Not Nice
Yesterday I was out with our dog when I noticed another dog on the other side of the road. It was off its leash and appeared to have wondered into the road. The owners were a Chinese family, mother, father, and child in stroller. Unusual, I mused, you don’t see that many people of Chinese extraction with dogs.
Anyway, I continued, thinking for a moment that maybe a dog with a tendency to wander into the road should not be off its lead in a city. Oh well, it’s their dog, hopefully they know what they are doing, I hoped. Read more
Milan’s Green Belt
I recently read an interesting article in Epolis Milano, one of Milan’s many freebie newspapers, and also one of the better ones, I might add.
This article was about the bods at City Hall who have dreamed up a scheme to cut down the smog levels under which Milan is drowning, despite the recent introduction of the Ecopass car charging system.
Now, you might think that the best way to cut down the pollution levels would be to simply ban all cars from the centre. Although this would be wonderful, it would, understandably, cause quite a few problems, and would not go down at all well with the car dependant Italians who inhabit this bustling city.
So, what can done? Well, apparently greenery and trees act as an effective filter and can help absorb many of the pollutants that are causing one person every 36 hours to head for hospital to have respiratory problems sorted out. So, some 500,000 trees are going to be planted.
Does this mean that Milan will become a forest? Possibly, I suppose. And , in addition to all the trees, the people at the top are planning to increase the proportion of green areas per head of the population to 19 square metres.
Whether these novel solutions will have any effect on reducing the still spiralling pollution levels remains to be seen, but a positive side-effect of the ‘forestation’ of the city will be the creation of a series of ‘green roads’ which will link each of the city’s larger park areas. This sounds very interesting, and, from looking at the illustrative photo in the newspaper, means that it may be possible to literally walk all the way round the city centre using these interconnected green ways.
It would also be nice if they installed cycle ways on the park-links too.
The deadline for this gush of greenery is 2015, which also just happens to be the year in which the Expo will be held in Milan.
Walking tours of Milan, anyone?
I hope this proposal does come to fruition, and actually works. It sounds like a jolly good pollution solution, if you ask me.
Not a lot of people know this - Francesco Rutelli
Apparently, Francesco Rutelli, the present Italian Cultural Affairs minister, once replaced the Italian flag which flew at Palazzo Montecitorio with that of the Vatican. I have not been able to discover in exactly which year Rutelli did this mischievous act, but it was interesting to hear about it from my former wannabe Italian politician student.
At the time of this act, which was a direct protest against the influence that the Vatican exerts on Italian politics, Francesco Rutelli was a member of a radical political party. In another radical incident, he also spent a short time behind bars after having very publicly smoked a joint, which he inhaled.
Alas it now seems that the formerly radical Rutelli has become absorbed into the repetitive instability that is mainstream politics in the Living Museum, and it is highly doubtful that he will carry out such an overt protest ever again. I suppose you could say that Rutelli has fallen upwards.
Actually, I understand that Rutelli is proposing himself as a candidate for Walter Veltroni’s former post, that of Mayor of the Eternal City. Interestingly, Rutelli has already been the Mayor of Rome, and preceded Veltroni.
In a country which regularly shies away from the new, the regurgitated Rutelli may well be in with a pretty good chance of being elected Mayor of Rome yet again.
Mugging in Milan
This post has been updated to make it more accurate - Alex Roe, 22.02.1008.
I was rather worried to learn from the guy I work with that he had been mugged a couple of weeks back.
As if mugging in any circumstances were not bad enough, this case is worse. You see, this guy was attacked in the centre of Milan in the Duomo underground stop, on a Sunday, and while he was with his little daughter.
Apparently, while he was getting on a train, he was brought down rugby style, and then held down while an accomplice stole his wallet from his back pocket.
As you do after such an event, you head off to the nearest police station to report the miscreants. And as he arrived at the police station, my friend found himself in the midst of a whole group of people who had also been victims of what was a well organised and executed mass mugging.
The other victims were a mixture of foreigners and Italians alike, and many had lost money, credit cards, and important personal documents. The muggers, and there were five or six, my friend told met, were in their mid-thirties and may have been Italian.
In view of the brazen nature of these attacks, it should have been possible for the police to have caught up with the criminals. No such luck.
My friend suggested that the police use the CCTV system to identify the perpetrators, but was surprised to discover that the underground station video surveillance cameras were not working on the day of this rash of nasty attacks. Great, not.
In view of this potential problem, and I don’t know if action has been taken, it would be a good idea to carry two wallets if you venture into the centre of Milan via the underground railway system, the yellow line, at the moment. Put one in your back pocket, in which you can put 10 Euros or so, and hide the other in a less obvious place. Then, in the event of a mugging, at least the thieves would think they had got what they were after.
On no account try to remonstrate with these interesting gentlemen. Unless you are Rambo, you will most likely come off very badly.
Just watch you back, and keep your eyes open for signs of unwanted attention down in the underground stations, and, if something does raise your suspicions, keep your wits about you.
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