Debt crisis: Eurozone faces day of anti-austerity strikes
Another day in Europe with new strikes and protests. People are pissed off, but still seem to fail understanding, you can’t life beyond your means. Austerity bites hard. From The Telegraph.
General strikes in Spain and Portugal will spearhead a “European Day of Action and Solidarity” called by unions in the region.
Unions in Greece and Italy also planned work stoppages and demonstrations against austerity policies, which labour leaders blame for prolonging and worsening the continent’s economic crisis.
For Spain, the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy where one in four workers is unemployed in a deep recession, it is the second general strike in eight months in protest against draconian budget cuts.
Spain’s main CCOO and UGT unions have urged people to rally under slogans such as “They are taking away our future!”, deploying pickets during the night at airports, bus and railway stations.
Activists alerted social networks of an evening rally outside the parliament in Madrid. (Full article here)
Protests in Spain increasingly violent-M15 revival?
As the markets cheer the Spanish bond sales, protests in Barcelona are getting out of control. Austerity sucks, at least for the people. El pais reports;
Demonstrations took place across Spain on Wednesday in protest against spending cuts in the public education sector.
Some 20,000 students took to the streets in Valencia, according to EL PAÍS’ calculations, where the protests began in earnest in mid-February at the Lluís Vives public school and swiftly escalated after the arrest of a minor, resulting in bloody clashes between police and protestors during which dozens of youngsters were detained.
Live from Athens
People are gathering in Athens. Live feed from Athens below.
Rule Brittania
Guest Post by Sturdyblog;
“This isn’t how a great nation was built. Britannia didn’t rule the waves with arm-bands on.” David Cameron 5 October 2011
Brilliant stuff, right? Evocative, inspiring, witty. Also, inaccurate.
I apologise for robbing you, dear reader, of this romantic illusion, but Britannia was wearing arm-bands; great big ones. On her left arm she was buoyed by slavery and the oppression of the working classes at home; on her right the exploitation of subjugated colonies abroad.
And, ultimately, this is what Cameron’s blueprint for our future requires a return to. He said recently in Europe “Some of my fellow leaders complain that it’s all about markets and speculators, but none of us are proposing to change the market system.” But that system can only function when sitting on a cushion of human misery. Cameron’s ideas do not look to the future. They sigh with nostalgia towards a Dickensian past.
Don’t believe me? Read on.
Latest comments