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Really? He's gone down massively in my estimations. Seemingly principled and demanding a referendum in order to give the impression of fighting for his people, he walks into meetings with creditors and "negotiates" absolutely no haircut, more borrowing and more austerity. No Plan B, just a...

The Greek parliament ought to dismiss this out of hand, and the leftist government ought to have an alternative plan in place that doesn't begin and end with "we MUST stay in the Eurozone, you can't legally cut us loose"

Quite. Centre-right German and Greek governments form an integral part of cooking the books to get Greece into the Eurozone, including allowing an astonishing level of borrowing. Then when the Greek economy predictably collapses (shrinks by a quarter in a few short years) owing to the...

So the Greeks have been promised some debt write-off in exchange for fiscal reform? If not, it's not much of a deal is it. And this "proud European" bluster is completely laughable for the reason Westdene highlights. I've always been very pro-EU, but this is vomit inducing. There is...

Yep. If no debts are written off, and no economic reforms are made, this is simply kicking the can down the road - which is what the EU always seems to do.

My position is that the lenders, those in charge of shoe horning Greece into the eurozone and the right of centre Greek government itself are all equally culpable for this. The Greeks cannot pay it all back, so they need to come up with a formula to reduce the debt. And we all saw what...

You appeared to rubbish his point by replying that only Brits talk about the war. What did you mean by it then?

The problem with your position is that it fails to recognise any responsibility of the lender in the first place. Greece should never have been allowed to enter the Euro all the while fudges were being made and unsustainable Greek debt was being racked up on the back of French and German arms...

Are you says it's isn't relevant because it happened 60 years ago?

Whether or not that's true, I object to the German position that they won't write off any of the debt under any circumstances. I hope the Greek parliament tell them to swivel, although I don't understand why the Greek PM seems to be crapping himself over Grexit. Well I do, but surely he must...

It's a simplistic solution, and to be fair to the Germans, they would probably consider that in exchange for economic reforms (and specifically tax reforms) in Greece. I don't think it matters any more. Either the Germans get some of their money or they get none of it. The lesson to be learnt...

Equally culpable, IMO. It's the old adage that if you owe £1,000 to the bank, it is a problem for you, but if you owe £1,000,000 to the bank, it is a problem for THEM. This is the position the Germans find themselves in. They kept lending and lending (irresponsibly) while the Greeks made no...

Meh. Heard it all before. I totally agree with Buzzer that the Germans appear to have forgotten what the EU project was all about. However it is easy for us to get preachy when our portion of Greek debt is trivial - less than the Dutch yet we have 4 times more people: And as for Tsipras...

So Greece didn't pay that €1.1bn last night then. The IMF are now saying they are "in arrears", and haven't declared a default yet. I can only assume this will hold only to allow that referendum to happen. What a mess.

In many ways, it us a shame cunning fergus is quite so indignant with rage over the EU because he is right on some things IMO. But in my view, all he does is cheapen some of his well constructed arguments against that institution by literally blaming EVERYTHING on it.

Is there an issue in the world that - according to you - isn't the fault of the European Union?

I've been baffled by the way Tsipras has gone about some of what he's done, but if that's true then I'd want reasons too.

The Euro is already way over-valued so I'd expect that to happen whether or not Greece stays in. The proof of this is the ridiculous FX rate against the pound, and if that's not enough, you wait and see what happens when the Swiss finally pull the plug on the idea of artificially pegging their...

Why? Do you believe the Euro will collapse when the weakest economy in the EZ pulls out?

All this talk of the Germans and whether or not they'll blink first: I really don't get it when this whole situation is akin to the Greeks playing poker with the EU, with a stack of two coins and a hand consisting of "9 high". They are in no position to be demanding anything from anyone and if...