Protests in Europe

[Bram Hengeveld]

In some Southern European countries yesterday was a day of strike. Riots in Spain, Italy and also in Portugal I believe.

To be honest its starts to really worry me which way we are heading with this union.

Your thoughts?

 

[Xosé Estrada]

Particularly in Spain we are sick of paying the private banks and multinational failures with our (the citizens) money.

At the beginning of this crisis we had a great healthcare, unemployment insurance, social benefits... and 35% public debt, one of the lowest in European union.

But then private banks and business started to fall because their corruption and malpractice, and our governments and most of our politics, with links and interests with them, jumped to rescue them raising the debt to levels we can't stand anymore.

And still in the rest of the EU people thinks they are giving money to Spain like if it was for the Spanish citizens, when it is for the broken banks. When I say broken banks I don't mean their executives who made a lot of money with this.

It's kind of the same than USA in Afghanistan, if you divide the money they spend in war there by the number of Afghans, would be one million dollars for each of them... same here with the banks.

 

[Rui F. Martins]

Couldn't agree more with you, here in Portugal is the same thing, the governement is always increasing taxes, cutting on the health care, education, etc budgets and everyday we ear in the news that the countrys debt is increasing more and more, and it is not because portuguese citizens are lazy and don't want to work or because they don't pay enough taxes, by the contrary we work more than in certain countrys that criticize us. So were does the money goes? it goes to private companys and to the banks, and the situation doesn't gets better because they don't worry about what they spend, for example, some weeks ago in a newspaper they were saying that a public company, that as been cutting his worker salaries had bought a all new fleet of cars for the administrators, so you can see why we have an increasing debt

 

[Alberto Casado]

And still in the rest of the EU people thinks they are giving money to Spain like if it was for the Spanish citizens, when it is for the broken banks.

More than that, it is ultimately for their (German, UK...) banks, that would be automatically broken if Spanish banks default.

Meanwhile, not a single bankster in jail.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Meanwhile, not a single bankster in jail.

I find that really incredible still ;( Oh well, criminal acts still pay off it seems in the EUSSR