Hanging by a thread

For six months a broken lamp post at the main intersection of our Peloponnese village has been lassoed by three lengths of rope tied together and hitched to a bollard. This could be a scene from the Wild West, but it is in fact in a village under the administration of the Kalamata council.

This Easter, as the pious people of our village celebrated the holiest time of the year, they walked past this evidence of a lack of council concern about their environment. But being noble folk they focused on the spiritual not the physical aspects of the community as they made their way to our beautiful church.

Later that night, a cameraman was killed in Kalamata by a stray flare in a pyrotechnic shamble that has no part in the Orthodox celebration of Easter. This so-called "traditional" event was bankrolled by the municipal council with 12,000 euros that could have been spent on...

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