28th Oct. Greece’s second national day. The first (on March 25th) celebrates the uprising against the Turks in 1821, and today, ΟΧΙ Μέρα (No Day), commemorates Mataxas’ clipped answer to the Italian Legate following Mussolini’s ultimatum. Whatever, the mythologies surrounding such events, the Greeks fought heroically in Epirus and checked the Italian advance.
Fighter jets are flying overhead just as I write. There will be military parades in nearby Perea and Thessaloniki. This time of year is big for Thessaloniki. The 26th is the feast of the city’s patron saint, Demetrius, and this year with the 26th and 28th falling on Monday and Wednesday, a lot of people have enjoyed a 5-day break.
Was the Epirus campaign worth it? The country is mired in scandals. To make matters worse, though there will be small-time fallguys, the real culprits will escape scot-free. The Tempe train accident? I doubt anyone will do serious jail time.
Pizza Fan, a chain I’d never heard of until a few days ago, and a bakery chain called Χωριάτικο are accused of massive tax fraud. This is a brief update on Pizza Fan: https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1319474/pizza-fan-owner-remanded/
In the case of the bakery chain, the following article speaks of police involvement: https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1319483/police-officers-suspected-of-leaking-information-in-horiatiko-fraud-probe/
The sums involved are so massive that one further question needs to be asked. Were both companies engaged in money laundering? The amounts seem to be more than simple cases of simple tax evasion.
And, though less money is involved, this case is a moral low point: a massive fraud involving a bogus charity, or “an unlicensed NGO” as one article called it. This gang urged people not to donate funds to a licensed charity. Instead, people were urged to donate money to Mr. and Mrs. Bogus to help pay for a sick boy’s treatment in the US. https://www.iefimerida.gr/english/greek-charity-accused-exploiting-sick-children-allegedly-targeted-nations-most-famous Of course, most of the funds raised were “diverted”.
Here in the north, fares for summer 2027 seem to be set to increase with Richter-scale exponentiality due to Trump’s Epstein Distraction War in the Arabian/Persian Gulf and the withdrawal of Ryanair from Thessaloniki. In the so-called “co-capital” of Greece there are currently, I believe, no direct flights to London. And what has the Greek government done to rein in the rapacity of Fraport? Fuck all. Fraport runs 14 airports in Greece and has a 40-year concession that runs out in 2057. Jet 2 will resume services at the end of March, but I have noted that a Thessaloniki-Stansted flight is much more expensive on any given same-day Stansted-Thessaloniki flight. How is this possible? The following is not AI generated.
10th November. Finally, we were in Prague at the end of last month. I don’t know much about former Eastern Bloc countries but the progress they have made since the break-up of the Soviet Union stands in stark contrast to the infrastructural mess we still see in Greece. In terms of prosperity, too, the comparisons and contrasts are also stark. Average salaries in Czechia and Slovakia are much higher than the Greek average, and the cost of living is significantly lower too. And for some inexplicable reason, we still love the fucking place.