Fate and progress

The two biggest wildfires to have hit Greece so far this summer season were both uncomfortably familiar: The first was started by a faulty power cable and the second at a rubbish dump.

The perpetuation of the country’s chronic failings feeds the impression that, in this corner of Europe, everything is the result of fate and nothing can be really fixed. And yet the speed at which the emergency text alert system was set up and launched (despite still being in the interim stage) by the new administration is testament to the opposite and provides for optimism about the future.

Sometimes progress is a far simpler case than what years of foot-dragging would make it appear.