Many of you will have witnessed through the magic of the world's media the tragic events that occurred recently in my - in many ways beloved - country of birth, Greece, and may even have wondered how these things could happen in a modern 'western' country. We are constantly bombarded with tragic events from all over the world, so they do not necessarily come as a surpriser a shock, but nevertheless the recent Greek events are not entirely 'run-of-the-mill' disaster fodder. You may also wish to argue whether Greece can and should be classified as a modern 'western' country, or if it is, in fact, closer to the Middle East or Africa in the way that it operates, but this is a different discussion, for another day.
Let me try to explain why and please bear with me if this gets a bit complicated. In a recent post but taking inspiration from a simple retail receipt I wrote that Greece must simplify or die; tragically these events fall into this category though I was not talking about deaths of individuals but was referring to an economic death, something Greece has been in the throes of for about a decade, if not longer. I was not expecting something like the events that unfolded, which were unexpected and very painful, as many people have lost their lives due, in large part, to the labyrinthine ways of the Greek state, as accepted and endorsed by the majority of society there. Oh, I know that people will now be coming out of the woodwork, tearing their hair out and declaring to all and sundry how they truly opposed whatever will be deemed to have been at fault, but they all (most?) were silent until tragedy struck, silent while the going was good.
Successive Greek governments not only failed to create and support a robust economy (which, in my opinion, should be based largely on free market principles) and thus have brought on the existing economic catastrophe there, but they also spent most of their time and money 'buying' votes by appeasing sections of society; this was done in large part by allowing people who had systematically broken the law for personal gain, often by building illegally in areas where no building was allowed (such as forestry land), to legalise their assets by paying a fee of sorts to the state. This, I'm afraid, was done by governments on all sides of the political spectrum so they are all culpable.
Where the current Greek government falls down, though, is in its supreme inability to accept operational - thus current - responsibility for failure, their lack of understanding, indeed, of the meaning of responsibility. 80+ deaths within a few miles of Athens (a modern large city and the Capital of Greece) surely cannot be blamed solely on challenging weather conditions, especially as it seems that there was no plan for tackling an emergency of this sort (a major fast-moving fire) or, if there was, it was not put into effect or was ignored. The various departments responsible appear to neither have used the predictive technology at their disposal nor liaised properly with the other such departments involved. Even if the current government had inherited a no-emergency-plans scenario from their predecessors, surely they've been in power long enough to have taken the bull by the horns and rectified - or attempted to rectify - this.
Greece is not a lawless place, though, but a place that has too many laws, most of which are not properly enforced. The snag with this is that - and this can happen at any time - that they can be enforced just as if they have always been, or there may be a way out, usually by currency-stuffed envelope. This, combined with a refusal to plan, or often even to think, ahead makes for a very dysfunctional society, which under normal circumstances can be annoying, tiresome, costly, unpleasant; the complexity of trying to get anything done was behind my seemingly harsh 'Simplify or Die' post This time around alas, due to a combination of things, it has become literally true, a proper tragedy with loads of dead bodies, missing people, massive destruction and a government squirming to avoid any blame!
This is not about politics, though I do despise the current mob's left-wingery and self-proclaimed moral superiority because of it, but about accepting responsibility when things go wrong on your watch. With children it's an essential part of growing up.
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