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REVIEW SPENDING?
date: 03 May 2012 at 15:56:32 - 0 comments
The Spending Review, (non-elected) premier Mario Monti’s attempts to identify sources of savings within the national budget, reached a new high/low yesterday.
Super Mario and his Team of Technocrats came storming onto the scene à la Batman and Robin five months ago to wipe up the awful mess that inept but democratically-elected politicians had left behind them. Their smelly ‘poop’ was the largest national debt in Europe. All major parties which have been in power in Italy over the last sixty years (left, right and centre) have added to the debt, rather than attempting to reduce it.
Unfortunately for Mario Monti, the national debt has grown since even he came to power.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BARD
date: 30 April 2012 at 10:08:27 - 0 comments
I have a bone to pick with William Shakespeare.
I’ve been an ardent fan of his for a million years. He wrote the greatest tragedies, the wittiest comedies, the finest histories, the most supreme of sonnets. At least once a day, the opening lines of Sonnet 60 ripple through my thoughts:
“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.”
It is, I am convinced, the finest poem ever written or conceived by Man. Until a few minutes ago, I had no doubt that Shakespeare had invariably hit the mark. But then I realized that even the Bard sometimes got it wrong.
I just heard an announcement on the early radio news…
IN PRAISE OF DITHERING
date: 27 April 2012 at 17:42:22 - 0 comments
If there’s one thing I really admire it is a spot of dithering.
Is there any need to justify the ability to waver, ponder, then decide in an instant to take the opposite direction from the one you were intending to take? It has often struck me as being an impulsive act of innate genius. Witness Michelangelo, an arch-ditherer, who changed for the better the greater part of what he had already roughly hewn or painted. Or Caravaggio…
An act of genius when it works. When it doesn’t, it’s a recipe for total disaster.
Take yesterday in Italy, Rome, Palazzo Chigi, the office of…
There, you see? I’ve started dithering, asking myself where to start, how to begin, how to proceed, how to conclude, and then, suddenly, inspiration – I KNOW where to start!
LIBERATION DAY
date: 26 April 2012 at 10:11:56 - 0 comments
April 25th is a national holiday in Italy.
This year it fell on a Wednesday, providing a marvellous opportunity for a ponte, i.e., a bridge. It works like this. You request two days’ leave before and after the 25th, then add on the weekends before and after, and you have a 9-day ‘bridging’ holiday.
Now, that is something worth celebrating!
THE GOOSE IS GETTING FAT
date: 22 April 2012 at 10:07:40 - 0 comments
Maybe I’m getting old.
I have these occasional flashes of unbidden memory from the past, and there’s nothing I can do about them. I woke up this morning with this rhyme going through my head, and recollections of my childhood: “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.” And there was a tune which seemed to fit the words: “Bah-bah, Black Sheep.”
The two things went together nicely…