THE PARTY leaders all looked pretty pleased with themselves after Friday’s crunch meeting for the economy at the palazzo di popolo. They all took credit for collectively taking the decisions that would spare the country from entry into the support mechanism.
We have been hearing nothing else but tributes to the political consensus achieved, for the last 24 hours, with hacks and politicians getting misty-eyed over the unity that would supposedly save the economy and spare the country entry into the support mechanism.
All this self-congratulatory fuss about one positive decision – the wage freeze in parasite sector, which should have been implemented two years ago – and several unjust tax measures adopted for no other reason than to keep union bosses happy.
It was quite disgusting that our wise and caring leaders approved an increase to VAT that would reduce the purchasing power of the poorest members of our society and imposed an additional tax on the earnings of private sector workers, to which cash-strapped companies would also contribute.
And this, because the union bullies, encouraged by the brainless commies of AKEL, wanted the “burden of the economic crisis” to be shouldered by everyone. As if everyone was to blame for the bloated public payroll that the state cannot afford.
But this cheap union propaganda, repeated by the comrade and his party flunkeys does not stand to rational scrutiny. In the three years of the economic crisis, total pay rises in the public sector were about 15 per cent, whereas in the private sector workers were lucky if they received CoLA.
And how did the public parasites share in the biggest “burden of the economic crisis” – unemployment? The state should have sacked 8 per cent of the public parasites so that everyone shouldered the burden of unemployment. And how about cutting the pay rises they received over the last three years as well?
FRIDAY’S meeting had one positive outcome. It pissed off those ugly, miserable, self-regarding, bullying nobodies who run the unions and believe they have a God-given right to run the economy as well. They could not stop crying because they had not been consulted before Friday’s decisions were taken.
Listening to their laments, about the burial of social consensus, the death of social dialogue and the blow to peaceful industrial relations, on yesterday’s radio shows, was thoroughly entertaining and uplifting.
Social dialogue and social consensus was the means through which public sector unions had even their most insanely greedy demands satisfied, over the years. This was why there was industrial peace and why we have the most privileged and overpaid public sector in the world.
It is thanks to this warped social consensus, that a state teacher’s earnings more than double after 20 years of service (from €25,000 to €55,000) without him or her being promoted once. Thanks to social dialogue, the laziest, most stupid, incompetent parasites are guaranteed a minimum annual pay rise of six per cent, even with zero productivity increase.
If social consensus is dead and buried as the distraught union fascists were claiming, we would like to know the location, so we can go and dance on its grave.
WHAT do we get in exchange for the generous pay and privileges social consensus has lavished on our parasites? A public service that offers a piss-poor service (just ask for a permit from the Town Planning Department) and state schools that offer a crap education (afternoon private lessons are big industry and kids get the lowest scores in international tests).
Talking of the uniformly lousy public service, it is outrageous that union bosses are constantly demanding for a clampdown on tax evasion. If the parasites at the Inland Revenue Department did their jobs properly tax evasion would have been eliminated. And they could also catch all those state school teachers who are violating their contracts by giving afternoon private lessons and not declaring their income.
Unless of course there is social consensus as regards law-breaking and tax evasion by public parasites.
IT WAS not a good week for Kyproulla’s banks as they posted record losses in their nine-month results. The B of C’s losses, taking into account the 50 per cent hair-cut of the Greek debt stood at a staggering €801 million.
Marfin Laiki’s losses were substantially smaller at €282 million, but this was because it made a provision of only a 21 per cent hair-cut for the Greek government bonds it holds. This was not the only sneaky thing Marfin did. Its five-page announcement about its nine-month results started off by announcing a €88.5 million profit.
The real news was buried on page five. Only at the very bottom of the consolidated income statement is there one negative; a €282.2m figure as net stated profit/loss attributable to shareholders. And there was no mention of the fact its accountants had incorporated the smaller hair-cut.
The trick worked, because the next day its share price was up 7.6 per cent. It was back down the following day.
NOBODY could have been surprised to read that our top academics, apart from their princely salaries, have had their sophisticated snouts in the tax-free, state allowances trough, ever since the establishment of the University of Cyprus, 20 years ago.
As honorary members of our kleptocratic elite, professors get a 12 grand allowance and associate professors 7 grand. This allowance may be unlawful because it was not granted in the conventional way. Apparently it was decided when the university first opened as an added incentive for attracting good professors, and – surprise, surprise – it has been kept in place ever since.
Our good friend the rector, Costas Christofides said the allowance was still being given in order to attract the best academics to state universities. There was clearly a danger that if the state university did not offer the 12 grand allowance on top of an annual salary in the region of 70 grand, the best academics would be snapped up by Frederick University.
CLEAN-CUT, blue-eyed boy Andreas Pitsillides, the DISY deputy made us all laugh this week when he issued a hysterically, self-righteous statement, expressing his disgust at the scurrilous rumours, presumably, about his sex life, that had been posted on several web-sites and blogs.
With his strong-worded statement, which he asked newspapers to publish in full, Pitsillides stirred the curiosity of hundreds of thousands of people who had never heard the malicious gossip, prompting them to find out why he had made such a fuss in the first place. Result – everyone has now heard the disgusting and vile gossip.
The rumours apparently were sparked when, after midnight on a Saturday, security at the American radio station in Nicosia, notified police about a car that was in the vicinity of the station. When the cops arrived they found Pitsillides and a friend of his in the car. This was all.
Libel laws do not allow us to repeat the rumours the followed, but we can repeat what the pissed off Pitsillides said in his statement which was unintentionally enlightening.
The rumours were “slanderous, cowardly, totally false and dangerously untrue,” he said, and explained why: “Never in my 34 years, have I committed anything obscene in my car and, certainly, never in my life have I had a foreign person in my car.”
For those who still did not get what the fuss was about, he had this to say: “I am saddened to note that only sick and unbalanced minds could think, that going for a drive with a respectable, on all accounts, friend could automatically imply something obscene and immoral.”
I FULLY sympathise with the DISY deputy and feel a bit sorry for him having never in his life done anything obscene in his car. I
am not talking about now, but when he was 19 or 20 did he never get up to mischief in the car, like the rest of us?
Being caught in flagrante in the car by the cops at the Makarios Stadium area, back in my days – there were no houses then – was part of growing up, something you could boast to your friends about and make your parents, whom the cops would call up to report you, feel ashamed.
I am certain the prim and proper, church-going Pitsillides is too much of a prude to ever have done something so immoral 15 years ago, which may be why he was so shocked by the false allegations. Just look at his boyish face, exuding angelic innocence and you suspect that, in his 34 years, he might not have had sex anywhere, ever, not even of the DIY type.
“THEY WENT as far as calling me a spy of the Americans and a Jehovah’s Witness,” the man, who never in his life allowed a foreigner in his car, complained in his written moral sermon, before issuing a grave warning about the ills awaiting our society.
“As other citizens, from time to time, have also fallen victims to similar savagery, I would like to warn, with my announcement, about the visible danger of our society degenerating and becoming so warped that, that it would in the end it be more like a jungle of wild and bloodthirsty beasts than a society of people.”
Why has Pitsillides been targeted? His own explanation is that Omonia fans wanted to destroy his reputation, because apart from being devoted supporter of APOEL, he was trying to scupper a sponsorship deal Omonia was supposedly negotiating with Gazprom. But the mud-slinging would not stop him, he defiantly declared. Thankfully, he also declared there would be no other statement about going for a midnight drive with a respectable friend.
OUR GOOD friend Charilaos celebrated his 55th birthday the Friday before last, at his favourite Nicosia haunt, Aperitivo with a small group of his former colleagues.
Among them was the government spokesman, the Attorney General, the finance ministry perm sec, a former DISY deputy (not a colleague) and the Akel spokesman, Stavros Evagorou, who appears to have taken over the post of Party bon viveur from Nicos Katsourides.
Charilaos’ commie guests seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, indulging in the capitalist vice of quaffing champagne. It all looked like good old-fashioned bourgeois decadence, even though one newspaper mischievously suggested, last Sunday, that Charilaos’ party could have been discussing with the AG how to wreck Yiorgos Lillikas’ political ambitions.
This may come as a disappointment to Lillikas but it was the last thing on the mind of our friend’s guests. They were far too busy having a fun-time, chatting to and eyeing up the two gorgeous, Russian babes that had joined Charilaos’ party. The champagne and presence of a couple of pretty, young women make even hard-line commies behave like normal men.
SPEAKING of Lillikas, it is becoming clearer by the day that he is the Archbishop’s chosen one. Chrys 2 seems determined to make his fellow Paphite the presidential candidate of the lunatic faction that would ensure Turkish occupation troops would leave Kyproulla, all refugees returned to their homes, all settlers returned to Turkey and the island was re-united under the Cyprus Republic.
Chrys announced he would invite all parties, except AKEL and DISY, to a meeting early next year to forge the brave new Cyprob policy and choose the candidate that would lead us to salvation. Only Lillikas has the intelligence, the courage, the cunning, the international connections, the strategic mind and the Paphite origins to pull off such a feat.
And Big Bad Al meanwhile, should mind his own business instead of appearing on our state TV and mocking Chrys’ master-plan. Is he trying to deprive us of our living during recession?
