Mamma mia... :(

Ai nostri sunt mici copii, bietzi bicisnici contabili balcanici, pe langa ce fac distinstii italieni cu viatza lor publica si politica. Iata cum se face zdrentze o societate, cum se poate bate joc de La bella paese. Coruptie, ineficienta, privilegii, ostentatzie a acelor cetateni imbuibatzi care sunt si mai egali decat restul. Splendoare in iarba, langa un hoit in putrefactzie. Cam ce ni se intampla si noua, ciobanashilor mioritici. Doar ca la ei, manca'i'ar mama de imperialisthi ruptzi in cur, e vorba de acea pompa gomoasa cu care ne'au invatzat cardinalii de'a lungul vremurilor.

Deci, ashadar si prin urmare: Uite ca mai sunt si altii care pot sa exclame, plini de fiere: ce tzara frumoasa! Pacat ca'i locuita.

La bella paese, bre. La bella paese. Tu'i paesa mamii sale de viatza...


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Courtesy of Constantin Gheorghe.

Tot articolul despre Italia aici, in The London Review Of Books (tot courtesy of Constantin Gheorghe).

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Where the state has led, society has followed. The years since 1993 have, in one area of life after another, been the most calamitous since the fall of Fascism. Of late, they have produced probably the two most scalding inventories of avarice, injustice, dereliction and failure to appear in any European country since the war. The works of a pair of crusading journalists for Corriere della Sera, Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo, La Casta and La Deriva, have both been bestsellers – the first ran through 23 editions in six months – and they deserve to be. What do they reveal? To begin with, the greed of the political class running the country. In the Assembly, deputies have raised their salaries virtually six-fold in real terms since 1948, with the result that in the European Parliament an Italian deputy gets some 150,000 euros a year, about double what a German or British member receives, or four times a Spaniard. In Rome, the Chamber of Deputies, Senate and prime minister occupy altogether at least 46 buildings. The Quirinale, where the president of the Republic – currently Giorgio Napolitano, until yesterday a prominent Communist, as impervious as his predecessors – resides, puts at his disposal more than 900 servitors of one kind or another, at the last count. Cost of the presidential establishment, which has tripled since 1986? Twice that of the Elysée, four times that of Buckingham Palace, eight times that of the German president. Takings of its inmates? In 1993 Gaetano Gifuni, the Father Joseph of the palace, at the centre of then President Scalfaro’s operations to protect himself from justice, received 557,000 euros at current values for his services – well above the salary of an American president. Transport? In 2007, Italy had no fewer than 574,215 auto blu – official limousines – for a governing class of 180,000 elected representatives; France has 65,000. Security? Berlusconi set an example: 81 bodyguards, at public expense. By some reckonings, expenditure on political representation in Italy, all found, is equivalent to that of France, Germany, Britain and Spain combined.

Beneath this crust of privilege, one in four Italians lives in poverty. Spending on education, falling in the budget since 1990, accounts for a mere 4.6 per cent of GDP (Denmark: 8.4 per cent). Only half of the population has any kind of post-compulsory schooling, nearly 20 points below the European average. No more than a fifth of 20-year-olds enter higher education, and three-fifths of those drop out. The number of hospital beds per inhabitant has dwindled by a third under the new republic, and is now about half that in Germany or France. In the courts, criminal cases take an average of four years to reach a final verdict, time that is taken into account in the statute of limitations, voiding up to a fifth of cases. In civil suits, the average completion time for a bankruptcy hearing is eight years and eight months. In late 2007 two septuagenarian pensioners, trying to bring a case against the Social Security Institute, were told they could get an audience in 2020. As for equality before the law, an Albanian immigrant charged with trying to steal a cow in his homeland spent more days in an Italian prison than one of the mega-crooks of the food industry, Sergio Cragnotti, who destroyed the savings of thousands of his fellow citizens. Politicians were treated still better than tycoons: Berlusconi’s right-hand man, Cesare Previti, convicted of corrupting judges after hearings that lasted nine years, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment, spent all of five days in jail before being released to perform community service.

The material infrastructure of the country is in no better shape than its public institutions. Harbours: the seven major ports of Italy, put together, handle less container traffic than Rotterdam. Motorways: half the mileage in Spain. High-speed trains: less than a third of the tracks in France. Overall rail network: 13 kilometres longer than in 1920. Airlines: Alitalia has 23 long-range passenger jets compared to Lufthansa’s 134. All contributing to the dismal economic record of the last decade, when GDP has grown at the slowest pace anywhere in the EU, and labour productivity has barely improved: just 1 per cent between 2001 and 2006. Per capita income – still increasing at a modest 2 per cent a year between 1980 and 1995 – has been virtually stationary since 2000.

Meanwhile, the gap in living standards between North and South has widened. Criminal organisations are active in more than 400 communes of the Mezzogiorno, inhabited by some 13 million Italians, where one in three local businessmen reports widespread rackets. Labour-force participation is the lowest in Western Europe, and that of women rock-bottom; 30 points below Denmark, 20 below the US, ten below the Czech Republic. Nor does exclusion from production mean high levels of reproduction: just 1.3 births per woman, projecting a fall in the population from 58 to 47 million by mid-century. Already the elderly above the age of 60 outnumber the young between 18 and 24 by nearly three to one. The average voter is now 47.



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