Exactly as predicted, the scenes from Greece are horrendous - and maybe that's because Greece was under-reported in previous months.

So the world missed seeing the impact of the continuing austerity measures on individuals and families. Reporters made a bee-line to Syntagma Square to get footage of riots but did not bother to go round the villages in the hinterland and see the unfinished houses, the young couples forced to live with their parents, the families where both parents lost their jobs, etc.

Even so, the scenes now from Greece are shocking: the elderly in crowds outside the shuttered banks, waiting for their pension, the limit on withdrawal of cash, after so many billions were removed over the past months, and scenes out of Apocalypse of elderly rummaging in waste bins, etc.

But to understand what is happening now in Greece, one has to go back years and years - the years of make believe economics, false figures that enabled Greece to slip into the euro, a country that never upgraded its economic basis, that allowed corruption and graft a free rein, where everyone was on sale, where no figures could ever be believed, where government after government went along with its predecessor's corruption and added its own. A country that had the temerity to organize the Olympic Games for which it built plants that today lie unused. And that joined the euro because Greece, of course, could not stay out.

After that, it simply refused to reform itself, even when the economic crisis hit Europe and Greece hardest of all. On the contrary, the Greek population elected a government which had committed itself to revert the timid reforms its predecessor had carried out (and for which it lost) and this new government lost no time before it announced a series of defiant U-turns, as if to challenge Europe.

It expected to be saved despite itself. It argued Europe was duty-bound to save it and after Europe had ploughed in with two, not one bailouts, like David Copperfield it held out for more.

Now that the chips are down, there are some remarkable voices such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty who have argued the Greeks should vote No and strike out on their own. They argue that both Germany and France were bailed out in the immediate post-war years by the Marshall Plan and that it is madness to try and solve a situation such as that of Greece by doses of heavy austerity.

These arguments have a validity all of their own and must be heard and studied. But equally, the voices from Spain, Ireland, Portugal must be heard too - they too faced a dire situation and they took the medicine and it worked, or is working. On a continental scale, the Syriza temptation can spread to the 5 Stelle in Italy, Podemos in Spain and all the eurosceptic forces and bring down all that has been done in the EU especially in the creation of the euro.

Basically, however, a country that allows graft and corruption to spread unchecked, where the oligarchs live in sybaritic luxury side by side with masses of poor should not expect the other countries to bankroll it.

For us, all that is happening in Greece had many important lessons to be learned. First of all, the negative impact of corruption on the body public, equally the living beyond our means, and the temptation to postpone hard decisions till later.