A special form of indifference to human suffering

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I admit that I am no great fan of Chris Giles at the FT, but I had no idea that he was quite as unpleasant as he shows himself to be in an article on Greece in this morning's FT that is headed:

Tsipras has earned his punishment

and which is subtitled:
The Greek people are enduring the consequences of their prime minister's childish misbehaviour
The analysis that he offers has to be one of the most incomplete that paper has, I hope, ever tried to offer in support of an argument. The essence is that:

Greece has achieved much since receiving the bailout loans, reducing budget deficit from 15 per cent of national income in 2009 to 3 per cent in 2014. It has implemented many necessary economic reforms; and the programme began to work, with Greek output growth topping the eurozone league table in the third quarter 2014. This progress was made despite Greece persistently failing to implement fully the reforms to which it had agreed.

And then he says:

Deploying the kind of tactics that would shame student politicians, the Syriza government has thrown all this hard-won progress aside in an attempt to extract more money from other European countries.

Staggeringly Giles ignores that Tsipras was elected by popular mandate.

And equally staggeringly there is no mention in the article of the cost of the reforms. There is no hint that GDP has fallen by 25% or that more than 50% of the young are unemployed, or that healthcare has disappeared for many or that poverty has reached levels the EU should never tolerate. No, according to Giles all that matters is that the banks were in sight of being repaid and Tsipras took that away from them. Why he might have done so is not even mentioned.

It takes a special form of indifference to human suffering to be able to view the world through such a lens. It's one I hope I never understand.


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