There are 10 million Greeks living in Greece (falling fast due to emigration), organized in around 2.8 million households with a ‘relationship’ with the tax authorities.

Of those 2.8 million households, 2.3 million (and 3.5 million tax file numbers) have a debt to the tax authorities that they cannot service.

One million households cannot pay their electricity bill in full, forcing the electricity company to ‘extend and pretend’, thus ensuring that a million homes live in fear of darkness at night and the electricity company is insolvent. Indeed, the Public Power Corporation is disconnecting around 30,000 homes and businesses a month due to unpaid bills.

For 48.6 per cent of families, pensions are the main source of income. Meanwhile the troika demands that pensions be cut even further. What was the €700 old age pension has been reduced by about 25 per cent since 2010 and is due to be halved over the next few years.

The minimum wage has shrunk (on the troika’s orders) by 40 per cent. Other benefits have been cut by more than 18 per cent.

Some 40 per cent of the population say they will not be able to meet their financial commitments this year.

Unemployment has risen 160 per cent so that 3.5 million employed people now support 4.7 million unemployed or inactive Greeks.

Of the 3 million people constituting Greece’s labour force, 1.4 million are jobless.

Of the 1.4 million jobless only 10 per cent receive unemployment benefit and only 15 per cent any benefits at all. The rest must fend for themselves.

Of those employed in the private sector 500,000 have not been paid for more than three months.

Contractors who work for the public sector are paid up to 24 months after they provide the service and pre-pay the sales tax to the tax office. Between 2008 and 2014 small and medium-sized companies reduced their workforce by 29.3 per cent and their output (in value added terms) by 40.2 per cent.

Half the businesses still in operation throughout the country are seriously in arrears with their compulsory contributions to their employees’ pension and social security funds.

In 2013 36 per cent of the population officially lived at risk of poverty or social exclusion. That percentage is on the rise.

Household disposable income has contracted 30 per cent since 2010.

Healthcare expenditure was cut by 11.1 per cent between 2009 and 2011 alone, with significant rises in HIV infections, tuberculosis and stillbirths.