Flower Feast May 1971, Alex/Polis

Flower Feast May 1971, Alex/Polis, a set on Flickr.

41 years ago, in my birthplace. Under the colonels junta, a flower parade with fake flowers - real flowers in earlier organized parades were long dead by the time the show started... Really funny to watch!

Incompetence pays off

Far too often have I participated in management meetings of commercial companies, when I've been stunned by how many managers out there are earning humongous salaries, while sitting squarely in fabulous Peter's chairs. I believe this is the reason that, when business is slow, company management implements various degrees of rightsizing without the company actually experiencing any real performance challenges after the haircuts. On the contrary. I used to work for a company that fed half of the available headcount as company 'fat' so that each time quarters were missed a small percentage of the fat was burnt and numbers corrected. However, the whole process seems 'unfair' to good people who do their best and add value. Thoughts like "it's not bloody fair" crosses their mind. All I had to tell them is what a New Yorker colleague once told me, one with a rabbi wisdom: Never say "It's not fair". Who ever told you life is fair? Always tell them, "it's not good for the company".

Even so, if the top suckz there's not much you can do about it. Until the BOD, if there is one, decides to take care of the problem and sends C-level officers homewards. Unfortunately, in the US this is done far too often and in Europe almost never ever. You can even 'shag' the chairman's spouse and still stay in place. Especially then... They might put a contract on your head, but they will never shack you.

On a serious tone, maybe it is due to the reigning incompetence in companies that European Economy is up for grabs. Even at the level of sovereign countries. Because, those managing public administrations, on top of being managerially incompetent, are also (party) 'political'. Meaning, they are used to lying in their face, nepotist, live on kick-backs and quite often range from mildly corrupt to extremely corrupt.

How do you solve such a problem? A colleague mentioned recently to me, simply and honestly: Where there's a will there's a way, he said. First, there must be a will and compelling reasons to have a will. Like people in the streets really start beating the living sh*t out of their politicians for being so incompetent and corrupt. Already started in Greece. Happened in Rhodos (a crowd attacked authorities reps attending a parade), and the far North (Evros, an old man beating with his cane Ntolios*,  an ex-vice-secretary of Interior). These guys need to start running for their lives instead of thinking that will always get away with murder as they are used until now.

Once there's a will, like in Mario's Italy more or less, then you need action on both the short and the medium/long term. The obvious short term remedy is actual punishment (effective jail service and large fines to return misappropriated capital) of those guilty. This almost never happens in Greece, for instance, as many judges are often among those unfair fraude 'game' participants. The longer term solution is education reforms to start telling the youth a different role model story than is the case today, especially in the GIPSI countries, and also in some not yet inside the club of Euro desperados. Even so, it will take whole generations, if ever, before the system gets corrected.

The other way is of course the Plato Utopia way, but this is not sufficiently democratic and therefore politically incorrect. Let's wait for a Wall-e society then... in the year 2525!

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* It was quite unfortunate that this happened to Ntolios, as he is one scarce example of political integrity in the current times in Greece, compared to his notorious peers and colleagues active today. This shouldn't have happened to him really, and, as it turns, he behaved as quite a gentleman handling the incident, as the footage showed on Youtube later on. On the other hand, there have been others, holding until over a year ago leadership positions in the local Administration (Prefecture), who were also beaten up in the streets, but they in particular deserved every bit of it. And more. The Mafia practices of one such character related to gambling, womanizing and extortion made him an ideal target for a gang payback attack. He's lucky he's still alive. This is the kind of functionaries the beloved PASOK party selected to lead the country for far too long. Socialists, my ass!

Yellow flowers...

Yellow flowers..., a set on Flickr.

Blame the Commission... nooot?!

A good friend of mine pointed me to this NYT article this morning by Mark Mazower, a History Professor at Columbia. I read it with great interest and I initially thought it put forward an unusual point of view. An approach that could easily lead to the conclusion that even now, with their current problems, the rest of us living in Europe, should in fact be grateful to present day Greeks for leading the way once again, and showing (uncovering) the notorious incompetence of Mandarin functionaries serving the European Commission. Read Mazower's article to see what I mean. 

What the article won't answer though:

- Was there any genuine Greek thinking behind the moves that changed the course of history the last 200 years, as Mazower defends, when Greece found itself at the forefront of the new evolutions, or it just happened? I believe it just did despite Greeks themselves, and not because they had planned it so. They were too powerless in all those events to mean anything whatsoever. There is no 'conspiracy theory' behind, and certainly there was no 'butterfly effect' chaos theory at work in the series of those events. Many of the historic incidents occurred of course with Greek involvement because it so happened that Greece was at the cusp between important empires, and at the frontiers between trouble geographies of great geopolitical importance. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

- What is Mazower's conclusion then? He just mentions that Greece will lead again an historic evolution that has as objective to prove the incompetence of Euro-Mandarins (BTW, he must have 'borrowed' the term from Derk-Jan Eppink, a well-known Dutch journalist, and a Belgian MEP since the latest Euro Parliamentary polls, who once wrote a great book about Commission Mandarins). Looking at today's mess, again it so happens that Greeks have been the greatest abusers of funds acquired for free by joining the EU, in the name of 'lifestyle'*, living like those in capitalist nations that at least have the economic infrastructure to support 'lifestyle'**, without a minimal presence of ethics and decency, virtues which actually exist to a much larger extent in the rest of the troubled GIPSI nations. No surprise then that 'mindless' Greeks, were the first who led their nation to bankruptcy by 'stealing' from their peers and their government, avoiding taxes and VAT, and wasting their money to show-offs in lifestyle and branding, spending more than they ever earned. Pretty smart cookies, ain't they? If Euro-Mandarins sitting in Brussels are notoriously incompetent to deal with monitoring and solving similar sovereign problems of their Member States, then, yes sir, it were the Greeks that proved the point, and we are sort of 'grateful' to them for having done so. But, as a Greek, feeling proud about it, or even calling upon Mazower's ideas to 'exonerate' myself, is the most insane argument anyone could come up with. It's like praising the Albanian Mafia operating in Belgium, killing, extorting, operating drugs and prostitution networks, and not being caught or put off, and by doing so proving the incompetence of the Belgian Police Force! Gimme a break! Now, really !!!

I hope us Greeks, reading Mazower's article, won't immediately rush to point at foreign factors as the wrongdoers in the situation we drove ourselves into. As this is something that we often do as Greeks. Blame others for our own wrongdoings and eventually believing our own fables. And, "Όλο μας αδικούνε!" (transl. They are always unfair to us). Moreover, comparing today's clusterf@ck with the 1821 Greek uprise against Ottomans, or those tragic Minor Asia incidents and swap of minorities in early 20th century - I am an offspring of parents from that emigration wave too, also Greece's fight against the German-Italian Axis during WWII, is, at minimum, a major insult to human intelligence. Anybody's intelligence!
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*A leading Greek economist, Tsakanikas, claimed in a "De Morgen" interview recently that even pensioners during the past 15 years of the 'Golden Age' in Greece would get to borrow money from Greek Banks and indulge themselves into a BMW or Merc experience. Go figure! BTW, I don't know if you knew, but an average Greek pension is way higher than its Belgian equivalent. If you don't believe me, go check it out...

** BTW, I just heard this very statement from the mouth of George Dalaras, the best Greek singer alive today, giving a radio interview at Deytero, an FM ERA station that is accessible via the Net too...