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.

Good? No, bad, bad, bad!

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I put my hand up. I probably shouted ‘Me! Me! Me!’ It was my first (and only?) time at the ‘top table’. We had our lunch first, before others were served. The headmistress was an old dragon but I got my chance. I would get a second serving of the baked potato.

There was a problem, of course. I was 5 or 6. My stomach could not take 2 baked potatoes. And I struggled to eat it. In front of everyone I was told that as I had asked for it, I must eat it. I was in tears trying to stuff potato into a mouth that certainly did not want it.

It was a lesson, for certain. To me it seemed cruel. I don’t think I ever sat on the top table again. I’m pretty sure I never asked for seconds again.

But, nearly 50 years later I had forgotten that lesson and that incident …………. until yesterday.

In the canteen, at work, there were chicken slices in a tarragon cream sauce. In addition, left over from yesterday (because less people had come into the canteen than was planned for), were some meatballs in a tomato sauce. The meatballs had been rather nice. I asked Gina for a meatball too.

“Can you eat two?”, she asked.

“Yes, sure”, I replied and then, as I was taking my tray to the table, I remembered the first incident like this. And, as I ate the first and then second meatball, I remembered the whole horror of it. But now I am older and I had to finish it as Gina was also clearing the plates so would know it was me. It was delicious but I simply must be more careful in future :-)

Actually, thinking about that school, where I was for a couple of years only, I can remember nothing good. Only two bad things. The lunch I’ve just mentioned. Then there was the time when the whole school (it was only small) was playing rounders one afternoon. We were in two teams and our team was batting. I got a little caught up in the whole match. One of our girls (much older than me) hit a ball and started to make a run for it. Meanwhile, the fielders were trying to get the ball back to get her out. It got very exciting, everyone was shouting and cheering and encouraging their side and then, as our girl was almost at the last post, the fielders managed to stump the post and she was out.

I had obviously completely forgotten that I was on the batting side and was cheering along with our opposition. I don’t remember anything that was said but I do remember the stern look from the headmistress and I know that I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. It seemed that everyone had stopped cheering and I was left as the last person still cheering.

Actually, I can remember almost nothing good about any of my schooldays. I hated school – not for the lessons but for all the other bad shit that happened. Whoever said that your schooldays were the best days of your life was either completely off their head or didn’t go to any of my schools!

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?

Next up ………. Dino sets up his own blog!

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Of course, I know that Dino howls when he hears an ambulance. I don’t need to be told that by the neighbours (even if I have been – it wasn’t a complaint so much as a comment that it’s the only way they knew the dogs were there, which is a nice kind of backhanded compliment).

Originally, not long after I got Dino, we did have complaints (in the old flat) that the dogs were barking. This was a surprise as my dogs, generally, do not bark. Eventually, we found out it was Rufus. He would do this when Dino had a toy or something and he wanted it. If Dino wanted it from Rufus he would just go and get it, Rufus growling and complaining but, in the end, letting him have it. Rufus, however, wouldn’t do that but, instead, would stand there and bark at Dino. So, I had to separate them. Now it’s not necessary with Rufus being so old and blind and deaf.

But I would like to know what they get up to when I’m not there. Do they play? Do they stay together? Do they just sleep most of the time?

There is an application on Facebook called Dogbook. I added them to this a few weeks ago. They have their own profile page and their ‘own friends’. I have also added F as ‘family’ (after checking with him, of course). They also have a ‘status’, just like normal Facebook. For Rufus it is ‘is sleeping’ and for Dino, ‘What can I lick next?’.

But, wouldn’t it be ‘fun’ if they could enter their own status? Rufus could go from ‘is sleeping’ to ‘is eating’ or ‘is sitting staring blankly at the walls’ (which is what he does, sometimes, now). Dino could be ‘walking around’ or ‘licking Rufus’ eyes’ or ‘playing with a toy’ or, even ‘howling at the ambulance’.

Well, it seems, they are almost there with the technology. I have found Puppy Tweet. Tweeting, of course, is publishing a small ‘story’ on Twitter. This would be the equivalent of the status on Facebook/Dogbook. Having seen the blurb somewhere I had to go see it for myself.

You can use your own Twitter account or a special one just for your dog. You can, within reason, set up how many tweets you get in a day. It says it monitors your pet by motion and then tweets a humourous tweet to the account via your computer.

I just love the idea. So funny. If any of you get one, you just have to let us know how it goes …….. please?

Update, May, 2015 I’ve just read the reviews on Amazon and, unfortunately, they’re NOT good. Would have been a great present.

Well, they’re fashion people of some sort, I suppose (but how would I know?)

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Well, I guess that I should be telling you about meeting some of the good and the great of the fashion industry.

Except that, apart from them all appearing to be very rich, I haven’t the faintest clue who they were. There were some fat men. There were some, ahem, ladies past their prime. There was a hat designer who came late, sporting a hat that (for those of you from the UK) would be best suited on some working class, washerwoman – a lot in the style of the wife of Andy Capp or, even, not unlike the way that Hilda Ogden used to be dressed on Coronation Street (but without the rollers in her hair).

Some woman, of a certain age (which was, actually, very uncertain – but O L D nonetheless), with a bright orange bouffant but very thinning hair-do and a very pale complexion caused either by her being very ill or by her applying a whitening mask to hide the liver spots, which, by the way, was unsuccessful, thought that the hat was wonderful. She is like Anna Wintour, apparently. Everyone had to agree with her even if they, secretly hated it (and, certainly, the few people around me DID hate it).

Some woman next to me kept jabbering at me in Italian. I understood some of it. We had a conversation …… of sorts. F says sorry to me for having to be somewhere where everyone is speaking Italian. I tell him not to worry and that, if it becomes a problem, I will tell him.

I was there, after all, not for my pleasure, exactly but to be introduced (or should it be ‘shown off’) to some friends of his.

“It will be very fashion”, he tells be beforehand. Everyone will be from the fashion world. Although, as it turned out, there was also C, Fi’s husband and he’s NOT fashion but a chef. These were the people with whom we were supposed to spend Christmas and New Year. Apparently, they had organised a special party for New Year, in F’s honour. He is their ‘jewel’, so I was told.

I am to like P, even if I don’t like her. She is part owner of a rather large business in Italy. She has a house in Venice. And a ‘Guest House’ nearby. This Guest House is lavish and huge, apparently. F wants to take me there. P says that she doesn’t like Venice apart from going there a couple of days every so often. I don’t say it but for me it is the most romantic city in the world. It beats Paris, hands down.

We are at a ‘chic’ restaurant. Ristorante da Gaspare. I won’t link to it as it would be unfair. I am led to believe it is expensive. We had some antipasto of shrimps and clams. Some pizze and foccia. And then the biggest branzino I’ve ever seen was wheeled to our table – then taken away to be served up in smaller dishes so that we could help ourselves.

I don’t know how much was paid but I think it was a lot. The branzino was wonderful – but I didn’t get much. Nor did most other people (except the fat bloke almost opposite me – which explains his fatness, I would think). A couple of people had sweets. I tried one. It wasn’t up to much. The rest of it I could take or leave, really.

The atmosphere was great – for the people we were with. The place itself lacked atmosphere being bright and more like a canteen. I’m sure the fish was very fresh but it wasn’t really anything special.

Fi and C were lovely. They bought presents – for us for Christmas – some stone dogs which, apparently, in Austria (or in one town/village in Austria anyway) people put outside their houses to warn people that they have a dog. It was sweet of them. There was one for me and one for F. F pointed out that, if we put them outside our front door they would be nicked. Fi hadn’t thought of that. There was also a special cake for F’s birthday. Bless them. They think the world of him, I can tell. I think I passed the test :-) I think they liked me.

They were all nice people, really. Even the small fat guy who, if I hadn’t been told he was married – with a grown-up son – I would have placed as being the most gay of all gay people at that table (there was only F and I). He wore, round his neck, a black scarf – no, more like a shawl – with beads round the edge. It was more feminine than all of the ladies at the table! His wife was lovely.

F told me that the lady wearing the Missoni dress was a journalist. Married to the old guy with the pin stripe at the other end of the table. I’m guessing he was ‘something’ in fashion. I was more amazed that it was a Missoni dress. It looked much like something you could pick up in a junk shop – something from the 70s. I didn’t say anything. F surprises me sometimes and he obviously has a great deal of knowledge about his industry – but doesn’t say anything to me, much.

Before the event, though, he did say that, as it was very ‘fashion’ I should dress accordingly. I dressed in my normal ‘smart’ way – as I would for any night out with friends, or, even him! I don’t know whether that was right or not. He doesn’t ever tell me and I don’t want to ask.

We are, apparently, to meet up for an evening out with P. She seems nice although with her head somewhere else half the time. Still, I don’t dislike her and she is a good friend of F’s – or maybe Fi’s – I’m not really sure.

Fi didn’t really stop talking. She is almost as bad as F’s sister! We are to go there in May or something, when the weather is better. And, probably, after Rufus has left us.

This morning I took F to the airport. He is away for 11 days. I can’t wait for him to be back ……. already!!!

p.s. below is a clip where Jennifer Saunders is wearing almost the same hat as I mentioned above – except hers is a dark colour and this one, the other night was bright pink! Enjoy the clip anyway, it is very funny.

French and Saunders version of The Exorcist!

The conclusion is …………

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There’s this big furore going on about the infiltrator in the environmental movement. Was this police officer a victim? Did he go ‘native’ as some reports say? Are the police spying on all fringe groups?

Well, I suspect they are but, to be honest, that’s not really important. After all, if this group had decided to blow up the power station and done so, then there would be questions as to why the police didn’t know about it beforehand – a little like the 7/7 bombings in London. They are in a no win situation. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

No, once again, the point about all this is in danger of being missed. Whilst the concentration is on the ‘rogue’ policeman (or should that be ex-policeman), Kennedy, the focus should really be on two things:

1. Whereas ‘spying’ on a group is one thing, being actively involved in the things they have done and actively encouraging them to do these things, by assistance or providing money or, even, taking part in their ‘actions’ is another thing entirely. This makes him (and by virtue of that, his bosses), equally liable to the charges they bring against the protesters – and yet none of them are in court. This is so wrong as to be almost evil. It makes this thing more of a police state.

2. When the lawyer asked for the video evidence which would permit the defendants to be obviously not guilty, the CPS decided that they could not proceed any further. Now, this video evidence existed when the police raided the school. This evidence existed when the people were charged. This evidence existed when the people were taken to court. And, this evidence was going to be kept secret. There is a right in the UK of presumed innocence until proven guilty. And, were it not for the evidence, they would have been tried and ‘proven’ guilty – with the police sitting on ‘evidence’ that meant that they were not guilty. It is one thing to find and present evidence so that a guilty person is punished. It is another thing when you have evidence to prove their innocence but you are prepared to ignore some evidence in order to ensure that an innocent person is punished. That results in a miscarriage of justice.

And all of this begs the question: this evidence was ‘found out’ by accident – how many other convictions are unsafe – and by unsafe, I mean that the evidence which would prove them innocent has been withheld to ensure conviction?

Which leads on to: are the police to be trusted?

Read more here and here