As poor as Papandreou and Berlusconi were as Prime Ministers, we must not lose sight of the fact that they were elected in democratic elections, something their successors cannot lay claim to. I’ll leave aside my objections to these successors’ politics for the moment. What has chilled me to the bone is this from the BBC:

Who, What, Why: What can technocrats achieve that politicians can’t?

I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.

As the prime ministers of Italy and Greece exited through the revolving doors of power, in came two wise men with no mandate to govern but clutching glittering CVs.

Glittering? Really? Please elucidate.

While he was EU competitions commissioner, respected economist Mario Monti showed his mettle by taking on computing giant Microsoft, and he’s expected to appoint a government made up of other technocrats.

Riiiiiiiiight. So he was an EU commissioner, and that’s glittering, is it? He ‘took on’ Microsoft. That’s the same Microsoft who have the same ubiquitous hold on the PC software market now as they did then? I’ve no axe to grind with Microsoft, there’s a reason so many people have their software installed on computers, it is because despite of the gripes surrounding it, it is the best on offer. And he’s giving jobs to his mates. Well, so far, so the EU in microcosm.

Lucas Papademos is former vice-president of the European Central Bank.

The BBC don’t inform us of his glittering list of achievements. Probably because it contains stuff about the Euro. You know, that same currency which is to blame in a large part for Greece’s demise?

Both men now find themselves cast as the unlikely saviours of these two countries and by extension, the eurozone.

Let’s wait to see what they save, shall we? If we’re supposed to believe they’re there to save Greece and Italy, we may be disappointed. Make no mistake, their job is to save the Euro.

The following just about pushed me over the edge (I publish excerpts, for the whole context go and read the article, if you can stomach it.):

What technocrats can do is rise above the paralysing political rancour in these two countries, says Marco Incerti of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

The democratic approval will come at a later stage

The Soviet Union is sometimes held up as the world’s first technocratic government

There are several benefits to a technocrat-led government in times of crisis

there is an anti-intellectual streak in British politics

Bear in mind this article is telling us that technocratic governments are a good thing. So as far as the BBC is concerned, technocrats are better than elected politicians, they don’t need democratic backing, they are beneficial during a crisis (when is there never a crisis?) and we in the UK only vote for stupid people, thus we must assume that the electorate are stupid. Oh, and the government of the USSR was a good thing as well.

What is the licence fee for again?