The working year begins after Epiphany, 6th January, except for this who will take the ponte (bridge) of Wednesday – Monday in which case it begins on Monday 13th. Befana, a corruption of the word Epiphany, is portrayed as a witch and at the Befana fair in the Piazza Navona brightly dressed ugly-faced dolls are for sale along with cribs and Christmas tat. Many children receive their presents on Befana.
The economic feeling in Italy is confused. The country suffered badly from high commodity prices – principally oil, also grain for pasta and bread - and now these have come down there is more money about, just as the Italians are reading how bad things are. The shops were packed at Christmas, and there were queues to get into some of the upmarket establishments on the via dei Condotti. The widely mistrusted official inflation rate for 2008 as a whole was, at 3.3%, the highest in 12 years although it has since tumbled and the year on year monthly rate is 2.2%, down from 2.7% in November. This resulted in some papers announcing record high and record low inflation rates on the same page. Italians shrug their shoulders a lot.
The Corriere della Sera reminds us of the interesting, and very Italian, story of Salerno Airport (at the eastern end of the Amalfi coast, S.E. of Naples). There had been a private airport there for years but it was only in August 2008 that it was used for commercial flights, the principal routes being to Malpensa (the airport near Lake Como which describes itself as Milan), Sardinia and Spain. And it was reasonably successful, 33 flights a week on the 100 seat planes (the runway is too short for anything bigger) moving 20,000 passengers until the end of the year. Now however all flights have been suspended due to ‘disagreements with local politicians’. You can guess. Naturally the EU has thrown money at it, €49m at the last count. The airport is spacious, clean, brightly lit and completely deserted, the latest addition to the ‘Cathedrals in the desert’ which include motorways not connected to any other roads and football stadia nowhere near human habitation.
The Vatican has announced that it will no longer incorporate Italian laws automatically on to its statute book, as has been the case since 1929. This is because there are too many laws in Italy and some are contradictory. I should have thought this was a golden opportunity to make itself a tax haven.
Alitalia will become a new airline next week! Already! The new consortium takes over officially on 12th January, but will immediately close down for a day while the aviation department checks the planes. They will discover that all the clocks are at least an hour slow. There will have to be some alliance with another airline, and whilst the obvious one is with Air France/KLM, the Northern League are pushing for Lufthansa because it is more likely to keep open the slots at Malpensa Airport (the one near Lake Como 45 minutes from Milan, unlike the real Milan airport which is called Linate). This project is unlikely to be viable until it stops becoming a political football, which itself is about as likely as the planes suddenly taking off on time.
Snow has been falling in the North, closing Milan’s airports and blocking motorways. Russia has closed the gas off. People are worried about global warming.
The Equal Opportunities Ministry has been advertising for clowns to work in children’s hospitals. 2m euros has been set aside for the project. I hear the money will be paid directly to Alitalia.
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