TV Review
BBC 3- Coming here soon? Greece bust and broken.
Reporter Stacey Dooley travels to Greece to see how the young are adapting to the Euro crisis.
Dooley arrived at her hotel to find she is the only guest. Manageress Ada explained that it had never been this bad with the city experiencing the full force of the Government austerity cuts.
Acropolis
We are given a view from Ms. Dooley’s balcony of the Acropolis, birthplace of democracy.
Over half of young Greeks are out of work. Ms. Dooley and her camera crew take a walk around the city centre shopping zone. There are many premises closed with others offering up to 60% sale discounts.
A crowd has gathered around the rubbish bins and bottle banks. In return for collecting plastic bottles the desperate are given meal vouchers to use at the soup kitchens.
Athens
The camera rushes to a nearby block of flats where a woman sits on the edge threatening to jump to her death.
She is a civil servant from the newly defunct social housing department who along with the her 700 colleagues have all been made redundant. Her family’s future looks bleak.
Next the crew visit a doctors’ surgery, which is waiving the normal five euro fee charged bit he hospitals. The surgery doubles up as a charity shop with a storeroom packed with donations of recycled goods. “We trust God will help us.” Says a helper.
Ms. Dooley offers to help by delivering a parcel puffing as she clambers up hill.
Upping the momentum, we next join a protest group, ‘We do not pay!’
The protestors storm Athens underground railway station. They tape up the ticket slot machines and wave bemused commuters past the barriers. Thousands of new protest movements have sprung up all over Greece.
The scene moved to a train ride to the suburbs. We are told the railways cost 600 million euros a year to run but only generate 100 million in revenue.
We are taken around a posh gated housing estate. Ms. Dooley explains that the rich evaded 15 billion euros in tax which the state failed to collect.
Shipping magnate Harry takes her to a gun range and Ms. Dooley gamely tries a handgun. The message is clear- the rich must live behind armed guards. But haven’t they always? The 34 year old self made billionaire swears that everyone now pays their taxes. He convinces us that from now on if he so much as evades one euro he will go straight to jail.
Our second clip of entrepreneurism is provided by a trip to an island farm. Two former civil servants have sunk 40,000 euros of their families’ saving into a huge indoor snail farm catering for French cuisine.
We move back to Athens and the mood darkens. A full scale riot backs out. Ms. Dooley’s crew just make it to a large hotel before the shutters come down.
Outside the protestors and Police clash with increasing ferocity. Ms. Dooley explains in between mouthfuls of air from her gas mask that petrol bombs burn off teargas. That’s why demonstrators have to throw so many.
The damage is so widespread that bulldozers are needed to clear up the following morning. However the Government still passes the budget cuts in order to comply with the euro bailout terms.
We finally meet an M.P. inside Parliament. She says the Greek people face the choice between a bad solution and a catastrophic one, and they must remain within the euro area.
She morns the fact that Greeks have lost their trust in politicians, but reiterates that the cuts and recession are going to get deeper.
