Clueless...

It is a source of enduring sorrow for me as a Greek national to watch successive Greek governments behave with a level of incompetence that is unmatched anywhere in the civilised world. It is particularly maddening, though, to observe the current incumbents pretend that they have any idea of how to run a country, never mind one that has endured over ten years of economic hardship. They actually make Mrs. May's mob appear efficient, difficult as that may seem at present.

You will hear little of this away from Greece, as the Government is good at misinformation and pretence, at 'cooking the books' if you like, then pretending all is swell. They work very hard at convincing the EU that they have mastered the crisis, that they have balanced the books and that growth is on the way. Alas it is not so, as growth will only come from the private sector, a sector that under the current SYRIZA government has carried most of the weight of the crisis. And there is no sign on the street that good things are happening, that this is about to change.

There have been grandiose announcements over recent years about the investments that would be rolling in, with international companies supposedly so dazzled by the opportunities available that they'd be throwing money at Greece just to get on the gravy train. Unsurprisingly, little external investment has materialised, partly due to a penal tax system unevenly enforced and partly due to ridiculously outdated attitudes towards business and archaic employment legislation.

For their latest trick this bunch of incompetents has chosen to increase the nominal minimum wage by a goodly amount. Never mind that there is no growth anywhere in sight, never mind that most SME businesses in Greece are just about holding on to life, ignore that this undermines the country's already substandard competitiveness - no, elections are nearing and this makes a good soundbite, creating another make-believe scenario like all the ones that got Greece in this mess in the first place. Politically they may be adept, these creatures - though that remains to be seen at the polls as and when the next elections occur - but commercially they are morons.

Coming as I do from a family that has been international for well over two hundred years and despite having spent nearly half my life away from Greece, primarily in the UK, I remain in many ways a proud Greek like my ancestors before me. But the succession of intellectual midgets who have reduced this lovely little country to pauper status and who, for the sake of their own short-sighted, petty little ambitions, are quite prepared to strip it of all its dignity, I feel nothing but revulsion and disgust.

Furthermore, I refuse to forgive them even though they know not what they are doing.