Ah! The romantic smell of wood-burning fires permeates the village. Except it is anything but romantic. It’s the smell of fuel poverty. Over the past four or five years, Greeks have been abandoning heating diesel in favour of gas central heating, but this winter heating oil is cheaper than gas. Of course, it is not easy to switch back to heating oil if one has had gas installed, but the problem is many people cannot afford either, so they are resorting to wood-burning stoves, “σόμπες”, and fuck knows where they are getting the wood from. Suppliers of wood and wood pellets have taken advantage of the current fuel crisis to jack up their prices, so I imagine many people are foraging for wood. As I have said before, when former PM George Papandreou raised the price of heating diesel to the same price as road diesel, several people burned to death or died of smoke inhalation that winter. So far, winter has been mild, so there have been no reports of people dying as their wood-burner sets fire to the house or poisons the occupants with noxious fumes. Let’s hope it continues that way.
Sadly the new ferry service between Thessaloniki and Izmir has been cancelled due to the lack of demand. The company has said it hopes to restart the service in the spring. The story is covered here: https://www.voria.gr/article/titli-telous-mechri-to-kalokeri-gia-tin-aktoploiki-sindesi-thessalonikis-smirnis
It is a setback. We need developments like the ferry service to draw both nations closer together. Turkey is sabre-rattling at the moment. It could become very dangerous were it not for the fact that Erdogan is not limiting his aggression only towards the Greeks. Kurds, Syrians, Egyptians and Israelis are all subject to his rants.
The big scandal at the moment involves the MEP Eva Kaili (Εύα Καϊλή) who is also one of the EU Parliament’s fourteen Vice-Presidents. What’s her connection to Northern Greece? She’s a local woman. Supposedly a socialist, she has been waxing lyrical about the Qatari regime, not a course of action that would enamour her to other members of the Social Democratic bloc in the EU Parliament. Following a raid at her home in Brussels, Belgian police discovered around €600,000 on the premises. Her father was caught with thousands of euro in his luggage. Her partner is implicated, and it looks as if several other people are involved.
Here in Greece Kaili’s PASOK party expelled her, the PASOK leader calling her the Trojan Horse of New Democracy. Talk about passing the buck! However, it is clear that Kaili was moving in a rightward direction and was perhaps too cozy with the governing party. As I write, Kaili is in the slammer. Her assets in Greece and Belgium have been frozen, and the cash found on her and others’ premises as well as the cash in her father’s possession has been confiscated. Her father has certainly pushed her career through his connections with PASOK. You also have to wonder: does any other MEP have a parent in Brussels? Contacts, connections and good looks have played a huge part in Kaili’s charmed life. Greed has led to her current predicament.
Nepotism is everywhere but it permeates Greek politics.
Let’s start with three families. The current Prime Minister, Kiriakos Mitsotakis is the son of a former PM, Constantinos Mitsotakis. The PM’s sister, Dora Bakogianni, was Foreign Minister and her son, Kostas Bakogiannis, is Mayor of Athens. Going back in time, the current PM’s grandfather married the sister of Eleftherios Venizelos, another PM and the most significant Greek politician in the early 20th century.
Their main post-war or post-junta opponents have been the Papandreou family, which has provided the country with three generations of PMs, George, Andreas and George the Younger.
Before young George took office, the PM was Kostas Karamanlis, the nephew of Constantinos Karamanlis, a former PM and President.
There are countless other examples, but I’ll stop with one more. Melina Mercouri was Minister of Culture in all the PASOK governments until her death in 1994. Her father and uncle were an MP and Mayor of Athens respectively. If Melina and her husband, Jules Dassin, had had children, maybe the Greek Parliament would now contain one or more of her descendants.
It will be interesting to see how the Kaili case develops. She has a two-year-old daughter daughter, so will she still be in custody over Christmas and New Year? In the UK Brexiteers are ecstatic, pointing out that this is just the tip of the iceberg of EU corruption. They forget, however, that Baroness Mone is still at liberty having pocketed £29 million as her cut in a dodgy deal for hospital safety equipment, a sum that dwarfs whatever Kaili has received. There is also the small matter of the failed “Track & Trace” app, which supposedly wasted £37 billion. Just think: £37,000,000,000 for an app. Personally, I would have hired two teenage computer nerds, put them in a cellar, fed and watered them over a weekend, and given them £500 each. They couldn’t have done a worse job and the country would be £36,999,999,000 richer.