Tag Archives: Politics

Mars Bars are Gay! Who knew?????? Please comment, I beg you.

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Apparently, according to A, the only people who eat Mars Bars are women or gay people.

To be honest, when he said it I nearly fell off my chair!

We had texted earlier. I said that it would be fine to go out but I wasn’t going to have any beer and no food. I would just drink wine. I was on a ‘wine diet’. It was a joke but, as with many things, it was lost in translation.

A was in fine form yesterday being more outrageous than normal.

“Dogs are like women”, he says.

“Don’t say that to Fr!”, I cautioned.

But, apparently, he meant that dogs to me were like women to him. I laughed. His view of the world is a strange one.

But the ‘this is what a gay person is like’ thing was a recurring theme during the evening. I forget them all now but they’re not really important in themselves. He likes to have everything pigeonholed. Gays are different to him and, therefore, must be similar to women.

He needs to get out more.

I think he actually said it, more than once, ‘You are like a woman’. Yes, it does irk me a little but he’s A and, for all his faults, I know he has a heart of gold. It’s only his ignorance speaking.

And the fact that he is a stubborn bastard.

I did have a drink in Polpetta with him. Red wine. Pinot Nero. A had some fruit juice (orange, I think) with campari. I had to refrain from pointing out that if someone was looking at us, he would have been gayer than me with that drink.

And he ate. I wasn’t eating but he ate and ate and ate. I did wonder why he wasn’t the size of a house!

I had forgotten my wallet and so we came back to my flat (although I then forgot to give him any money anyway) and I opened a bottle of red wine. And this was when the thing about Mars bars came out. I told him I would blog it as it was, at the same time, outrageous and extremely funny.

And I forget why but we started talking about politics. This is not a good thing and I avoid it like the plague, here. After all, here, they are so right or left and so dogmatic that it is impossible to have any reasoned conversation.

“I’m not ashamed of Berlusconi”, he states. I find it impossible to keep the smile off my lips. He doesn’t like that but it’s either that or starting an argument which will have no end since his views are set and nothing will change it. I do say some things but not nearly enough. Anyway, it’s not my place to criticise his thinking, even if it is closed.

“He came from nothing and is a great entrepreneur”, he says, adding “the right have the right mind”. But, what was noticeable (at least when I thought about it this morning) was that the arguments (as usual when people talk politics) was not really a defence of Berlusconi nor his way of thinking (nor his Bunga Bunga parties) but instead an attack on the left and the magistrates.

“They are rich and live in nice houses (the left)”. I’m sorry but that’s not an argument to say that Buzz is great. Nor does it say that (the left) are not qualified to be speaking for the left.

“The magistrates are out to get him”. That doesn’t mean he has done nothing wrong. Nor does it mean that if he has done something wrong that he, just because he is Prime Minister, should not be held accountable in court. He’s not God however much he and his supporters think he may be.

In the end, I countered, weakly, with the fact that they (politicians) are only interested in what they can get for themselves, their friends and family and don’t care about the likes of us and that they were all corrupt.

“What we should do is exile them all and start again”, I concluded.

I was dissatisfied with my argument but I knew that I should not ‘get involved’ since, as I said before, this was not an argument where reason and logic would play any part. A lot like religion, really. After all, it’s a belief and beliefs have no sway with logic nor reason.

Still, we finished the bottle of wine. Which made me late. However, I think the ‘wine diet’ part is going rather well, don’t you?

However, given that Mars bars (and, in fact, sweet things in general) are, apparently only eaten by gay men and women, I need your help.

This is why I said I would blog about it.

Please let me know if you (being a straight man) or straight men you know (if you are a woman or gay) eat sweet things like Mars bars, chocolate or other such things. A seems to think the answer is no but, being a gay man, he refuses to believe me when I disagree as if, by being gay, it precludes me from knowledge about the world that is not gay or female.

I need to know. He will, in all probability, read this and your comments. Comment immediately ……….. please?

The power of the [foreign] people …. it’s a good thing.

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They’ve been on the streets, protesting. The police have been using tactics that are, at the least, undesirable. People have been in hospital as a result. They are protesting about the increase in tuition fees, the cuts in grant money, the large organisations that are avoiding paying too much tax. The government doesn’t like it; the police don’t like it.

Oh, hang on, our Deputy Prime Minister has something to say:

“It is incredibly exciting what is going on, it reminds me so much of the time when the Berlin Wall fell, the power of the people out on the streets, in a regime which ……… everybody thought was one of the most stable regimes in the region,” he told ITV Daybreak.

Ah but no. He isn’t talking about the protests in Britain, of course, but those in Egypt.

You see it’s perfectly OK for ‘the people’ protesting against the government ………. as long as it’s those foreigners doing it in their own foreign country, of course.

I don’t like you, your program or anything you’ve had to say.

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I’m trying to imagine it ……. but I can’t.

Let me give you a scenario. There is a discussion program. Say, a part of Channel 4 news, or Panorama, or Question Time. Many bad things are said about David Cameron (let’s say about his ‘special’ relationship with Rupert Murdoch). There is a Conservative MP on the panel.

Then towards the end of the program, David phones into the program. They put him through, live, on air.

He calls the program vile and despicable. He says that the program is full of lies disguised as the truth. He says of the ladies on the panel that they are only so-called ladies. David gets quite angry.

The presenter say something along the lines of ‘You may be my Prime Minister but enough of the offending by you. You are a boor – rude, uncivilised, etc”. David then demands that the Conservative MP leaves the ‘brothel program’. The MP, quite rightly, doesn’t leave.

Can you imagine? The Prime Minister, bringing himself so low as to call a program whilst it is being transmitted? Being oafish and more like a petulant child, in front of his mother because his brother or sister has just accused them of doing something nasty?

No, of course you can’t. It would mean, after all, the end of any respect for him. I mean, to phone in in the first place? But then to argue with the presenter and basically do some name-calling – unbelievable, right?

Only, as we are in Italy, that is, more or less what happened, except, of course, replace Cameron with Berlusconi. It really would be hilarious if he wasn’t the leader of Italy. The shame of it all. And I would like to apologise if I got the gist of this wrong – but I don’t think I did. Please feel free to comment with any corrections to my understanding.

Update May 2015 – The video I had here is no longer available.

No changes here, then?

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Although the Buzz Lightyear-owned press and media tried to bury all the latest about Mr Berlusconi and his shenanigans, most people do have something to say about it. But I read, today, that he and his party are gaining in approval rating.

This is not a surprise, really.

I have an American friend (As), born, I learnt yesterday, of Italian parents and, actually born in Milan (although she was really brought up in New Jersey) who was exasperated and annoyed with the whole thing and was saying that this country (Italy) was terrible and that she didn’t want to live here any more. She just couldn’t understand how people could accept what was happening.

So, I put my point of view (at that point I knew nothing about the Italian lineage she had).

My point was that these things are so deep inside [all – with some few exceptions, it would seem] Italians that it is almost at the very root of their life.

I have said before but it’s worth repeating. There is an acceptance, nay proudness, of mens’ ability to have sex with a beautiful woman (of whatever age) that when an old codger, past real retirement age, can be so successful with the women, he is not seen as a bad person but rather there is an almost heroic quality that Italians seem to see. I’ve had quite a few men here allude to the fact that they have a mistress – or, even, speak proudly of the fact. It’s the ‘done’ thing. And it is becoming more acceptable for women too. This is not seen to make any difference to the perceived qualities of the person – this is just normal life – at least, in many Italians’ view.

Then there is the Mafia connection. As I said to As – how many people does she know here who would not, given the chance, pay a little less for their meal – as long as they accepted they wouldn’t have to have a receipt? She agreed that it wasn’t many. And that general culture means that the Mafia (as a loose term) thrives here. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

Both these things seem so ingrained in the ‘people’. As asked how it was supposed to change. I replied that I didn’t know that it could be changed. And, so, Buzz epitomises your average Italian who has ‘done well’. He is rich and successful (and who doesn’t do the best they can to pay less and do favours for people) – and so his supposed Mafia connections are, in fact, only an extension to the normality of things here – and who would throw the first stone when you had €10 knocked off the bill from your restaurant meal last night? It’s the same thing, more or less.

And he is so virile that he can have sex with a number of women in the same night (apparently) – what Italian isn’t envious of him – or, if not envious, then a hearty ‘Good Luck to you mate’ would seem in order.

And so he remains. He is a ‘good’ man, apparently. He’s a little bit ‘squidgy’ round the edges but who isn’t here?

In most other European countries he would, of course, have had to resign. But these bad things he has done are to some degree a way of life, even THE way of life and for all the huffing and puffing, there’s no real will to relieve him of his duties.

And, Lola, before you comment, I know that not all Italians are like that. It just seems that there are too many of them all around (probably a majority?) to be able to fight the good fight and make real changes when really, most of the population don’t want things to change – at least, not these things.

Lies, lies and more bloody lies!

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As I’ve written before, the danger with all the scandal over the undercover police ‘spying’ on the activists is that the focus is on the wrong thing.

At the moment, horror of horrors, it seems some of these undercover cops were getting a bit close with the people they were supposed to be monitoring. To the point where “Undercover policeman married activist he was sent to spy on” – except, when you actually read the piece, the implication of the headline and the facts themselves are at odds. He didn’t marry the woman whilst he was undercover – rather, after he left the work he contacted the woman a year later, TOLD her he had been an undercover policeman and only then did they get married. The headline isn’t exactly a lie, it just implies something different than the reality.

But, the big problem here, in my opinion, is not that they got too close. I mean, if you live and ‘work’ with a group, you get close – you really have no choice. The dividing line between the reality of what you are actually doing and what you’re supposed to be doing will blur. To be really convincing, NOT to have a relationship with someone you like would be the unrealistic and unreal thing – possibly leading to you being ‘found out’!

No, the real problem is the lies. The lies by the cops involved. The lies that must have been made in court. And then there is the lies made by the Chief of Police to parliament.

It’s the lies that are the worst of it. I mean to say, if you cannot trust the police to tell the ‘truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ (since they are supposed to be the law enforcement group), then one has to wonder if there is any point in them?

And so, how can this be justified, when, as it was being said by a person that we are supposed to trust, he knew it was untrue.

“We had no plain-clothes officers deployed within the crowd. It would have been dangerous for them to put plain-clothes officers in a crowd like that.

“The only officers we deploy for intelligence purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain clothes officers deployed at all.”

They are touting it as ‘false information’. False information! How dare they! Let us call it was it is. It’s a downright, deliberate lie.

The police cannot be, nor should be in future, trusted to tell the truth. If the ‘top man’ can tell blatant lies then it goes to the very heart of the police – and it’s a very, very sad day. I remember when I was thinking of becoming a magistrate, that the most important thing was that you were to support the police and what they tell you. I believed in that, too, but if I were a magistrate now, I would have very serious doubts about anything the police were to tell me and I would tend to err on the side of the defendant. No longer would a policeman’s word be enough – in fact, I would have to question everything that they said that was not backed up by irrefutable hard evidence.

The police are liars and, if there were a confidence vote, mine would go against them. This is a shame for those of the police (and, surely, there must be some) who are not liars. But then, guys and gals, if your top man can lie so openly and brazenly, what chance do you have?

There’s nothing wrong with Buzz …….. except his age, perhaps?

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I bought Caligula on DVD recently and have been watching it over the last few nights (F is away at the moment). It is, now that I look at it again (I saw it when it was originally released), not only very dated but also barely-disguised soft porn. It’s not really good, in spite of the famous actors and actresses involved. I seem to remember that, at the time, a lot of them distanced themselves from the film claiming they hadn’t been fully informed of how graphic it would be.

I think I prefer the depiction made by the BBC with I, Claudius (which, although dated now, still is a brilliant story).

In any event, it was his madness and excesses regarding sex that, in both accounts, brought him down, causing his trusted henchmen to kill him.

We were at lunch today. M suggested that ‘sex’ was the downfall of all ‘empires’. He wasn’t actually referring to Caligula but, rather, Berlusconi (or Buzz Lightyear, as I have previously referred to him).

All of you must have read something about the latest scandal to be hitting the beloved (or, is it ex-beloved?) leader of this life-loving nation. Paying a prostitute for sex is, apparently, not illegal here – unless she is under 18. It is suggested that he might have done that. The story of Ruby has gone from ‘I was just helping her out’ to ‘all the magistrates are just trying to get me’ to ‘the media are trying to get me’. All the while, I am reminded of Bill Clinton’s famous ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ – because, obviously, having her give him a blow-job under the desk in the Oval Office wasn’t ‘technically’ having sex – well, in his eyes, at least.

I suspect the ‘truth’ from Buzz is similar to that from Clinton.

M and I discussed it after lunch. He thinks Buzz will be out within the next two weeks. I am doubtful. If there was a strong candidate to replace him then, yes, maybe. As it is, there is not or, rather, there doesn’t seem to be.

But over lunch, whereas, in the past, there have been his strong supporters who will defend him, the discussion around the lunch table left the Buzz supporters with little to say.

Afterwards, I asked S, my colleague, what she thought. Previously she had been such a staunch supporter of his and I was intrigued as to what she would say.

“It’s his age’, she replied, laughing. Yes, before you ask, I’m not sure how that can be used as an excuse either!

Unemployment – rising … no …. falling …. no …… rising

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Newspapers.  Not really to be trusted – as we all know, erm, don’t we?

Some, of course, are worse than others.  Unemployment figures have been released in the UK today.  The prediction was for a sharp rise.  Anyway, it wouldn’t matter as it’s all manipulated stuff, in my opinion.

However, to give you a taste of two completely different papers – here is the news:

Unemployment leaps to 2.5m as record levels of young people are out of work

Or, is it:

Overall jobless level drops below 2.5m.

Hmm. Forgive me but I would think that the first would be a Labour (loony left) paper and the second would be a Conservative (rabid right) paper, wouldn’t you? Well, in fact, it’s the other way around (although the Guardian is a bit tied to half supporting the coalition given that it moved from Labour to Liberal Democrats prior to the last election).

Even so. If unemployment is ‘soaring’ to the dizzy heights of 2.5 million, one wonders how, at the same time, it can be ‘dropping’ to 2.5 million.

But it’s all in the interpretation of the figures, as always. There’s the number of people claiming money (Job Seekers Allowance) in the short term versus those claiming it for six months or more. Then, of course, there’s the people who find some work – even if it’s not full-time employment – there seems to be more of those jobs about. Well, at least it takes them off the count of ‘unemployed’.

This big rise is in the number of young people out of work. We are, I believe, creating a disaster to be realised in 30 years time or so. The same is true here, in Italy. Who will be paying my pension when I’m 80-odd if we don’t give them work to do now? Or, maybe, I’ll still be working?

I don’t know that the war can be won here.

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One of my colleagues at work, M, talks to me, daily, about the latest ‘revalations’ regarding the ‘Mafia’ here, in Italy (and here I am using Mafia in the general sense, covering all the different groups).  Just the other day, he informed me, Paderno Dugnano was a ‘hotbed’ of Italian Mafia (in this case the Ndrangheta, from Calabria) – who had made it their Lombardy headquarters.  It would be similar to them making Romford, in Essex, their British base.

And we have talked of the ‘whys’ – when, so it is said, the police secret service know all the leaders and where they live.

I tried to explain that it is a problem that, in my opinion, is too deeply ingrained into all (well, I mean the majority, of course) Italians.  I explained to him about S, my other colleague.  She always asks people for someone they know when she is buying anything or having work done.  And, she always expects a discount.  The discount comes with a price, of course.  The price is no receipt.  The no receipt not only means no tax to the government but also means the money can go into the ‘black’ – i.e. into the black economy.

Of course, she knows that.  We all know that.  We know that our few Euro going into the black economy is nothing.  But the few Euro for thousands of transactions every day (or, even, every hour) adds up to a considerable sum which can then be used to safely hide dirty money or to pay bribes.

But, she doesn’t think about it like that.  She thinks of it as her getting a bargain.  And a bargain is important, moreso here than in the UK.  Everybody does it.  Go to a restaurant and pay without asking for a receipt, in cash, and you will get a discount.  And they say that restaurants are one of the main ways that money can filter into the black economy.  It is said, apparently, so M tells me, that many restaurants in Milan are owned by the Mafia.  I can believe it.  You may get a 5 or 10 Euro discount by paying cash – that cash (and the subsequent saving in tax by the restaurant) can add up to a lot in one evening.

The problem is that it cannot be solved easily, if at all.  With a very few exceptions that I know of, everyone wants that discount here.  Buzz Lightyear (Mr B) continues to ‘infinity and beyond’ as he survives another vote of confidence.  Despite the recent Wikileaks cables suggesting a link between him and Mr Putin (another place where, I suspect, the Mafia rules) and money changing hands.  Well, why not?  After all, he is only doing what S does, albeit on a slightly larger scale?  S approves of him.  She is a supporter.  He is, after all a great businessman here.  And we would honestly believe that he hasn’t greased a few palms here along the way?  That he hasn’t accepted any kickbacks in a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ kind of way?  It is, after all, the way that even the ‘little’ people operate here.

Perhaps it also operates like that in the UK and I was just too blind or stupid to see it?  Or too naive to know better. I’m not trying to say that Italy is worse than the UK in this respect since I really don’t know. But here it is more obvious ……… and more accepted.

And, therefore, this, with Italians being brought up with this thinking, is too difficult to fight. Too difficult to control. Too difficult to destroy. And this, of course, is one of the reasons that Buzz remains in power since ‘everyone’ is at it, to a greater or lesser degree (I say everyone but I absolutely know of at least one person who insists on receipts for everything and has a good ‘community’ awareness).

And, no, I do not include myself in this list of upstanding people. On Saturday afternoon, a guy is coming to take down my Art Deco lamp in the lounge and take it away to be fixed. I asked my boss for someone that may be able to do this and she suggested him. Any money I pay (and it will be considerably cheaper than getting a proper electrician to come) will not be ‘declared’, of course. And the same in some restaurants. And my dentist. And a load of other people. And me. And I know that I am contributing to this – this malaise that affects Italy. But as I said to M – this is not my fight. I do my thing for the UK – where I really (feel that I) know the ins and outs of the situation. I do it with my posts about the students protests and other things. That I can do. To buck the trend, the way of life, in Italy – given all my other problems with just living here – is too much to ask.

There! Poor excuse it may be but it’s the way it is.

And, here, we’re missing the bigger picture…….

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Apparently –

Jacqui Karn, an urban safety and policing expert, thought there had to be a re-examination of police tactics.

She says, on this page that:

“The big question is how you can use police on horseback charging across when there are 14- and 15-year-olds in there,”

That, actually, isn’t the big question.

The big question is: How can you use police on horseback charging into a crowd of people (of any age) when you have corralled them into a space and where they have nowhere they can go because you (the police) are not permitting them to leave that space?  Even worse where the majority of those people are demonstrating peacefully?

Is it right or is it the sign of a police state?