THANK goodness the voters of France and Greece are giving their support to leaders who have some concern for the way wealth is distributed.
Since the global financial crisis, you'd think that economic growth and cost cutting was the only way to extricate the world economy from the mess made by the speculators and money lenders. Another way of balancing the books is for big wealthy businesses and individual taxpayers on multi-million dollar incomes to dig a little deeper.
In Australia we have banks making almost obscene profits and mining companies boasting how the new tax won't hurt them after all.
Meanwhile, ordinary people the world over are seeing pay cuts and job losses and hard-won entitlements being clawed back.
Our own federal government is cutting the spending that underpins a social wage.
We are told this is the only way a blatant untruth.
No wonder electorates are volatile and incumbents are an endangered species. I say, let the people-power momentum roll on to elect leaders who, like the new President of France, have the courage to stand up to vested interests.
HANS PAAS
Castlemaine