For all its pretensions of unity, Europe is made up of two very different kinds of country whose economies are not really compatible and which were never ready to share a currency at all. Greece is the most extreme example of the first kind – profligate Mediterranean places where productivity is low and inefficiency rife. Germany is the opposite – northern, thrifty and responsible, the EU’s cash cow.Isn't all this stuff about the hardy Northerners and the lazy, corrupt Southerners just the worst sort of racist stereotyping?
Mr Gilligan, I thought you'd worked for the BBC. Surely they must have taught you that we are all exactly the same, and that's why we should celebrate our difference?
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Greeks are still white so it's not so bad. Plus they produced lots of smart elitist white guys in the old days (Plato, Aristotle etc).
Isn't it more religious stereotyping? The contrast is between the countries that never really left the old catholic christianity - i.e. those that flounced half-out to become Roman Catholic, plus those that remained behind (now called Orthodox) - and those that conclusively left i.e. that underwent the Reformation.
France is a nominally Roman Catholic country though, and its economy is in considerably better shape than Italy's.
Also, standards of local governance decline and social clannishness increases the further south you go in Italy. Naples is astonishingly chaotic, more like a Third World city than a European one.
Some other factor is at work.
too many furriners!
Laban, for old times sake I was looking through your blog roll, and link after link - dead & dormant blogs.
Rather sad, you ought to have a link cull.
Even sadder I realised Ive not seen a really new blog for a while. Do people still start blogs or is the dumbed down lure of Twitter too great?
Even within Italy there is that north/south divide. I helped out with the southern separatist movement for a while.
Thirty years ago I was talking to some Torinese in an Italian ski resort. "The Third World starts at Rome" summed up their view of the South.
I have generally found southern Italians to be more friendly than northern Italians, both in London and in Italy.
One of those odd paradoxes of cultures where clan feuds and hostilities that can roll on for generations, also producing traditions of hospitality and studied good manners.
Who needs more enemies when you've already inherited plenty?
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