How the world sees Greece
PAOK beats Veria 2-0 in Greek league SI.com ATHENS, Greece (AP) -PAOK moved into a second place in the Greek league with a 2-0 victory over Veria on Saturday. PAOK was 14 points behind league champion Olympiakos, which travels to Platanias on Sunday. Asteras can catch up with PAOK if it ... |
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George Osborne drew the election battle lines with his controversial statement on the Philpott case
There is nothing new about politicians using human tragedy to make a political point, though sometimes they come to regret it. In 1993 Labour's ambitious young shadow home secretary, Tony Blair, seized on the killing of two-year-old James Bulger as evidence of the failings of post-Thatcher Britain.
The toddler had been murdered by two 10-year-old boys after being dragged by them along a railway line near Liverpool. The terrible crime traumatised the country. In a speech at the time, Blair deployed stirring rhetoric to attack a Tory government which, he implied, had let society disintegrate to such an extent that it could produce child killers so young.
"The headlines shock, but what shocks us more is our knowledge that in almost any city, town or village more minor versions of the same events are becoming an almost everyday part of our lives," Blair said. "These are ugly manifestations of a society that is becoming unworthy of that name … If we do not learn and then teach the value of what is right and what is wrong, then the result is simply moral chaos which engulfs us all."
When he published his autobiography in 2010 Blair repented, saying he had been wrong to generalise and to frame policy off the back of one terrible case. "I look back and think that though the problem was real, the analysis was faulty and this came to have policy consequences ... I drew the easy but ultimately flawed conclusion that our society had broken down. Of course, it hadn't as a whole, only in part." His point was that the kind of families that produced James Bulger's murderers were anything but typical. "Instead of focusing general social policy on this class of people, they need specific, targeted action," he wrote.
Wind forward 20 years to the deaths of Duwayne, 13, Jade, 10, John, nine, Jack, eight, Jesse, six, and Jayden, five, all killed by their father, Mick Philpott, his wife Mairead and friend Paul Mosley in an attempt to frame Philpott's former lover, and politicians are once more being accused of exploiting tragedy. On Thursday, after the trio had been convicted of starting the blaze in which the children died, the chancellor, George Osborne, visited Derby, where the couple lived, and linked Philpott's life on benefits to his terrible crime. He spoke, as had Blair, of a nation in shock. And in a carefully prepared answer to a question from the BBC, Osborne said it was the responsibility of politicians to consider whether general conclusions, and lessons, could be drawn.
"Philpott is responsible for these absolutely horrendous crimes and these are crimes that have shocked the nation," he said. "The courts are responsible for sentencing, but I think there is a question for government and for society about the welfare state, and the taxpayers who pay for the welfare state, subsidising lifestyles like that. I think that debate needs to be had."
It is difficult to imagine Osborne admitting he was wrong to link this one isolated and shocking case to a general malaise in society, even 20 years from now. This weekend, despite an outraged response from Labour and some among the Tories' coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative party leadership is confident the chancellor did the right thing.
On Friday David Cameron, champion of compassionate Conservatism, offered his full backing to Osborne. "He is absolutely right," the prime minister said. "Philpott was the one to blame for his crimes … We want to make clear welfare is not a lifestyle choice." Officials in No 10 feel that for the first time in months the Tories have Labour on the run. "The only clear message from this week that you can draw," said a senior Downing Street source, "is that Labour would increase benefits when the country still has a huge deficit. It is a quite extraordinary position for Ed Miliband to be in. He has nothing to say on the question that we have rightly raised."
So there it is. The political dividing lines are drawn and a key pre-election battlefield identified over welfare more than two years before polling day.
After months of vituperative internal arguments on everything from gay marriage to Europe and overseas aid, the Tory party has a seasonal spring in its step. Backbenchers are rallying. While only a few days ago there was talk of plots to unseat both Cameron and Osborne, morale shows signs of recovering as belief returns.
Charlie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover, quoted Cicero, saying a good argument was the way to make a strong political point and promote change. "The more George Osborne attacks the establishment and is in favour of social change that people want, the more the row helps him," he said. "We say there is one choice that takes you the way of Greece or Cyprus, or there is our choice – getting on top of the welfare bills and sorting things out."
For Cameron and Osborne, there was a desperate need to turn the argument over welfare on to Labour. The last fortnight had seen the churches and charities – the foundations of Cameron's supposed "big society" – uniting in condemnation of cuts to benefits, many of which were introduced last Monday. Clerics complained they hit the poorest and most vulnerable in society hardest. Most alarmingly for Tories, the anti-cuts movement had been threatening to gain a populist momentum, as witnessed by a petitition, now signed by more than 400,000 people, which asks work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53 a week for a year, the sum a market trader said he had to survive on despite being in work. The Tories knew more flak would fly this weekend, before the abolition of the 50p tax rate, which Labour protests will benefit millionaires, including several key Conservative donors, at the very time the neediest see their incomes diminish. For Lynton Crosby, the Tories' new election strategist at No 10, the assault on the poor and tax cuts for the rich must have seemed like a perfect storm – and therefore the perfect moment to act. "Yes. I think Lynton will certainly have had a role in the Osborne comments. It may not be pretty, but this is politics," said a Tory minister.
In the heat of the storm, facts have proved of little value to Labour. It can point out until it is blue in the face that only about 3% of the total cost of welfare goes to the unemployed, while more than 40% is spent on the elderly whose pensions Cameron has promised to defend, and that only 0.8% of the welfare budget is lost in fraud. But Crosby, Osborne and Cameron know full well that the impression of one evil man milking the system will always prevail in the public mind.
The rightwing press saw its chance to weigh in behind the Tories. A Daily Mail editorial concluded Osborne had been spot on: "It was a reasonable statement to make about an increasingly bankrupt Britain's unsustainable £180bn-a-year welfare bill which, while providing a humane safety net for the genuinely needy, is indisputably abused on a major scale," the paper said. A Sun editorial said Labour was trying to close down a debate it was afraid to join. "Labour's are kneejerk reactions that owe everything to political point-scoring and add precisely nothing to a vital debate about Britain's future," it said.
Worryingly for Ed Miliband's party, it is not just the right that thinks the tactic could work by shifting floating voters back to the Tories. Pollsters say the younger generation, in particular, could warm to the theme. Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos Mori, says that, whatever the ethics, Osborne's move is probably good politics. "Osborne's intervention is effective politically, because it sends a clear signal to swing voters that he wants to cut down on these outrageous examples of people getting something for nothing."
Not everyone in the Tory party or the coalition is happy. On Saturday Osborne's deputy, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the treasury, Danny Alexander, reiterated his view that it was an isolated case from which general conclusions could not be drawn, while the former children's minister, Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather, described it as "a staggeringly low blow".
Even some Conservatives are nervous that if they go too far the label of the "nasty party" could be stuck on them once again. Martin Vickers, Conservative MP for Cleethorpes, where 500 people have just been made redundant from a local factory, urged caution. "It is very easy for people to slip into knockabout language and give the impression that everyone on the dole is a shirker," he said. "We have to treat the issues sympathetically."
But a week that began with the government on the rack over welfare cuts has ended with Labour under scrutiny perhaps more than at any time since the last election. Miliband and Ed Balls can attack the Tories for "cynical" politics, but what Osborne's intervention has done, rightly or wrongly, is focus the debate on what they would do to curb the welfare bill.
Today in the Observer, Liam Byrne, the shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, says Osborne is guilty of "vicious strategy and horrible politics". But attacking the cynicism is the easy part. More difficult is to frame a policy which is tough enough to convince the public it will act to get benefits bills down, but sensitive enough to get past his party. Here Labour is hobbled by its understandable reluctance to make spending commitments so far from an election and with the state of the economy so uncertain. But Byrne hints at radical thinking on welfare, including a return to the contributory system of benefits so that a clearer link is created between what an individual puts in and what he or she draws out of the system. Labour, he says, would also ensure that no adult will be able to be live on the dole for more than two years and no young person for over a year.
Despite its high-minded reaction, it too wants to send a message as powerfully as it can, within the bounds of good taste, that Labour will have no truck with the Mick Philpotts of this world if it wins back power in 2015.
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 Telegraph.co.uk | Rehn: big bank depositors could bear cost of bank failure Telegraph.co.uk Plans from Brussels put the onus on bank depositors, rather than the taxpayer, to bear the costs of bank failures. "Cyprus was a special case ... but the upcoming directive assumes that investor and depositor liability will be carried out in case of a bank ... Watchdog did not have timely Bank of Cyprus data on Greek debt: report Bank of Cyprus Boosted Greek Bond Holdings in 2010, Report Shows EU's Rehn: Big Depositors Could Suffer in Future |
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 FRANCE 24 | Greek e-ticket ad riles gays, truckers FRANCE 24 A Greek e-ticket ad will be withdrawn from television after managing to insult both the country's truckers and its gay community, top-selling Ta Nea daily said on Saturday. - A Greek e-ticket ad will be withdrawn from television after managing to ... |
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 Greek Reporter | Greece Wants To Boost Greek In Schools Greek Reporter He said that the government's goal is to support the Greeks abroad, in their effort for integration but also help them keep their Greek identity and culture. He said that he wants to help boost Modern Greek language departments at foreign universities ... |
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 CNBC.com | EU's Rehn: Big Depositors Could Suffer in Future CNBC.com Big bank depositors could take a hit under planned European Union law if a bank fails, the EU's economic affairs chief Olli Rehn said on Saturday, but noted that Cyprus's bailout model was exceptional. "Cyprus was a special case ... but the upcoming ... Watchdog did not have timely Bank of Cyprus data on Greek debt: report Bank of Cyprus Boosted Greek Bond Holdings in 2010, Report Shows Laiki's UK arm to escape Cyprus deposit charge |
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Greece's OPAP gets shareholder approval for disputed IT deal Reuters UK Greece's privatisation agency, HRADF, is selling all but 1 percent of the government's 34 percent stake in OPAP as part of Greece's efforts to raise 2.6 billion euros in privatisation proceeds this year. The OPAP sale, along with the privatisation of ... |
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 Kathimerini | German Tourists Big Spenders In Greece Greek Reporter tourists While much enmity remains between Greeks and Germans because of Greece's crushing economic crisis and the view from Berlin that it's because of a laissez-faire attitude about work, it hasn't kept German tourists from coming – and spending. Germans account for most tourism revenues |
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 Moneycontrol.com | Laiki's UK arm to escape Cyprus deposit charge Las Vegas Sun The Bank of England's new financial watchdog says savers, big and small, in the British arm of the Cypriot bank Laiki will not have to pay a levy on their deposits. The Prudential Regulatory Authority says 270 million pounds ($410.5 million) worth of deposits in ... Watchdog did not have timely Bank of Cyprus data on Greek debt: report Greek Cypriot Finance Minister Michalis Sarris resigns Cyprus to probe Greek bond purchases |
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Moneycontrol.com | Greek Cyprus finance minister quits, capital controls partly eased GlobalPost Greek Cypriot Finance Minister Michael Sarris quit on Tuesday after concluding talks with foreign lenders on a bailout that forced the island to slap unprecedented losses on bank depositors in return for aid. The news came after Greek Cyprus announced ... Watchdog did not have timely Bank of Cyprus data on Greek debt: report Cyprus to probe Greek bond purchases Can Cyprus' economic crisis end long division between Turkish north and Greek ... |
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 Kathimerini | Troika's demands for civil service sackings places strain on Greek coalition Kathimerini The cohesion of Greece's three-party government is set to be put to the test over the next few days as a second consecutive day of inconclusive talks with the troika ended with Administrative Reform Minister Antonis Manitakis considering his future in ... Greek lawmakers approve new bill to spur investment, boost tourism Glimmers of hope for Greek recovery Greek govt resumes talks with troika inspectors on terms of further bailout |
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Sarah Lim: Merced's 'Mixing Bowl' -- Greek immigrants left mark in early 1900s Merced Sun-Star In his address at Courthouse Park, Taft celebrated the American melting pot by saying, "We have Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Bohemians, Hungarians, Italians and Greeks, and we have shaken them all up in a bowl and we have ... |
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 New Europe | SOCAR vs. Gazprom for Greece's DEPA New Europe BAKU – State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR is competing with Russian gas monopoly Gazprom for Greece's public gas corporation, DEPA, which is being sold as part of the Greece's privatisation programme. But there is more at stake than just buying ... |
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 Greek Reporter | The Spare Greek Diet Of WWII Greek Reporter katoxi Few Greeks are left to remember what happened 72 years ago this month, when, after the Greek Army repulsed the invading Italians at the start of World War II, Nazi troops invaded the country on April 6, 1941 and entered Athens three weeks later ... |
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 Greek Reporter | Crisis Leaves Greek Military Outgunned By Turkey Greek Reporter Struggling with a crushing economic crisis that has cut government spending across the board, Greece's military is seeing itself unable to keep pace with rival Turkey in armaments and preparedness. The cuts have meant that Greek pilots have not been ... |
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Sights and Sounds Festival at St. Thomas Greek Orthodox Church Saturday Patch.com The festival features more than 1,000 sights—artwork, crafts, and photography in more than 24 categories—and 20 hours of sounds—solo, group, vocal, and instrumental musical performances, dances, and theatrical presentations, in both Greek and English. |
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An unusual suspect arrives at annual Latin Day: Greek BurlingtonFreePress.com The youngest students were middle-schoolers at the Riverside School in Lyndonville, where Latin is mandatory, and where some students have even been known to study Greek or Hebrew at lunch hour. That's according to Roy Starling, the Latin teacher. |
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New Greece law to boost investment Peninsula On-line ATHENS: The Greek parliament approved legislation late on Thursday to boost private investment, a key condition to get the crisis-struck country out of its worst-ever peacetime recession. The new investment incentive law aims to cut red tape by making ... |
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