Maserati outrage

It’s an outrage, cried Ignazio la Russa, Italian Defence Minister. He was referring to the question, posed by Emanuele Fiano of the usually silent Democratic Party, as to whether it was appropriate in the economic circumstances for the staff of the defence ministry to take delivery of 19 armoured Maserati cars. In their basic form these cars cost more than £80,000 but we are talking about a fair bit more for the bullet-proofing and so on. I remember when these cars came out that the then President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, took delivery of one and said what a luxury it was. Now they are available to mere officials.

Ignazio La Russa

La Russa, in his fury at finding his absurd largesse with other people’s money criticised, pointed out that Maseratis were an Italian brand (he forgot that so were FIAT 500s and a nice range of scooters).

At the same time we learn that the French President has taken delivery of a aeroplane costing €300 million. At least the aircraft itself only cost €50 million, the rest being ‘optional extras’. If you’ll excuse me I am just going to repeat that. The aircraft cost €50m, and there were €250m of extras.

What these two examples, shocking in their own ways (the Maseratis aren’t the only government cars in Italy, there are 300,000 of those, yes, 300,000) is the liberties the political class take with our money.

Why do they do it? Two reasons. One is because they have an inflated sense of their own importance, normal with this type of person but brought down to earth by democracy (the French President has enormous unchecked powers, perhaps more than any individual in the world, but at least he can be got rid of, and indeed, may well be). None of these new Maserati class, of course, have been elected.

The second reason is that they are too often unchallenged by the press and the people.

We see the stirrings of change now in Italy. I do hope that will continue.