Berlusconi the Wizard
The Italian daily, Il Corriere della Sera, ran a lovely little cartoon on its front page yesterday.
Anyway, until that happens, a little description will have to suffice.
Picture 1
Berlusconi, dressed as a wizard, approaches a pile of rubbish.
Picture 2
Berlusconi the wizard waves his magic wand over the pile of rubbish.
Picture 3
Whoof! Berlusconi smiles as the pile of rubbish disappears before his very eyes. Only behind the great wizard appears the very same pile of rubbish, which has doubled in size!
If I manage to hunt this cartoon down on the www, I’ll put it here. It certainly caught my little eye.
Actually in real life, said wizard has begun his rubbish elimination illusion down in crazy Naples. Don’t know who his footing his €4000 an night hotel bill though. Not to mention the cost of the serious security measures that have been implemented to protect the magically tanned one from evil spells and the like.
Italy’s Trashy Trouble Worsens
The out of control rubbish situation down in Naples, which has been smouldering away since 1994, has finally landed Italy in a spot of trouble.
I first wrote about this troublesome issue in my Naples and Rubbish post back in May 2007, then I mentioned it once more in January this year in my Naples is Burning again post. Just for good measure, I suggested something that Prodi might do to deal with the mess in a post entitled Want to Sort Out the Neopolitan Trash Problem Mr Prodi?, in which I suggested that the Italian army should be sent in to attack the problem.
Indeed, I was pretty surprised to learn the next day that Prodi had sent in the troops! Dutifully, I wrote yet another post - Was I Writing Rubbish? to announce the coincidence.
Well, this issue has not yet gone away, instead it has piled up into a whole heap of trouble for Italy. The European Union has finally tired of Italy’s procrastination over the trash topic and taken the Living Museum to court. All this despite Berlusconian promises to get on down there and sort this embarassing issue out.
Will this buring matter finally be resolved? Well, the ball’s now in the European court, so to speak.
Cheesed Off
The rubbish crisis that appears to have made Naples infamous the world over, has now been joined by a mozzarella crisis. A Buffalo Mozzarella crisis, to be more precise. As you may have seen from stories in the press the world over, one of Italy’s more prized delicacies, this delicious cheese has become the subject of a health scare.
That the mozzarella crisis is a direct result of the trash trouble is highly likely. Years of dumping toxic waste in the countryside around Naples plus copious doses of political inaction and mismanagement have not helped either. Sooner or later it was inevitable that the toxins would enter the food chain. ‘Sooner’ has now arrived.
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