High life
Greek tragedy
Taki
TAthens he Big Olive has turned into a gar- bage dump, with two weeks of uncolleclted rubbish fouling the already polluted air and making the open-air sewer near Salamis an oasis by comparison. And the wave of strikes that have paralysed the ancient city looks likely to continue thanks to my old friend Andreas Papandreou, the greatest crook in modern Greek history.
Although out of power and under indict- ment for crimes even Al Capone would envy, Papadoc still wields power within the unions and has ordered them to go all out — bring the conservative government down or ruin the country type of thing. It is enough to make political assassination not only legal, but compulsory. The filthy old man will not rest until Greece takes her place among Bolivia, Bangladesh and Up- per Volta, and that is if we're lucky and get the suckers from the EEC to lend us some more of the loot he and his party squan- dered.
Banks, public transport, electricity and telecommunications have all come out in protest against the free-market Mitsotakis regime that is desperately trying to reverse the mess the socialists left in their wake. Greece owes more than $100,000 million, which makes her a far worse bet than countries like Argentina, Brazil and Mex- ico, and we don't even grow pot, not to mention cocaine.
Mitsotakis, a brave and honest man, is trying to dismantle the massive state- controlled bureaucracy which has grown genie-like over the past eight Papandreou years in conjunction with the main trade unions. In a nation of ten million, one tenth of the population lives off the state, and during the run-up to the election last year, the great crook hired up to 100,003 new civil servants. (Civil servants are hired for life in the land of rubbish.) In the words of the prime minister, 'We have broken all the negative records. Our deficits equal 25 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. In bankrupt Brazil they are only 7.5 per cent. This has never happened to any country before in the history of the world.'
So enraged am I at this state of affairs, I'm off to the Big Bagel and then to my fellow neo-Hellenes. Frankly, I'd rather have been born a Puerto Rican.
Except for the stench and the fact that no one has money thanks to the overpaid slobs in the banks, the other big news here is the good news that the Big Olive will not be hosting the Olympics in the near future. Knowing Ali Babandreou and the commie- dominated unions, they would pull the same kind of scam as they're pulling at present just as the Olympic flame came into the stadium. Mind you, personally I lost a lot by the IOC decision to choose Atlanta, but I don't mind. What saddened me was that the present government got the blame, whereas it was the dirty old man
'We've got a boy and a girl, so this time we're hoping for a transsexual:f who had actually dug our grave. After his eight years the only games Athens is capable of holding are those of Yankee- bashing, thievery, terrorism and pollution.
So enraged am I at this state of affairs, I'm off to the Big Bagel and then to London for my dinner, one that only friends will attend. My big ball for every Spectator reader will be given after the filthy old man goes to the sauna-like place below. But knowing my luck I might get there before him.
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