In first link above, I wrote the following comment on Dick's post about minimum pricing:
"The sooner Greece falls, the better... Why? Because we need things to get a a lot worse before we can make it better. The reason is because no one will take action until thing get bad enough. While I don't know when it will happen, I do think Greece will fail, then Portugal, and Italy, and Spain... then France, and of course the UK. America right behind them..."
I was then rightly challenged by another commenter, who wrote:
"You are adopting the faux-Marxist position of the French situationists in the 1960s, and supporting the deliberate worsening of ordinary people’s lives, and deliberate provocation of the authorities so they will be provoked into striking back with disproportionate force, so they will be condemned, and so there will a popular uprising, and then the “we” that you refer to can take power, right?"
Well, I wasn't really adopting that faux-Marxist position at all, although when you read my comments you could not be faulted for thinking that I was. I did write one further comment in reply to try to justify my comment and mitigate any damage caused, but the damage had already been done and I sincerely doubt that last reply had helped -- it probably made it worse.
There is a whole lot of fail in my comments, definitely. We don't need things to get worse. We need to make them better. If we can do that before things get worse, I am definitely all for that. I just don't know how, and that frustrates the hell out of me. I didn't consider my comments about Greece properly before typing them. It's easy for me to sit here, in my computer chair, and type whatever the hell I think without actually being in the middle of it. I'm not in Greece, which is having huge problems and the very beginnings of civil unrest, so for me to make a frustrated, flippant comment about wanting it to fail sooner isn't fair to anyone in Greece. Not to fair to anyone, perhaps. My real issue is with the UK government and how they are walking all over us. And I do believe that here in the UK, it will probably get much, much worse before anyone actually stands up to the government's bullshit.
So I apologise to all of Greece and to the commenter for my insensitivity. Because you are all dealing with it right now. I am completely unable to offer any advice, because I have no idea how to fix any of it. (Maybe this kid does?) I didn't mean to be insensitive. Honest. I can only offer consolation, which is hardly enough I admit.
And I'll repeat that I don't want any of this to happen to Greece. I just think it will happen. I don't want any of the EU countries to fail -- not Portugal or Italy or Spain -- but from my magical armchair perspective it certainly appears as if it is all going tits up quite rapidly and I cannot see how German and French intervention is going to make it better in the long-term.
I hope I'm wrong. I often hope I'm wrong when I say some things, because I'm a cynical optimist. I hope, yet I somehow feel it's going to go horribly wrong -- like a child asking for money to go to a film for over 18s hopes and yet knows his parents are going to say "no" before he even gets the full question out. You still gotta ask, though. Right?
