There is a reason why the British media are ignoring the massive demonstrations in Athens and Spain. They are intrinsically anti-establishment, which means they are beyond the pale. The media is the bastion of the establishment in this country, setting and controlling the agenda, keeping minds off the terrifying prospect that the people are clamouring for power.

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Out of habit I still have The Telegraph website in my favourites but it's very rare I click an article now. It's getting to the point where I may just delete it and rely on links from blogs.

Look at todays page:
A photo of a middle aged lady in a bikini (why, for the love of God, why?)
Something about Sepp Blatter - can't even be bothered to read a sentence telling me what it's about
An article about £1m being spent on credit cards by civil servants (£1m? Come on, is this the best they can come up with, it's not even a distraction)
Something about someone from Yugoslavia

That's as much as I can take.

The only European related story is 'Berlusconi faces popularity test' a story I know will be of such little interest to me I won't even bother wasting my time clicking through to have it confirmed by the sub heading on the actual story.

The first business link looks promising, about the demise of the Euro. The business section sometimes does have one or two items of interest, and the stuff 'below the fold' so to speak is so dire I never even venture down there.

I really can't see what good this demonstration is going to do. Even if these people take control of Greece their demands actually cant't be met. Not won't be met but can't.

The benefits and entitlements Greeks receives are always going to cause huge deficits. If they default and drop out of the Euro they won't even be able to borrow and everything will have to be funded directly out of taxation.

The protesters aren't small government radicals seeking to rein in the state. They are sheep angry that the shepherd hasn't been looking after them. This is precisely what makes this situation so damned dangerous. Hundreds of thousands (may be tens of millions across Europe) of angry people whose demands literally cannot be met.

As with all revolutions - the people who start them rarely end up in control at the end. I don't know how this will turn out but it can't end well.

But they have all their systems of surveillance and legislation to protect them.

For the time being in any event.

Pressure builds.

The trouble is that the majority of sheeple (which in turn is of course the majority of the population everywhere) just want more of what they have been getting, but without any cost.The free lunch parties dominate, and will always dominate, until the bill finally can be put off no longer - then the world and his son rebels and chaos ensues. The Millenium worriers may not be too many years out in their doom-saying. As observed above, this cannot end well for any of us, other than the very well-heeled and those in their direct service (a.k.a. politicians)!

It's a crucial point. What will happen when the masses realize there is nothing left, subsidy and benefits are over?
Will the EU attempt a Federal Benefits scheme?
Will the public turn to cash, effectively throttling tax flow and forcing civil servants to moonlight their way into productive jobs?
There are no coherent policy demands yet.

Your last point is very true.

But - I can assure you that in Greece - civil servants do moonlight in other jobs ... and have done for years. They aren't the problem.

It's 93 billion Euro in uncollected taxes that's the problem.

"The Revolution will not be Televised" (Gil Scott-Heron)

not massive ... not yet. 50 000 max. in Athens. That's in a country where a major political party can pull out 500 000 for a rally. There's a long way to go before the Greek sheeple wake up.

OK ... thanks. I'll change that.

Any Greek with any sense would want to take his money out of the banks. He would then be holding cash euros, which will be worth at least double the drachma amount in bank accounts when Greece leaves the Eurozone. The same thing happened in Argentina when it defaulted. Its currency had been pegged to the US dollar, but when the banks closed no-one could get hold of their money, and when they reopened the value of their deposits had halved in real terms, as the Argentine peso crashed against the dollar. In Argentina it made sense to hold cash dollars, in Greece it would be folding euros (or gold and silver of course).

It is a truism that Greece should never have been in the Eurozone, the way it fudged its figures to get in has become the stuff of legend. The Eurocrats should not have allowed it, but it seems belief in the Projekt outweighs reality every time. But remind me, in ancient Greek mythology, what was that thing which follows hubris?

I never tire of saying this ... all Eurozone members fudged their figures to get into the Euro (except Luxembourg). In other words, only Luxembourg actually fulfilled all of the "Maastricht criteria" for entry.

Greece's fudge back in 1999 wasn't that bad comparatively.

It's only after 2004 that Greece's public finances fell apart completely because the 2004-2009 government neglected to collect taxes due ... for electoral purposes.

So the German taxpayer is being asked to bail out the Greek Gvmt. because of the taxes on Greeks it hasn't collected?
I can see that might be somewhat explosive.

The Germans should worry about their own gold, not about the fiat they are spending.

The Greeks are being asked to hand over all their gold as collateral! Greece is being raped of everything valuable that it possesses, just because the global fiat-based monetary system has collapsed.

The solution to the collapse of the global fiat monetary system is being postponed until the real pigs have acquired the gold of the potentially rebellious states.

Their gold will go towards the gold-backed global single currency to which the bankers plan to have the national currencies pegged. This intention is outlined IMF reports.

To what extent were those tax revenues "real", in that they represented realistically recoverable taxes? Or was it the case that the government gave up trying to collect the uncollectable?