01 May, 2010

Italy News


And what, amidst all the excitement of the British Elections (OK, sorry) and the Greek debt crisis, has been going on in Italy?

Francesca Martini is such a nice name you half expect it to be the stage name of some starlet. It sounds like a cold drink. And she looks like someone in an advert for good quality stock cubes. But this woman makes waves. She is undersecretary in the Health Department and has special responsibility for animals. She is going to improve the dog pounds where strays are taken, enforce the law which prevents people putting down poisoned meat for dogs, and is going to send people who can’t control their animals on a series of five 2-hour courses. Stray cats next, I hope.

Relations between Silvio Berlusconi and House Speaker and Deputy in all but name Gianfranco Fini are, to continue the stock analogy, simmering at just below boiling point. Fini wants to take over the party, Berlusconi wants to be President. Umberto Bossi, the head of the just this side of barking Northern League says the alliance is ruined, largely because he would like another election and he doesn’t want to look as if it was he who broke up the People of Liberty Alliance, as he did with Berlusconi's last government. But it looks as if things will carry on.

The theatres are on strike over government funding.

Antonio P., of Salerno, who was under house arrest, was deemed to have broken the terms of his imprisonment by standing on his doorstep begging the police to rearrest him on the grounds of an intolerable breakdown in his family relationships, saying he would rather go back to jail. Now the Court of Cassation has ruled that this was not a breach of house arrest so the poor chap has to go back to his family.

Claudio Scajola, Minister for productive affairs, who had been previously in the news for having kept open the airport of Villanova d’Albenga (near Genova) into which he was usually the only passenger, is now accused of receiving €900,000 in slush money from a dodgy developer called Sig. Anemone with which he bought a flat overlooking the Colosseum. Scajola says he can explain everything.

The usual May Day rallies. At least it's quieter than Greece.

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