DESPITE reassurances from the Prime Minister that we won’t be contributing to the Greek financial bail-out, it is a pretty safe bet that in one way or the other we will.

We may not contribute directly, but you can bet your life that to stave off the almost certain collapse of the euro zone, the mandarins in Brussels/Strasbourg will find a way of getting their sticky fingers on other contributions that we make.

The Greeks get 60 days’ holiday a year. They retire at 50 (and most can expect a pension amounting to 90 per cent of their final salaries, far higher than those in countries with far healthier economies).

Their salaries are ridiculously high and unaffordable and even a hospital porter gets around £60,000 a year.

Tax evasion is a national pastime (hundreds of the country’s wealthiest don’t pay a penny in tax) and bribery and corruption are rife.

It is intolerable that any EU member state, especially this country that is not and, God willing never will be, part of the euro zone should be expected to beggar itself so that the Greeks can continue to live high on the hog.

The money thrown away on merely postponing the inevitable for Greece and the euro zone would be far better spent saving the lives of hundreds of thousand, soon to be millions, of starving innocents in the Horn of Africa.

ROBERT READMAN, Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth