The principals won’t
like this report. So let’s
press ahead anyway
Life of George
An uncertain stream
Is Scotland to be
regarded as a feeble
child in the playground?
Angus Skinner
Boredom will win
John Cameron
When protestors set fire to a German flag and the old Gestapo headquarters in central Athens, it indicated that the Greeks are starting to see the big picture. Germany turned a blind eye to the financial jiggery-pokery involved in Greece’s euro entry and then stood by for years doing nothing about the obvious mismanagement.
Its firms encouraged and profited from Greek profligacy and, as Angela Merkel well knows, much of the bailout money will end up back in Germany.
Instead of using cheap EU loans to boost its competitiveness, Greece blew the lot on the 2004 Summer Olympics and vast amounts of imported German products.
In 2008 Greeks bought 9 billion euros worth of German cars and goods but Germany imported less then 2 billion euros worth of Greek textiles and agricultural produce. In fact Germany repeated this pattern across Spain, Portugal and the rest of the indebted southern tier of Europe which still accounts for 15% of all German exports.
The bubbles which grew on the periphery were a mirror image of the German surplus and produced the disaster predicted by John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods in 1944. Selling to the captive Greek market was a fabulous deal for Germany’s large, politically connected export industries and the German workers employed in them.
It was sustainable as long as European banks bought Greek debt, and German banks in particular – especially government-owned ones – were delighted so to do.
German banks, pension funds and insurance companies hold 30 billion euros worth of Greek government bonds and these institutions expect to be paid off by the bailout. Indeed, if they do not get paid off they will be in serious trouble and the consequences for the German economy and taxpayer are what keeps Merkel up nights. Instead of lecturing everyone else, the Germans should stop being so high and mighty about a fiasco they helped create and use it as a learning experience. It was Angela Merkel’s misplaced reluctance to support a floundering Greece which allowed the contagion genie to escape and spread the crisis to other weak states.
In the long term, it is clear Europe can sustain neither the economically-dysfunctional Club-Med banana republics nor a Germany addicted to export-led growth.
Should we cut aid to
countries where gay
people are abused?
Elizabeth Goodwin
In July 2011, the UK government, along with other international donors, suspended budget support to Malawi. The move followed a worsening
of the human rights situation, not now just for the LGBT community,
but for all citizens.
Attitudes towards ‘women and gay people are the litmus test of whether a society is democratic in respecting human rights; we’re the canaries in the mine’. This quote from Peter Tatchell accurately depicts the slippery slope of rights abuses. Malawi, for example, has followed its recent criminalisation of lesbian relationships with restrictions on media freedom and increased police powers.
There is no sign of increased public understanding and all the time that civic education is interpreted as illegal ‘promotion’, this will not change. That is why an outside catalyst is needed. It is what gay rights activists want and it is what they say is working.
Gift Trapence is executive director of CEDEP, a Malawian human rights organisation. In 2010, it supported two men who were convicted after getting engaged. There was international condemnation. Despite that diplomatic pressure, there was no let up for vulnerable same-sex couples and CEDEP is now fighting two new cases, including one of two men arrested for cross-dressing.
In July 2011, the UK government, along with other international donors, suspended budget support to Malawi. The move followed a worsening of the human rights situation, not now just for the LGBT community, but for all citizens. Gift Trapence described how the cut in budget support has interrupted the supply of foreign exchange, of fuel and of medicines, making life hard for everyone. He then told how the government is using the LGBT community as cover for the cuts to divert people’s attention away from governance issues.
Despite the blame being attributed to the group he represents, he welcomes the decisive and coordinated pressure from donors. As well as managing the aid-dependent economy badly, he said, the government is directly funding the Pentecostal churches and inviting the pastors to preach hate messages on state television.
The suspension of budget support has had a great effect and compelled the government to start listening. In December, the Ministry of Justice referred a large number of restrictive and unpopular laws to the Malawi Law Commission for review. Among them are the sodomy laws.
According to Gift Trapence, should these laws be repealed, there will still be a lot of work to do to change public attitudes starting with members of parliament and the traditional and religious leaders, who are the gatekeepers of society. An especially important project will be one to build the capacity of the media to report LGBT issues objectively.
Until the laws are repealed, this work has to wait. Though, with the support of the UK, and other international donors, he hopes to start it sooner rather than later.
Elizabeth Goodwin works for VSO UK but is writing here in a personal capacity. She delivered this paper at a recent Young Thinker of the Year
event organised by the Scottish Review team.
