Okay, so we’re back in business (I hope). Quite a madhouse with plumbers bashing down bits of wall all over the place, and painters painting them up again. BUT we are thereby doing our bit to get the economy going again. Now, though everywhere else a great effort is being made to provide the middle classes with greater liquidity so that we can spend our way out of the recession, here in Greece we are being taxed and taxed and taxed some more because we have an enormous deficit hole to fill. However, how can you tax more when people are earning less? Now, the intricacies of the Greek Economy are such that nothing ever works as it’s supposed to. That is because we have an enormous black economy (bequeathed to us from the Nazi occupation when this pursuit began to thrive) so those who get taxed, are those who are honest, have nothing to do with the black economy and earn so much less than those who get away with murder, just about (and sometimes literally too). Which means, that any Minister of the Economy can do very little. Unless he tackles the real problem, which they rarely do. Why? Well, because as recent scandals of the current government indicate, these Ministers often form the very core of this black economy. We even had one ex Minister bragging that he used off shore companies to avoid paying tax, which, he rightly said, was a perfectly legal thing to do. As to the morality of the situation? Ah. He had an answer for that too. Whatever is not illegal is moral too.