Tales from the Coffeeshop: At last, a female minister shows it is possible to have cojones in the post

GREAT to see that most people have finally turned against the teaching unions which have shown Turkish-style intransigence in rejecting the evaluation system drafted by the education ministry with the aim of ending the practice of giving the laziest, most clueless and disinterested teachers top marks for job performance.

If we were not living under the dictatorship of the overpaid proletariat, there would not have been an issue, because teachers would not have a say in how their employer would evaluate their work. In countries that do not have union rule, the evaluation system of workers is the prerogative of their employer, the person that pays the wages.

Yet once those hideously reactionary union bosses rejected the proposed system and made strike threats, the president of the House education committee Pavlos Mylonas immediately took their side, ordering the education minister to engage in dialogue with them so there could be an evaluation they approved of. It goes without saying that he had the support of the Akelites.

Education Minister Athina Michaelidou – a rare case of a minister with cojones – stood up to the union bullies and their shameless parliamentary backers, refusing to engage in dialogue, which would lead to unions imposing their terms. Having been a teacher, she knows what teacher-friendly disaster zones public schools are.

MICHAELIDOU’S ballsy stance forced the people pleaser Prez off the fence, on which he was sitting waiting to see on which side public opinion would tilt. In the last week, sensing public anger over the work stoppage at secondary schools, the Prez found the courage to back his minister.

On Wednesday, when the teachers stopped work for three hours, he told hacks that “no strike will stop the government’s big drive for reform of all sectors.” And there would be no more dialogue as there had been enough talking, he said. He has not accustomed us to such public displays of bravery, but he could not be seen to be weaker than his minister.

High school teachers union Oelmek chief Demetris Taliadoros was so annoyed with the minister he decided to resort to some good old-fashioned sexism to put Michaelidou in her place. In the past he had called on the Prez to rein in his minister as if she were some out of control dog, but on Monday he patronisingly said: “A woman appeared… after 50 years, to change the evaluation system.” 

And what a woman. One who is not afraid of ugly bullies, like Taliadoros, accustomed over the years to intimidating weak losers of the male gender.

YOU HAVE to admire Prezniktwo’s complete lack of self-awareness when he is talking publicly. When he was having a go at the teaching unions, he also spoke about all the reforms that needed to be made in all sectors “which are intended to serve just one purpose, the Cypriot people and the Cypriot citizen.”

He added defiantly: “And we will continue in this way so as to modernise and upgrade the state of 1960.” The scale of rusfeti he has engaged in since being elected (25 of the 100 citizens that backed his candidacy have been given state jobs by him said a report in Politis) and the long list of friends and relatives he has employed at the presidential palace, indicate the preservation rather than modernisation of the Makarios state of 1960.

FOREIGN minister Constantinos Kombos could not hide how pleased he was with himself when photographed with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom he met in Washington last Monday.

He got the government spokesman Mini Me to explain the importance of the meeting, and he did not disappoint with his platitudes. “The overall imprint of the meeting confirms that Cyprus has entered a new phase of international presence and political weight,” said Mini, also pointing out that the Republic was a “useful European actor able to contribute to transatlantic cooperation, stability in the eastern Mediterranean….”

The timing of the comment was a bit unfortunate, considering how the complete lack of transatlantic cooperation became evident a couple of days later when it became apparent that the US had prepared a horrendously one-sided peace proposal for Ukraine without even consulting its transatlantic allies.

The international presence of the useful European actor contributed absolutely nothing to the transatlantic cooperation in this instance.

IT WAS rather tiresome reading about the positive atmosphere at Thursday’s first encounter between the Prez and the newly-elected Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman. There were reports about “signs of progress”, a “different climate” and of course “positive messages.”

Erhurman showed that he can play the PR game as well as our guy, who had a very easy ride for as long as he was dealing with the inflexible Tatar, appearing constructive and sincere and scoring cheap points on the goodwill meter.

Tatar’s smarter successor went to the meeting with 10 proposals aimed at creating a “settlement atmosphere,” fully aware that nothing will come of them except earning him a few goodwill points.

The good climate lasted one day. On Friday evening, Erhurman went on the offensive, accusing Preznik of ignoring the agreement they made at Thursday’s meeting not to make public statements about the Cyprob. The Prez had made comments about the settlement he considered acceptable at an Eldyk gathering earlier on Friday.

Erhurman needs to be told that our Prez has a habit of opening his mouth in public and firing away on whatever comes to his mind. He is an impulsive Paphite after all.

FREEDOM of speech, I am overjoyed to note, is in rude good health in Kyproulla, in stark contrast to more advanced democracies of Europe, where it is being dealt countless blows by wokeness and the hideous virtue signalers championing it.

I read in the Daily Sceptic that on September 29 in Germany a man was visited by the cops at his home and taken to the police station for identification purposes, as a suspect in a crime of “inciting hatred”. The hate crime consisted of referring to civil servants as “parasites” in a tweet.

This is what he tweeted: “No, anyone who is financed by the state pays no net taxes; they live off taxes: every civil servant, every politician, every employee in a state-owned enterprise, everyone who is subsidized and financed by the state. Not a single parasite pays any net taxes.”

Our establishment has been referring to the hated civil servants as “public parasites” for some 20 years without ever falling foul of the authorities. I was never questioned or tortured by the cops for the systematic use of “public parasites” to refer to the bloodsuckers of the public sector because in Kyproulla free speech is queen. Thank you dear Kyproulla.

THERE was a new tactical manoeuvre against Odysseas by his former henchman Andreas Hasapopoulos this week. Hasap announced that he took his mobile phone to technicians to retrieve text messages from Odysseas – from the time they were bosom buddies – in which he was telling him to write nasty comments about the then auditor-general’s critics.

The holier than thou Odysseas claimed he had nothing to do with the abusive comments directed at his critics, on the Facebook page known as Auditor-General Support Group and ran by Hasap. Odysseas, relishing the role of establishment victim, claimed this was a political assassination attempt by the system which found Hasap as its ally.

I will not write anything more because I am a bit fed up with the abuse directed by Odysseas’ trolls against anyone who doubts the greatness of the man. Free speech is not allowed if it targets Kyproulla’s prospective saviour, who was himself a public parasite for many years.