Cashing in on a brand name. Not.

March 12, 2005 · Filed Under Italian politics · Comment

Ever heard of one Benito Mussolini? If by any chance you have not, you can read a little about this interesting gentleman here. Well, he has a grand daughter who goes by the name of Alessandra and, guess what, has retained the surname of her rather infamous ancestor. Not only this, but she decided to cash in on her gramps ‘good’ name and become a politician.

Now, I find this a wee bit odd. How many politicians in Germany have the surname ‘Hitler’? Not many, I bet. Well, Italy is a little different and seems to be able to let bygones be bygones, almost. You see Alessandra may have been up to some dodgy tricks in the name of keeping her name in the political spotlight. You can read about this in English over on a New Zealand web site, of all places, which goes by the name of ‘Stuff‘.

I don’t know exactly who discovered Alessandra’s possible naughtiness, but I would like to think that it was someone who does not really appreciate her sticking up for and using the name of her grand daddy. Maybe, I dearly hope, it is a sign that Italian’s are getting a little tired of having so many recycled politicians. I mean using someone with a good name to launch your career is just about acceptable, almost. But trying to exploit the name of one of history’s more notorious leaders does not strike me as being a great thing to do. Does not give the country a great name, now does it?

My, Italy is an interesting place to live in.

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Tags: Italian, Italy

Pumping out the scams

March 12, 2005 · Filed Under Life in Italy · Comment

The local news here in Lombardy has just reported that the Guardia di Finanza, the Financial police, have uncovered a large scale scam involving quite a few service stations, 24 in all. This was a high-tech attempt at fiddling. What the unscrupulous were doing was hacking in to the software on the computers that ran the pumps and ‘adjusting’ them so that hapless customers got less then they were paying for. Nice. In the past, similar fiddles were reported but none were as sophisticated as this one.

I wonder how long it will take these people to work out a way of quickly adjusting their pumps so that they can get by the checks, which are low tech and involve measuring the output of a pump and comparing it with the price and quantity displayed.

On the subject of scams, Italians have always, by and large, been good at managing their cash, so much so that things like bank loans, mortgages and overdrafts were almost unheard of. Not any more. Lending companies are springing up all the time and many advertise on the telly. The situation here is still very different from the situation which existed in the UK ten years ago, when I was able on one occasion to organise a loan in about one and a half hours flat. Try doing this in Italy now and getting a reasonable rate of interest. However, as I said before the plethora of new companies offering quick loans is a sign that things are changing. This causes me to ask the following question. Are the rich and powerful here trying to send Italians down the easily available credit road which has already been occupied by some time by the USA and UK? I think, yes. Why?

Well, if you are rich, very rich, like the Italian prime minister, for example, what is one of the easiest ways of making even more cash? The answer is lending it to others, of course. Mortgages, so much a part of life in the UK, are a great way of earning an enormous amount of interest and the whole thing is secured on that most secure of investments, bricks and mortar. So, imagine, you are rich and powerful and you just happen to end up being prime minister. Now, how could you reduce the population’s disposable incomes enough to ensure that they need more credit? Easy! You increase taxes and work to ensure that the cost of living starts growing out of all proportion to the growth in pay. As a strategy it’s a winner. It can’t lose, especially when you have the power to make laws to keep yourself on the right side of legality. Indirectly, of course, the blathering fools which go to make up the opposition will help you keep power, because they have no way of matching the swarve and sophisticated marketing of you and your ‘political’ company, sorry, party.

Is this happening in the living museum? Well, I’m not sure, but I have my suspicions. I will restrain myself from mentioning the ‘N’ word, again.

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