National Press Review, January 12

Dissatisfaction with the rise in gas price and how customers plan on protesting next – the subjects that take up a lot of the space in today’s newspapers.

The Evenimentul Zilei prints a four page review of a day ‚on the battlefields that are gas stations’.

It seems like the change protests are no longer a solution, at least in Bucharest – the daily concludes.

The hard part is getting coins, but the cashiers from gas stations have learnt to count change quickly and are now amused at the situation. The clients are still dissatisfied’.

We are being laughed at and even stepped on by gas station billionaires – the Evenimentul Zilei quotes a 70 year old driver from Piteşti; ‚This is humiliating’ – a young man from Hunedoara complains, because the rise in gas price is threatening his small garage.

On the same subject, today’s edition of the Jurnalul Naţional opens with a call to boycott gas stations that has been going around the Internet.

Amateur drivers are being urged not to fill up on gas for three days in a row, while big transporters are threatening to buy gas from Hungary or Slovenia.

Finally, the Gândul calculated that Romania takes the second place among the 27 European states in gas price rise during the two years since the crisis set in.

Other topics in today’s press.

The România Liberă tries to answer the following question: „Why sell your vote for a bucket?” The doctrinaire jumble encouraged by parties avenges during elections: we vote for whoever offers the most – the daily claims and provides the following argument: the National Liberal Party is now an ally of the Conservative Party, who until yesterday used to be leftist, the Social Democrat Party proposes neoliberal anticrisis measures, the Democrat Liberal Party has left socialists for the European People’s Party. So are there any ideologies left in Romania? If there are, they are simply words – the România Liberă concludes.

Today’s Adevărul warns on its first page: ‚None of the counties can pay pensions’.

It’s not the pension payments are threatened, but the social contributions are not enough to cover them in any of the counties.

The Capital is the only one with positive figures: it covers the pensions that the elderly are entitled to and fills some of the holes from other counties.

Some counties, such as Giurgiu or Teleorman, have twice as many retired people than active ones.

The former big industrial centres, such as Hunedoara – now bankrupt – are at risk as well.

But all this is nothing compared to the load that has been lifted off our chest: the end of the world has been postponed.

The dead starlings from Constanţa – exactly 31 – did not predict the end of the world. The birds ... had had too much to drink.

‚Starlings couldn’t hold their liquor’ – the România Liberă reads.

The vets from Constanţa claimed that the birds had eaten the fermented mix from fruit that results in the process of making plum brandy. It is once again clear the alcohol is bad for your health.