The true Rome
So, a collection of British tourists, enjoying a quiet drink in a bar in Rome, are viciously assaulted by masked Romans armed with knives, iron bars and clubs. Several were hospitalized and at least one will need an operation.
A decent country would take this as a declaration of war, but the British government has stayed remarkably quiet. Why? Because the victims were football fans and the attackers were Italians.
Lazio chairman Claudio Lotito said today: "Lazio fans have nothing to do with what happened" and he added that there would be "surprises about the real culprits".
Nice line in self-delusion there.
Lotito, people might like to know, was banned from football for two and a half years in 2006 for his part in the local football scandal involving a network of football executives and referees rigging games. He also wears a nice line in expensive suits and fancy shiny black shoes. Hardly a man with much street-credibility, but definitely one of the self-perpetuating Italian elite who have got rich on the backs of mugs like us.
Interesting also that none of Italy's four overpaid and overstaffed police forces, which are well-inhabited with people who hanker after the good old days when Mussolini was in charge, were to be seen during the unprovoked attack on law-abiding British tourists who were minding their own business. There's no such shortage of police loafing around outside political headquarters and parliamentary buildings, polishing their shiny belts and shoes. There's a distinct shortage of Italian police when it comes to proper policing.
The silence of the British ruling classes here is not surprising. They are all Italophiles with hidey holes either in Tuscany or, if they haven't feathered their nests yet on the after-dinner circuit, in Puglia or somewhere cheaper. While Greece is hammered for a few years of overindulgence, we have continued to permit Italy for FIFTY YEARS to rob the EU blind with grants for subsidized museums that are never open and subsidized transport systems that never run. The South of Italy (in which I include Rome) is just a cesspit of corruption and patronage, and the sooner the EU tells it to fuck off the better.
Rant over.
A decent country would take this as a declaration of war, but the British government has stayed remarkably quiet. Why? Because the victims were football fans and the attackers were Italians.
Lazio chairman Claudio Lotito said today: "Lazio fans have nothing to do with what happened" and he added that there would be "surprises about the real culprits".
Nice line in self-delusion there.
Lotito, people might like to know, was banned from football for two and a half years in 2006 for his part in the local football scandal involving a network of football executives and referees rigging games. He also wears a nice line in expensive suits and fancy shiny black shoes. Hardly a man with much street-credibility, but definitely one of the self-perpetuating Italian elite who have got rich on the backs of mugs like us.
Interesting also that none of Italy's four overpaid and overstaffed police forces, which are well-inhabited with people who hanker after the good old days when Mussolini was in charge, were to be seen during the unprovoked attack on law-abiding British tourists who were minding their own business. There's no such shortage of police loafing around outside political headquarters and parliamentary buildings, polishing their shiny belts and shoes. There's a distinct shortage of Italian police when it comes to proper policing.
The silence of the British ruling classes here is not surprising. They are all Italophiles with hidey holes either in Tuscany or, if they haven't feathered their nests yet on the after-dinner circuit, in Puglia or somewhere cheaper. While Greece is hammered for a few years of overindulgence, we have continued to permit Italy for FIFTY YEARS to rob the EU blind with grants for subsidized museums that are never open and subsidized transport systems that never run. The South of Italy (in which I include Rome) is just a cesspit of corruption and patronage, and the sooner the EU tells it to fuck off the better.
Rant over.