ names, wife’s birthday, change my underwear, I had devised a little method of retaining information. I sang. By singing the things I wanted to remember I'd be able to recall them later on with incredible accuracy and it must have been my joy at winning the election but I was singing for Europe the night I had first taken my place in this now spartan office. More importantly, I had sung my way through all the usernames and passcodes. Humming a tune, the well-assembled secretary took my arm as she realised the relevance of the series of secure international banking sites. Site after site I effortlessly gained access to the previous mayor's transactions and my secretary leaned over me to press the PrtSc key to file all the dirt we may need to sling at those who might have objections to our actions.  

By the end we had enough to cover some of the municipal wage arrears and a new coffee percolator but we weren’t nearly out of the woods yet. 

I had a flash! We would go public, appeal to the goodwill of the people. No. Fuck. They would eat us alive, there would be a run on the bank. No, we had to keep this schtum, no-one must know. I swore everyone to complete and utter silence.

Somehow the cat had got out of the bag

The next day I arrived at the town hall to find the usual nook for the Vespa occupied by a huge van with a dish on the roof and it wasn’t alone there were at least another three, some with unfamiliar, foreign lettering on the side, and the entrance to the town hall was infested with paparazzi. We had a mole. 

“Mr. Mayor, what do you have to say about the bankruptcy of the prefecture,” a microphone was shoved in my face. 

I chose the fifth amendment and told them to fuck off and that by the way we had plenty of money to run the prefecture.

One of the paparazzi shouted a figure, the others scribbled and I went cross-eyed in thought; it was exactly the amount we had in the bank. We had a numerate mole. 

Within the halls of government a cup of instant coffee sat on a pile of IKEA remnants passing itself of as a desk, my desk. 

The rest of the day continued as badly, until it got worse.

There parked in the middle of the main street was a big black Mercedes van. Its back doors were open and three or four men hewn from dubious stone with minimalist haircuts giving out food parcels. They had created quite a stir and an impatient crowd had gathered but did not dare to push or shove. I walked through the crowd up to the most generous chaps. I asked what they were doing and one turned his attention to me.

“S’fer tha pipple,” he belched then paused but it was his collegue that made the distinction.

“Where are you from, eh?” my accent maybe more obvious than I remembered.

I replied that I was from the Town hall.

“You ain’t one of tha pipple!” he pointed out and turned his head looking for recognition from  ‘tha pipple’.

“I’m not getting you, young man,” I raised my self out of a slouch which belied my slightly above average height. 

“You some kinda ponce foreigner then?” his enunciation started to become a spray. “You not like the good pipple of this country,” he flashed a pitbull smile at them and they murmured in response.  

“No, young man, I may not be but they did choose me to represent them around here,” I realised I was sounding more foreign by the moment and I could not expect any support from those around me, who ever defended a politician? “Just finish oiling the good people and get the fuck out of here, you’re blocking the road, if nothing else.”

With that he began raining blows about my head yelling incomprehensible gibberish. 

I was later lucky enough to be able to nurse my wounds in the relative safety of my office, the well-assembled secretary dabbing my head with something that stung like hell.

Beating an elected official in broad daylight, what had we come to?   

Where it all began

close to credits...

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The Lord of the Flies

Piggy & Ralph 

I have always maintained that Greece is a country of children. A country that despite its thousands of years of history and culture, despite its gift of civilisation and philosophy to the ancient world, despite hundreds of years of austerity and occupation, has a childlike relationship with the today and a flippant mistrust of the tomorrow. I say despite but this could easily be replaced by because of.

You may feel free to be angered by this but personally I am very fond of children.   

A little spot of gardening

Last week I had a blazing row with my neighbour. The next day I had a highly animated argument with her husband where he threw pot plants around and attempted to pull saplings from the ground in utter exasperation at my audacious interference in matters that I should not have been concerned with. Everyone in the block told me to keep schtum and stop making an issue about it. So what was it all about. 

Cash in on Guilt

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. 

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Under the enormous pressure of the ECB and IMF and just about anyone who has any kind of stake in Greece at the moment, the powers that be are rolling out the only weapon they ever really knew how to wield, guilt. Over decades of laws and counter laws and the plugging of loopholes and the creation of favours, what Greece is left with is an unholy web of legislation that few understand and is almost inapplicable even by those whose job it is to impose it. Instead we have arbitrary demands based on the understanding that they are quite aware that you have a lot more to lose if they were to rigorously audit you. 

If we all stop believing, will it cease to exist?

There has been a lot of talk of contagion during this Euro crisis. Contagion is the domino effect of a falling economy taking its less stable creditors over the edge, which in turn causes larger and larger economies to fall, unable to resist the infectious debt. Such is the incestuous nature of finance that this could feasibly take down the majority of the world economies; starting with one little trip. There is another contagion that worries the Eurozone, however, that is not spoken of, the contagion of faith.

The Euro is a fiat currency, which means that it has no substantial commodity (usually gold) underpinning it. This means that its value is derived from the faith in the issuing nation and the belief of the financial markets. Were Greece to be excommunicated, or worse, walk out during mass it would spend more than 40 days in the wilderness but it may just learn a thing or two, or at least appear to have. This is the most infectious idea that could be spawned. If Greece survived exile, and ultimately but painfully, it would, this would send a clear message to other suffering members to cut the cord.

The world's financial markets are run by some of the most sharp, aggressive and secular intellects on the planet. They form long and short term strategies and know how to make the market move in their favour but a hint of a rumour of an idea from someone who knows the right people and all hell breaks loose. If traders believe something will happen, it happens because they will make it happen. Have you ever noticed how the news that someone is leaving a company or political position sends the markets into turmoil. For the last two years the markets have gone wild every time Steve Jobs looked a bit peaky or adversely when he was looking well. The markets draw conclusions from omens that are interpreted by the high priests to mean up or down.

The markets don't know what to believe about the Euro, their fates are too closely linked to what everyone else believes, but their minds can easily be made up. If Greece and one other Eurozone economy lose the faith it could be more than the central bank can support.

For the time being, the big players in the Eurozone have faith that they can carry the currency and the market is willing to have faith in them. 

So, if we stop believing in the Euro, will it cease to exist?...

...that depends on who we are.    

Why Greece will fall

who will play Captn George
 in the movie

The present problem derives from the fact the EU thinks it is in battle with Greece but it is not. Greece is in a battle with its government and its political classes as a whole, both right and left. It knows that it has played its part in the situation but it will not take responsibility for its self-serving rulers any more. The EU is dealing with the government who has no influence over its people. 

The Papandreou and Karamanlis dynasties have only ever been allowed to govern because they have shared out the sweeties from time to time, the public sector is bloated with the price of favour, crumbling roads are the price of wannabe civil engineers who happened to be cousins. Now, however, the sweeties are all gone and the sweet shop is calling in the debt. The rulers never curried any sustainable favour and definitely never earned any respect. 

    

The people will vote against its government, not the Euro, not the EU but the government has now made that the same thing. Those who have been managing this country have missed all the lessons on running a tight ship, efficiency is all German to them and working a narrow margin is vaguely sexual. Ultimately, all will lose, the Greeks, the single currency and, once again, the Germans.     

Hopefully, once its all over Greece may get a ringmaster worth his ring and then be remembered as the 300 of Thermopylae. 

Update: Tsipras And Varoufakis are those ringmasters