Greece

It's all too easy to blame the Greek people for the mess their country is in.

I don't share that view.

For years the Greeks have been fighting for democracy and freedom to rule their own country.

Now the actions of the haves has led to an impossible situation to resolve.

Getting reliable information about what it's really like for the everyday person like ourselves to be living there at the moment is very difficult.

We hear about bailouts which concerns those at the top and has little relationship to what is happening at 'the bottom'.

I cannot believe that we are not going to have a crash and that our banks are going to suffer leading to even more hardship here.

Quite honestly we too are in an equally dire situation. We are in a similar situation to Greece financially.

Our politicians are relying us all to pull together. |They all want us to believe in 'The Big Society'.

I see little evidence that this exists.

Things could become worse than financial - the emotional upset  of the ordinary Greek people could easily spread to those that are angry over 'unfairness' here. Could we not have riots here that reflect what is happening in Greece?

I wish more people would focus on the likely future we have ahead but instead we avoid the issue and bury ourselves in football or 'networking ' on Facebook.

It was good to hear a thirty year old friend of mine say that she is avoiding Facebook as a place that wastes valuable time and energy. She is one of the few people in this age group that I respect.

We all need to focus on building an emotionally secure environment around ourselves.

More than ever before we are going to need reliable, communities of unflinching people who will commit to each other with time, support both emotional and financial though in my opinion the latter is less important.

Basically we need good reliable friends people you could trust with your life, people of the same character as we imagine was present within the French resistance movement in the last war.

Some people will want to label me as pessimistic - on the contrary - I feel very positive. The label I would attach is 'realistic' - one is able to be positive after one has faced up to the worse that may happen. This has been part of Greek philosophy for 2,000 years. Only when one has looked disaster in the face, can one smile. Reality then will always be better than we were expecting.

No wonder I can be cheerful!

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