At the risk of repeating myself

The problem with writing a blog is that at times you keep coming back to the same themes and repeating what you have said more than adequately before.

All well and good writing a piece on an old topic if people start reading the whole blog from the beginning. What I have learned though since checking the stats that we are kindly sent daily is that readers select various articles that they have found on the blog that are often the old pieces - probably pointed there by a search engine like google or bing.

I was this week once more going to return to the subject of unemployment, a subject about which most of my regular readers know that I am extremely angry, and social benefits. And the conservative view that the unemployed are all lazy usw. For the record the unemployment rate is a disgusting 24% in Spain. And while their PRIVATE BANKS are having to be bailed out (a continuation of the crisis of capitalism in 2008), and their PRIVATE BANKING CRISIS is having to be resolved by governments across Europe, this disgusting number is not going to go down.

And you want to tell me that all the unemployed in Spain are unemployed because they are too lazy to work? WHO IS KIDDING WHOM?

On the subject of scrounging and state benefits, rather than go over old ground I will point you back to two previous items that I wrote on the subject on this blog:

"The usual conservative nonsense about scroungers" dated October 5th, 2010, and

"Too many scroungers" dated September 19, 2011.

After hearing the solutions offered by the Marxist leader of the party that looks likely to win the upcoming elections in Greece, I would be highly sceptical that that will do much to resolve the issues either. Nationalising the banks for example sounds an interesting concept (at least it might remind them that they are banks, not casinos!). This, however, is not a new solution, and is beset with problems. Either the government buys them out, which is very expensive (and the Greek government is already broke), or you seize them and take them over free of charge, which will prove to be illegal.

I have read some sad stories this week about some talented people in Greece who worked hard for years to get qualified only to see their "good jobs" eradicated by the crisis. No new jobs out there, little hope of anything turning up for years, their lives ruined. And thrown on the scrap heap of the unemployed with the rest.

Good, solid, hardworking, intelligent people who wanted a fulfilling career and the interesting life that accompanies it. AND CERTAINLY NOT SCROUNGERS!