This post is part of our Europe in Crisis special coverage. In the fight against tough government austerity, crisis-weary Portuguese are giving laughter a try. Besides pursuing politicians with the historic and revolutionary song Grândola Vila Morena in public appearances, people in Portugal are speaking out against the government's tough tax hikes and spending cuts in creative, non-violent, and funny ways. Humour is a useful tactic “when people affected by the issue are not being consulted”, according to Tactical Technology Collective's 10 Tactics. With the troika (European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) overseeing the country's economy, Portuguese citizens shut out of the country's decision making are not surprisingly playing up the absurdities of political power. The greatest enemy of authority is contempt and the surest way to undermine it is laughter. – Hannah Arendt Can I have your tax ID number? Asking for receipts under the name of ministers has gone viral. Since January 2013, the government imposed a new legal measure that imposes fines up to 2,000 euros on consumers who don't ask for receipts. A list of tax ID numbers [pt] from several ministers soon started spreading around the social web. A collection of crowdsourced scanned receipts is being uploaded to the Facebook page “Eu já pedi factura em nome de ministros” (I've already asked for a receipt under the name of ministers, with more than 2,500 likes at the time this post was published). This image, by Filipe Roque, reads, “To identify a pimp, use the adequate number.” Call it either “austerity revenge” or a “hijacking” of ministers’ tax affairs, as international media reported, the fact is that thousands of bills in ministers’ name [pt] are flooding tax offices and confusing the system of declared income from politicians. Who tweets this? If you want to giggle a bit on Twitter, then follow “Pedro the PM” (@Passos_PM), a fake alter-ego of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho (also on Facebook). But don't be disappointed if he wont follow you: he only follows the Chancellor and the Finance Minister of Germany, Angela Merkel (@Angela_Merkel) and Wolfgang Schäuble (@Wolf_Schauble). On February 22, 2013, he tweeted: O Sr. Ministro Gaspar deseja saber quem foram os 500 engraçadinhos q compraram 500 calculadoras com factura em nome dele. Later in the week, his thoughts were: Durante o ajustamento temos vindo a acumular credibilidade. Também acumulámos recessão, falências e desemprego, mas não servem p negociar. And he added: Aos portugueses e às famílias deixo um conselho: não têm pão, comam credibilidade. Also on Twitter and with a blog too, Manuel Parreira (@manuelparreira) has a rather peculiar way of lampooning the Portuguese left through extreme right-wing views. For instance, on February 6, 2013, he suggested: Porque não encerrar metade dos hospitais? Ao menos mantínhamos a TAP e a RTP. He often makes parodies of Portuguese society, such as in a series of tweets in early February where he poked fun at citizens whining on Twitter and the Communist Party's rather dense and obsolete speech, as well as exposed the ridiculous red-tape at the European level. For instance, a tweet where he assumes the character of Edite Estrela, a member of the European Parliament from the Portuguese Socialist Party (PS), reads: TwitEstrela: Estou numa reunião para estabelecer o regulamento preliminar para a uniformização das cores Pantone dos semáforos europeus. Subverting public figures The Independent called him “the fraudster who fooled a whole nation“. Artur Baptista da Silva was widely interviewed by Portuguese mainstream media as an economics expert, but he was discovered to have false credentials and zero experience on what he would be invited to talk about.