Body Armour

[Kostas]

I'm hoping for MEH's input on this but I am happy to hear anyone's opinion.

Due to our various little problems here in Greece, our great government has decreed that our police forces must now buy their own ammunition, guns, body armour, (even fuel for their cars/bikes!).

I have a friend in the riot police who wants to upgrade his body armour and has been looking for something that is both stab and bullet proof. We've been looking around, (mainly I have on the internet, his English is not very good), and I can't find anything. Is there any armour that can protect against both?

[shootwillus]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bullet+stab+proof+vest

[Kostas]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bullet+stab+proof+vest

Okay I feel silly now.

[Patrick L.]

I'm hoping for MEH's input on this but I am happy to hear anyone's opinion.

Due to our various little problems here in Greece, our great government has decreed that our police forces must now buy their own ammunition, guns, body armour, (even fuel for their cars/bikes!).

I have a friend in the riot police who wants to upgrade his body armour and has been looking for something that is both stab and bullet proof. We've been looking around, (mainly I have on the internet, his English is not very good), and I can't find anything. Is there any armour that can protect against both?

The major problem you have is that nearly one out of ten people in Greece work for the government. It's BS that they are making your friend buy his own equipment when there are other places to cut budgets from.

[Kostas]

The major problem you have is that nearly one out of ten people in Greece work for the government. It's BS that they are making your friend buy his own equipment when there are other places to cut budgets from.

The police here as a rule are right wing, some of them extreme right. That means that they are not represented nor protected my the all-powerful Communist Party controlled trade unions. Their own union is crap. Therefore we have rapid reaction motorcycle cops paying for their own petrol and being issued cheap faulty Chinese made helmets, while the personal trainers at the Parliament Accounts Dept gym are untouchable.

There is so much BS here in Greece. 37% unemployment for under 30s, cuts to the lowest private sector worker pensions, illegal taxes on dividends, illegal taxes on property, all to put off the inevitable, our default.

Meanwhile the politicians have taken no wage cuts. The highest ranking civil servants have received wage increases. The civil servants who are supposed to be fired under the IMF terms are merely being sent home, but will continued to be paid 2/3s of their wage plus full social security contributions plus bonuses plus plus plus.

I see myself leaving soon. 1 in 3 Greeks under 35 want to migrate, and we probably will.

[Patrick L.]

The police here as a rule are right wing, some of them extreme right. That means that they are not represented nor protected my the all-powerful Communist Party controlled trade unions. Their own union is crap. Therefore we have rapid reaction motorcycle cops paying for their own petrol and being issued cheap faulty Chinese made helmets, while the personal trainers at the Parliament Accounts Dept gym are untouchable.

There is so much BS here in Greece. 37% unemployment for under 30s, cuts to the lowest private sector worker pensions, illegal taxes on dividends, illegal taxes on property, all to put off the inevitable, our default.

Meanwhile the politicians have taken no wage cuts. The highest ranking civil servants have received wage increases. The civil servants who are supposed to be fired under the IMF terms are merely being sent home, but will continued to be paid 2/3s of their wage plus full social security contributions plus bonuses plus plus plus.

I see myself leaving soon. 1 in 3 Greeks under 35 want to migrate, and we probably will.

I knew it was bad but only someone living there can give a real description of the problems you face. In the United States, the pictures of rioting by young people in Greece is attributed to cutting their "government handouts". It makes it seem like young people in Greece are spoiled and used to the government taking care of them.

If what you say is true, and the corruption by the politicians and the elite is that bad, I would be protesting in the streets as well.

[Kostas]

I knew it was bad but only someone living there can give a real description of the problems you face. In the United States, the pictures of rioting by young people in Greece is attributed to cutting their "government handouts". It makes it seem like young people in Greece are spoiled and used to the government taking care of them.

If what you say is true, and the corruption by the politicians and the elite is that bad, I would be protesting in the streets as well.

Kids here don't get and never will get government handouts. Public health care is so abysmal that it can't be counted. They don't get pensions and they never will (but they still have to pay into the system).

But that isn't why they are rioting. They are rioting because they know there is no future for them. They know that these bailouts are just to save the politicians, the fat-cat civil servants, and the banks (though the banks aren't really to blame here). They also know that the bailouts are pointless and damaging and only making the inevitable crash more and more destructive.

There are of course some stupid kids, maybe more than just some, who are rioting because they have been brainwashed by the hard left or far right or whatever, but they are in a minority.

This is a fucked up country with a great past, (not just ancient, until quite recently too), but no future.

P.S. The "elite" here, i.e. the rich, can be divided into two groups. The smaller group has become rich through government cronyism. The larger group have become rich despite government uselessness and interference. It take 3 days and 500 Euro to set up a company, (legal paperwork), in Holland, 1 week and 500 Euro in France, and 8 months and 3000 Euro in Greece (not including bribes to get the job done, not to get something illegal covered up). This explains why there is a great deal of rage from private sector workers and the youth against the politicians, the union bosses (often the same people) and the cicil servants, but relatively little, compared to other countries, against the "rich". The only sector worth working in here, despite it's own problems right now, is the maritime sector, but it can't absorb enough workers.

[Kostas]

What I said a year ago about sums it up:

We got what we asked for. Everyone is blaming the naughty politicians, but we are the idiots who continued to vote them into power and support their socialist programs which provided half the population with civil service jobs, which the State was incapable of paying for.

The other half who didn't get civil service jobs, or didn't want them, (people like me), are to blame too because we didn't exactly go out on the streets and hang the fuckers up by their toes like the Romanians did to Ceauşescu. To say our politicians weren't as bad as Nicolae only means that their lives could have been spared, after a good beating and exile to Somalia of course.

Take heed lest you all follow the same path...

(And to people who might say that the European and US banks who lent to Greece, and the countries who fund the IMF, are victims in all this, you're wrong. Any bank who felt it was clever to buy government bonds promising 7% from a piddly little country with no manufacturing base, a laughable services industry, out-dated tourism facilities, a gigantic state sector, a ludicrously high national defense budget, and politicians well known to be thieves, got what they were asking for too. If you want to blame anyone, blame Goldman Sachs, who helped Greece cook its books).

[squat_gnome]

I see myself leaving soon. 1 in 3 Greeks under 35 want to migrate, and we probably will.

so where are you heading to?

[The Emancipated Freak]

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/default.aspx

If there's a place to buy riot gear on the internet, this is probably it. They even sell guns here now.