Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Cllr Isidoros on a personal rescue mission to Greece
Tottenham Green councillor, Isidoros Diakides, has sent me a link to the Greece Solidarity Campaign website and the video below, in which he features, about a 'mission' to Greece last year.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Is he asking them to all agree to pay their taxes?
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Permalink Reply by Isidoros on
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John,
Despite what you may be hearing, the average Greek pays (and avoids when he can) roughly as much taxes as the average European. Indeed the levels of VAT and income tax are comparatively higher than in most other EU countries, whilst tax liablities are attached to one's electricity bills and failure to pay leads to having your power supply cut-off, followed by prosecution and in many cases imprisonment.
It is however true that the very rich and the big corporations do avoid paying taxes, probably to an even larger degree than their equivalents in most other EU countries (though for sheer size, it would be hard to compete with the scale of celebrated cases like the infamous Vodafone deal here); many of the rich Greeks have found a haven for their money, helping them to avoid declaring it and paying tax, in banks and property investments in Britain and Switzerland, with the apparent acquiesence of the authorities in these countries.
Blaming (and demonising) the average Greek (and Spaniard, Italian, Portuguese, Irish, Cypriot or Icelander) for the crisis is in my opinion counter-productive. It is a fruitless smokescreen, which only serves to mask the real situation and the looming implications for all of us, across Europe.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Isidoros
In your opinion, do you think Greece should leave the Euro, or do whatever it takes to stay in the Euro?
(I might add I've read and heard accounts of real suffering of ordinary Greeks currently).
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Clive,
To a large extent my own opinion is almost irrelevant. For the record I would, if the Greeks were to ask my opinion, have advised them to leave the EURO, in order to be able to handle their debt crisis through the standard fiscal policy measures (like devaluation etc) avaialable to other non EURO linked countries, including Britain).
However, my mission and that of the campaign, is not to tell the Greeks what to do, but to help them and enable them to decide for themselves their own solutions without outside powers imposing their own, often self-serving prescriptions on them.
It is clear that the vast majority (c75% in recent opinion polls) of the Greek public want to stay in the EU and the EURO. I suspect that the main reason is that the EU and the EURO are associated in their minds with being part of the first world, fearing that an exit from either or both would result in Greece becoming a lower status country.
Whether I agree with this or not is immaterial and I feel that, whatever my own thoughts on the subject, I (and our campaign) have to support them and leave it to them to decide (just as I would if it was any similar issue involving us in Britain, or the people of any other country in the world).
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Isidoros thanks for your reply. It does seem that much enmity has been directed towards Brussels and to Germany in particular.
I don't know if its occurred to others, but one question I'd like to ask you, as a politically aware Greek is, why are ordinary Greeks not more holding to account their own political class for the debt and difficulty in which the country finds itself?
A secondary question if I may: what role, if any, is played in current Greek debt by the cost of the 2004 Athens Olympics Games?
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There is no point saying that it's only the rich avoiding taxes and hiding capital in West London property, the poor cannot. Does the Greek public service still offer final salary pensions of 125% or have they been cut back to 100% yet? The sums of money required to forgive Greece's debts are nominal, but that is not the point, figures like this wrankle with German taxpayers. Can you imagine what the reaction in Britain would be if we were being asked to bail out Greece (we effectively will be because so many of our banks hold Greek government bonds)?
One, possibly apocryphal, tale that did the rounds in the city a few months ago was that there were more Porsche Cayennes in Greece than people who declared their income as more than €50,000 per annum. I do get that Germany made a lot of money selling those big Porsche 4WDs to Greek citizens.
Greek citizens going through hardship have my sympathy, I doubt any of them were in anyway architects of their own situation. Collectively it will be a long time before anyone loans Greece money again at the rates they were, culturally they are serial tax evaders.
As for pointing the finger at Britain: Cheeky. The rates can be higher but the point is you have to collect it. VAT is collected for the government by businesses as is PAYE, very hard taxes to escape.
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Thanks Bushy,
'It would be good to think this is just because Greece has rock bottom tax rates but it hasn't - this is because for some people, what they actually earn and what they put on their tax forms are often different figures.
Last year, Horst Reichenbach, head of the EU taskforce offering technical help to the Greek government, said the amount of unpaid tax was estimated to be "in the order of 60bn euros [£49.49bn]".'
They really need some computer systems to collect those taxes from payroll before it's given to the employees.
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John,
I know you are trying to play devil's advocate, but please be a bit more careful with the statements you make; you never know, someone may not see the humour and take them seriously.
For the record, retirement age for both men and women in Greece is 65 (used to be 60 for women).
Early retirement in the state funded and/or regulated schemes is generally allowed from 60 years old, with 6% reduction for every year before 65 (it used to be until a few years ago a bit less tight and there are some special exemptions for a small number of specially dangerous and hazardous occupations).
Maximum pension levels in the earnings related schemes are up to70% of previous level of earnings, calculated I believe on the basis of last 5 years of employment (I may be a bit out of date on some of these, since the last time I looked some 3 years ago, because things have been tremendously tightened up in the last 2-3 years).
Pensions had been increased in the last 20 years or so at above inflation levels, but the Greeks were starting from a very low level and still the average pension (before the recent massive reductions that is) is below that of most European countries.
In the recent austerity measures imposed on the country the average pension has been cut by something like 40% in real terms, making the Greek pensions now probably the lowest in the EU.
Pensions in the Meditteranean countries are traditionally used to compensate for the much lower than the average EU levels of the other social security measures (especially things like unemployment benefits, sickness benefits etc), due to the social structures and traditions of these countries.
The average pensioner in Greece today is suffering hugely and deserves our support, not derision.
As regards bailing out Greece, I do not have enough space here to explain that the so called bail-out funds are predominantly earmarked to protect the usurious money-lenders (predominantly German and French banks) and international contractors of "prestigious" public works (mostly again ... you guess it, German and other northern european companies). One could say that they are not bailing out the Greeks but their own banks and businesses who are charging the Greek taxpayers exhorbitant rates.
As I said, it is wrong to blame and demonize the victims. I am attaching a cartoon which I think says it all.
Cheers
Isidoros
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Greek pensioner.docx, 52 KB
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OK.
I think you could do more taking your fight to the estate agents in West London facilitating the incredible capital flight from the Greek middle classes into London property. Someone needs to draw attention to that.
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Permalink Reply by Timon of Athens on
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Money is leaving the Euro and going to either London or Switzerland.
The issue at stake is that a common currency without a common government and without common taxation would end in failure. And it has.
The mythology of the whole situation is that whilst this is a US crisis it suddenly became via the corporate press and the corporate politicans and their parties a 'Greek' issue. Greece doesn't even represent 1% of EU economic activity yet it has been labelled as having all the modern sins under one roof. Germany went bankrupt three times in the 20th century, created untold misery through two massive world wars and has been bailed out countless of times, by Greece itself as well.
The time will come when the tide will turn and the shoe will be on the other foot. When Greeks enforce a moratorium of debt repayments, call in their loans to Germany and stop purchasing weapons from abroad (at least E10billion annually). Until then we wait, for Spain or Italy to default....if we dont do it first.
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