Eurozone recession 'will be deeper'; Portugal to cut 30,000 govt jobs; Enslaved by the idiot box

1 Eurozone recession ‘will be deeper’ (Katie Allen in The Guardian) The eurozone's recession will be even deeper than previously feared this year, the European Commission has warned, as it slashed its outlook for crisis-stricken Cyprus and downgraded the prospects of the bloc's biggest economies. The EU's executive arm now expects GDP in the single currency zone to shrink by 0.4% in 2013, a sharper decline than its previous forecast for a drop of 0.3%.

The recovery pencilled in for 2014 will also be slower than expected and the unemployment crisis in the eurozone will persist, the commission said. Painting a picture of subdued domestic demand and lacklustre investment, the commission slackened its deficit-cutting targets to help some countries focus more on jobs and growth. The economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, said the commission was now prepared to give France and Spain two more years to get their deficits below 3% of GDP.

Germany will be the only one of the area's five largest economies to escape recession this year and even its prospects were downgraded to growth of 0.4% from 0.5%. France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are all expected to shrink. The sharpest revision was reserved for Cyprus, which the commission now sees contracting by 8.7% this year.

2 Portugal to cut 30,000 govt jobs (BBC) Portugal is planning to cut 30,000 civil service jobs and to raise the retirement age by one year to 66 as it tries to meet the terms of a bailout. Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said civil servants would also be required to work 40 hours a week instead of 35. The proposals, which would be applied mostly from next year, would save 4.8bn euros over three years, he said.

Austerity measures have proved deeply unpopular and have triggered large protests. Portugal received a 78bn euro bailout from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 2011. Unemployment stands at nearly 18% - a record high - and the economy is expected to shrink for a third consecutive year in 2013.

Last month, the Portuguese Constitutional Court struck down more than 1bn euros ($1.3bn) of proposed cuts, which included the suspension of holiday bonuses for public sector workers and pensioners. That forced the centre-right government to look elsewhere for savings - though it has ruled out raising taxes.

3 Enslaved by the idiot box (PG Bhaskar in Khaleej Times) TV viewers are today, probably looked at as a lumpy mass that willingly absorbs with great equanimity and resilience, anything that is hurled at it. It will not retaliate. It is the entertainment industry’s equivalent of a punching bag. It has become immune to abuse.

The sad thing is that this is actually the truth. We, the audience, have become that; a weak, disorganised, resigned, inert mass with little or no choice. Most of us have lost the book reading habit. If we read our daily dose of comments on email, Facebook or Twitter, we consider ourselves ‘well-read’.

Advertisers have pummelled us into submission to an extent that we have lost our voice. Not many years back, if an advertisement or a serial or film was repeated too often, people would switch off the TV in protest and find something else to do. Audiences were a force. But not for nothing do they say that excessive TV watching dulls the brain. Little by little, we have got ourselves numbed. The very same advertisements get thrust on us every five minutes sometimes throughout the day. Yet we watch, gaping, our chins dangling.

That spark has gone. Years of watching TV and playing video games have done the trick. Phones are getting ‘smart’. We are getting dumb. There must be kind of law against it somewhere. It is worth checking. To me this seems to be a form of battery. Just not physical.