Greece's Latest Austerity Vote.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one the Greek Parliament yesterday (12/2/12) voted to implement a further E335million in spending cuts in order to release the latest tranche of EU bailout money needed to prevent the nations economy imploding at the end of March 2012. Unfortunately in Europe's second most corrupt country a large number of politicians decided to complicate the matter further by choosing to put their own electoral interests ahead of the national interest by voting against the cuts.

Outside the Parliament the public reaction was even more disorderly with a night of vicious rioting that saw almost 50 buildings burnt to the ground and 150 shops looted. Although it's hard to see how further destroying the country will help solve the problem it's easy to see why the Greek people are so angry. Up until now the years of severe cuts they've been forced to endure have nothing to do with them and little to do with economic reform. Instead they've been about sucking as much money as possible out of the country and giving it to the multinational banks that hold Greek debt. As a result the economic situation in Greece has only got worse trapping it in a never ending cycle of more debt and more austerity. Amid this economic death spiral homelessness is up, suicides are up, hard drug abuse is up and the sort of deaths you get in winter that are caused by a combination of a shortage of food and a lack of shelter have sky rocketed. Therefore it is essential that the October 27th agreement to write off Greek debt is implemented before we need to get Bob Geldof to organise a concert for them.

In fact it would be a good time for the insurers of Greek debt to announce that if the write off is not implemented they will treat any future Greek debt default as voluntary and not pay out. After all they've spent the last couple of weeks very publicly explaining to everyone they've already set aside all the extra money they'll have if they don't pay out.