By: Mike Hosking | Friday, May 11, 2012 8:26 AM

What do you think they need to see before they give Greece what it deserves, which is the flick. Just how bad does it have to get before Europe wakes up to the fact Greece is a basket case? It can’t be fixed, it’s third world, it should never have been let into the EU in the first place. The sooner they’re shot of it, the sooner they can get on with getting life back to normal.

Have we forgotten just those few short months ago all the pain, the acrimony, the tension, the fear, the worry over whether they could be saved? The offers, the loans, the bailouts, the cash, day in, day out, crisis talks, last minute desperate developments, markets plunging on fears it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t stick. Greece on the edge. Have we forgotten the headlines?

Then finally they got it sorted, patched together a deal, got a plan in place. Many wondered through that why they didn’t just let them go. Was Greece really all that important? Was one exceedingly minor player in the European jigsaw really worth all that angst and upset? Would the rest of the world really see Europe as a shambolic basket case with no future if one small part of the overall machine got jettisoned?

So they persevered while we looked on bemused. And now this after all that. Communists, Nazis, the most unbelievable shambles thrown up by a population that has no concept of fiscal responsibility. It is the worst ad for democracy you could possibly imagine. If there’s a party that supports abdication of responsibility, they got voted in. Greeks have given the EU, and by inference the rest of us, the big finger.

They don’t want to pay their way, they don't want austerity, they don’t want balanced budgets, they don’t want any form of accountability at all. So why on earth we’re even bothering with them is beyond me. Why is Merkel looking on concerned? Why isn’t she leading the charge to dump them, get rid of them, out of the Eurozone, cut the loans, freeze the money, let them sort their own mess.

If the Eurozone has a fear it should be its reputation that surely now is being so badly damaged by the fact it seems once your in, you can do whatever you like because expulsion is not an option. It doesn't matter how dysfunctional you are, they won’t get rid of you.

What’s the safer bet? Get the money owed, pay it back, and cut Greece loose. Or keep trying to bail Greece with yet more money we don’t have in the hope they have an epiphany and start acting like a first world country. Anyone who backs the latter is mad.

Photo: A political rally for the New Democracy Party earlier this month ahead of elections (Getty Images)