Above is pictured a maggali. It was a popular way to heat your home, if you were too poor to afford a chimney, a couple of centuries ago. One can load it up with coal, like a barbie, or wood or even coke if that is available. It must be lit outdoors so that the dangerous fumes related with an open fire do not enter ones' home. Once all the dark spots dissapear from the coals it is safe to drag indoors. The one pictured here is clay with wrought iron legs and a very practical cover if one has some socks to dry by the coals.
Above is pictured a former minister of Transport. That is to say a Greek former minister, now retired, who was in charge of regulating all things to do with motor vehicles. Insurance, licence plates and all other things where his jurisdiction. Other things in Greece include our annual licence fee in order to drive our car. Whoever cannot pay this fee is required to immobilize their car and return their licence plates to the nearest revenue Greece office. Having a larger vehicle, anything over 2000 cc, is extremely expensive and includes a luxury tax. Total annual cost to drive your car, if it is a VW Touareg that is, is 5000 euros.
Above is pictured a modern day maggali, constructed out of an old oil barrel with re-bar legs. Many out of work construction workers prefer this do it yourself model as it fits many cut up planks and scaffolding. You need lots of scrap wood in order to end up with enough coals to heat your apartment for one night. So a barrel being almost ten times bigger than the old maggali is ideal. You light it up on the balcony and feed it wood until there is enough coals to last the night. Once the dark spots dissapear you may drag it indoors.
The little girl pictured above is the latest victim of this maggali heating process. People of course would simply use an electric space heater if their power hadn't been cut off. This girls mother had a 2000 euro utility bill, of which only about 200 euros would be actual electricity, that she couldn't pay. As a result the power was cut off a couple of years ago. Living without electricity in a modern city is nearly impossible. Using camping gas for cooking and candles for lighting, the balcony for a fridge and a maggali for heating. I can't imagine living only with cold water while raising kids. Anyway the poor woman dragged in her maggali before all the dark spots had dissapeared from the coals. The result was the carbon monoxide poisoning death of this young girl.
Our benevolent former minister of transportation, pictured above before, was kind enough to turn in his licence plates on his luxury SUV. However he did have a counterfit plate printed so that he could boogie around at will thus saving himself about 10000 euros over the last two years. All this till last week that is, when he was caught red handed and arrested. Check him out in the after caption below explaining to us how he just wanted to charge up the battery. No explanation for the counterfit plates though...
So in the aftermath of all this the government decided to reconnect all 350000 (three hundred and fifty thousand) households to the grid that had been disconnected thanx to that unconstitutional Haratsi tax. It will cost the rest of us a measly 50 cents a year to pay for the bill. It took one more death to change the tide. As for Liapis he is spending his x-mas with his favorite escorts in Singapore while staying in a five star hotel. I kid you not. At least every little kid in Greece will have electricity this x-mas.
http://ellinomangia.blogspot.gr/2011/11/haratsi.html
Oh and I would like to say that at least in this country the suffering of the poor is a direct result of the greed of the rich. They will never have enough. Also the suffering of anyone that comes into close contact with our former minister while he visits Singapore should also be factored in. In Greece if you are affluent we say that you have "chimney" ancestry. Liapis would be said to have been bred from a political "chimney"... no maggali for him.
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