Money's too tight to mention............Simply Red

Ok, I know it's international workers day (bank holiday in France and the one day when virtually everything is shut), but I cannot understand all the demonstrations around Europe today.  Greece, Turkey (who think they are in Europe, or ought to be!) Spain and Portugal have all held demo's complaining about the austerity measures that their respective governments are putting into place to ease the current financial crisis.  Most were violent (with the exception of Portugal) but why??

As we say in Yorkshire, when you are up to your neck in Sh*t, you keep your mouth shut and try your best to get out of it.  Greece could go bankrupt if these measures are not put in place, who is going to benefit from that!! Are these people mad? No, they are union members.  Unlike the UK who killed most of the unions back in the early 80's, europe is still infected by these organisations.  In france we have some moderate unions, but we also have the CGT, whose sole objective is, as we say in french, is to faire chier. They even campaign for all companies to distribute all their profits to the staff rather than pay dividends to shareholders - these people live an a different planet!

i can understand that the Germans are not happy with having to work to 67 (an extra 2 years) just to bail out Greece from it's mess, who all retire at 62!

Europe needs to get a grip, it needs to recognize the mess it is in and deal with it The UK Labour party in particular also need to be honest with how dire the situation is, still if things stay as they are for the next week, it might no longer be their problem.  Bit of a poison chalice winning the election next week in my opinion.