Rampaging Football Hooligans and Mafia

Last weekend rampaging football hooligans caused some half a million Euros worth of damage to a Rome bound Italian train.

Some Italians, when they find out you are English, joking mention that you must be a football hooligan, such is the infamy of English football fans.

Sadly though, Italian fans have taken to hooliganism too, and several incidents have occured, including one in which a police officer died after a Catania-Palermo match.  Hard core football fans are known as ‘ultra’ in Italy, by the way.  More recently though, Italy’s hooligans have been at it again. Read more

Alitalia’s Never Ending Story

After having fallen through back in July last year, talks concerning saving Italy’s ailing national airline have been resurrected.

Belusconi’s predecessor, Romano Prodi had had a go at pulling Alitalia out of the mire.  And failed.  Berlusco, who made the salvation of Italy’s national airline one of his election priorities, is also having a go.  He made great play of the fact that he and a few fellow Italian industrialists would band together and keep Alitalia Italian.

This nationalistic breast beating probably went down quite well with Italy’s voters, even if Berlusco was only really voted back in because the lot that hover on the left were not doing a fat lot.

The Alitalia issue has once again boiled to the surface, and articles on how the airline is to be saved from bankruptcy are all over the press. Read more

Zero Tollerance in Italy

Road accidents in Italy lead to more deaths than in any other European country, according to recent reports in Italian newspapers.

Recently released figures from 2006 regarding Great Britain (3,297), France (4,709), Germany (5,091) and Italy (5,669), clearly put Italy at the top of this macabre road accident death table.  Formerly, Germany, which has a much greater population than Italy, was at the top.

Owing to the poor light shed on Italy by such statistics, and in addition to frighteningly high levels of work related deaths, Italy’s government is introducing a ‘zero tolerance’ policy concerning those caught driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Read more

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