Delay rather than resistance

While they haggle over the minutiae, they are united behind the need to hammer the working class into submission.

They have agreed to a 15,000 more public-sector job cuts, making 150,000 in all, further deregulation of employment rights and slashing the minimum wage by a fifth.

None of the parties has a mandate from the people to carry through this assault on their living standards.

They are acting as local satraps of the EU, having agreed to the troika demand to appoint ECB former vice-president Lucas Papademos as prime minister. His loyalty, as theirs, is to the bankers rather than to the Greek people.

The current 48-hour general strike, which began today, was called by the public-sector union federation GSEE and its private-sector equivalent ADEDY under increased pressure from the Greek Communist Party (KKE) affiliated All Workers Militant Front (PAME).

It followed mass strike action across Greece on Tuesday, coordinated by PAME, together with mass protest rallies in 61 cities all over the country.

The repeated demands of the bankers, formulated by the troika, for more and more cuts in workers' living standards to resolve a crisis that the working class had no part in creating reflect the naked class loyalty of the EU elite.

The assault on wages, pensions, benefits and democratic rights is no one-off exercise. If accepted by the people, it would herald a decade-long process of reducing Greek workers to beggary.

This is the logical result of an unworkable experiment based on a European single market, a single currency and a single interest rate for countries with different interests and priorities and at varying levels of economic development.

While historically low interest rates benefited Germany, with its advanced export-oriented manufacturing sector, they encouraged unsustainable property booms in the Irish Republic and in southern Europe including Greece.

The euro has been a boon for Germany assisting its expansion but Berlin's austerity policy has choked off the possibility of other EU states cutting their deficits by increasing production and exporting goods.

Greece is being driven into the ground with no prospect offered by the Establishment parties than cuts and more cuts.

No wonder KKE general secretary Aleka Papariga insists that simply changing the faces at the top is futile and calls on the working class to drive out the government parties and to overthrow the class that holds power.

"Now the responsibility lies solely with the people. Either the people will completely sweep them away or they will pointlessly and unfairly waste their tears and indignation on the old and the new pseudo-saviours," she warned.

Thou shall not pray

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles professes and disappointment at the High Court ruling that Bideford Town Council exceeded its powers by summoning councillors to prayer.

Mr Justice Ouseley's judgement was not a ban on councillors praying before meetings. It was a ban on them imposing their beliefs on others.

It would be interesting to see what Pickles's reaction would be to a council composed mainly of people from another religion summoning councillors to their prayers.

Religious freedom also requires respect for people of different or no religious views.