Greek mythology, by Boris Johnson

by Michael Burke

Guardian
June 20, 2011

It is increasingly clear as Greece stumbles towards the precipice that all Greek mythology is not ancient and that some very elaborate modern myths are also being created.

The villains in this fiction are the lazy and feckless Greek workers, who are responsible for the country's ills and whose intransigent attachment to lavish public spending is the reason a second bailout is required. The latest peddler of this falsehood is Boris Johnson, writing his £250,000 a year column for the Daily Telegraph, who in his latest instalment writes:

If the Greeks would only change their national character, and suddenly discover a Scandinavian faith in government combined with German habits of industry and thrift – then, or so we are told, the catastrophe could be averted.

The London mayor is a canny enough politician to distance himself from a xenophobic rant against the Greeks by an artful "so we are told". But to repeat myths without debunking them is to give them added weight. Although German tabloids such as Bild daily spew out nonsense about the work-shy Greeks, the opposite is the case. Greek workers have the greatest work pressures of all European countries, with the second-longest weekly hours and the greatest level of weekend working. Who says? The EU.

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