RIDDLE OF THE WEEK

When is an installment not an installment? When Rai [Italy's public service broadcasting company, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance] has anything to do with it, that's when!

For some time now, Italy has been trying to solve the problem of TV licence fee evaders, of which there are many.  A couple of years ago, it was decided that, if the fee was added to electricity bills, everyone would have to pay it on time, for everyone has electricity and if you have electricity you are bound to have a TV, right?  Who, after all, could live without one? Well, quite a few people are actually claiming that they can and do.

If you genuinely don't have a TV and therefore wish to be exempted from licence fee payment, you are going to have to prove it, this year and every year, and, quite honestly, I don't fancy your chances. I have a friend here who has never had a TV and who has to date fought a ten-year battle in order to be believed - a fiasco which began long before some bureaucrat came up with the combined licence fee and electricity bill idea.

But let us get to the installments: as a softener, the licence fee has been slightly reduced from €113,50 to €100 per year, to be paid in ten installments.  Parliament finally passed the measure last year after much to-ing amd fro-ing and if you're British, like me, you might have expected to be billed for the first installment with the first electricity bill of 2016. This didn't happen and nobody seemed to know if or when the payments would have to start. Now, however, it has been announced that the first "installment" will be requested with the July electricity bill - only it won't be one installment, but six, as the January - June installments will have to be paid in one go.  To my mind, this renders them non-installments but a down payment, though everybody else just sighs and regards the situation as perfectly normal - which of course, it is in Italy, a country not known for its ability to simplify such matters.

Something tells me there is going to be a fair amount of chaos in July!

PLUS ÇA CHANGE....

So after visiting the UK for the first time in eight years, what changes did I note? I tend to notice weird, often insignificant things, so here are my weird observations, in no particular order:

• Handbags are still on the small side.
• Eateries are noisier than Italian ones but at least they are free of the ubiquitous televisions you find in the latter.
• Why did I get a separate "glass of ice" every time I asked for ice in my mineral water?
• There is a craze for sweet potato chips.
• Halloween has become a more pleasant festival than I remembered.
• When did people start saying "See you later" to mean "soon/sometime/never"?
• I was interested to see what kind of shops have survived the recession and was surprised to find several novelty shops in the centre of Cardiff still there.
• I was negatively flabbergasted at the cost of public transport and positively so at its efficiency [after 10 years in Modica].
• I was relieved that most people I talked to were more sympathetic to refugees than when I left and than the media would lead one to believe now. I was also relieved that most people I met did not think the UK will leave the EU.

Et plus ça ne change pas.....

As a post scriptum on my trip home, here is a note to Comiso Airport, a clean and efficient facility that we are justly proud of in these parts:  I know Sicilians don't like to be comfortable, but the rest of the world does, so please can we have some seating outside the airport? Weary travellers waiting to be picked up after you close need somewhere to sit!

MODICA, CITTÀ CHIUSA

If you are a tourist coming to Modica tomorrow for the Ferragosto holiday, you will be able to visit this,

Modica, Duomo di San Pietro

this

Modica, Duomo di San Giorgio

and this:

Modica, Chiesa di Santa Maria di Betlem

Virtually everything else, I am sorry to tell you, will be closed. This includes museums, the house of Modica's Nobel laureate Salvatore Quasimodo and, in the countryside, the Cava d'Ispica.

Yes, it is true that if we come to another country, we have to do our best to adapt to its rhythms and I have no problem with that. However, dear Comune di Modica, you cannot continue to behave in such a way and, at the same time, blame your woes on the crisi economica and tell us how much you want tourists!

Happy Ferragosto.

AUSTERITY FOIL?

Does anyone else remember when what we used to call "silver paper" was difficult to remove from a Kit Kat bar? It used to stick to the chocolate and you'd get a metallic taste in your mouth.

Well, I'm beginning to think that Italian manufacturers of kitchen foil have used the old-style silver paper as their inspiration, as their product has become noticeably thinner and sometimes sticks to the food - "austerity foil", perhaps?

Cling film [plastic wrap] went the way of all flesh years ago but I'd be interested to know if anyone else has noticed a deterioration in the quality of kitchen foil, either in Italy or elsewhere.

Some of you may remember that I've had an issue with kitchen foil before and no doubt the hapless Mr Letta, charged with the task of forming a new government for Italy yesterday, has other matters on his mind, just as Mr Monti did before him.  On the other hand, I'm sure that Mr Letta, like his compatriots, will wish to continue to eat well, crisis or no crisis, so what could be more important than turning his attention to the problem of l'alluminio della sobrietà?

WHAT PRICE CULTURE?

Dante Alighieri, attrib. Giotto
Image:  Wikimedia Commons

Dante Alighieri, in a cold Cardiff lecture hall, caused me much misery and not a few nightmares almost half a century ago. However, his poetry came alive for me the first time I visited Florence and its beauty amazes me all over again when I hear the verses recited by the great Roberto Benigni.

Benigni's ambitious Tutto Dante project, in which the actor-director explains and then recites selected canti from Dante's masterpiece, began in Greece in 2006. The project was then taken to Florence. Since then, the one-man shows have toured Italy, completed an international tour and returned to Florence in 2012, when more canti from the Inferno were added to the repertoire.

Rai 2 is currently showing the recorded 2012 shows and in this house Wednesday night has become "Dante night". Not everyone in Italy appreciates the shows, though, and one of the criticisms has been that what works in the magnificent setting of the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence does not work on the small screen.  Another criticism is that the programmes are too long and in addition there is controversy over Benigni's reported fee. A package comprising the Tutto Dante 2012 shows and a programme about the Italian Constitution which Benigni presented in December is rumoured to have cost over 6 million euros, including production costs. Audience share for Tutto Dante is down and it has been suggested that Rai is about to pull the programme from its prime-time slot.

Can you put a price on culture and, if so, can it be justified in a time of recession?  Well, let us imagine, for a moment, a world without culture, in which the lines of Dante, through a genius like Benigni, do not come to us down the ages; in which such lines do not uplift someone, somewhere, or cause  listeners to turn again to their copy of the Divina Commedia and find comfort in the revelation that human passion and suffering are universal and that Dante, as Benigni reminds us, is sympathetic to these emotions. When I hear Dante recited like this, I know what my answer would be. Please bring us the Vita Nuova next, Roberto!

50 SHADES A DAY?

As you may have read, last Friday some of Italy's private beach companies, in what became known as the sciopero degli ombrelloni or "parasol strike", staged a protest against new EU regulations which, from 2016, will allow for licence auctions. 

And this is what Simi the dog had to say about it:

DON'T SAY THAT IN MODICA!

Beppe Grillo
Image:  Lucarelli via Wikimedia Commons

I am, on the whole, a fan of Beppe Grillo though I am beginning to believe that he falls into the category of people whom Lillian Hellman called "good rebels who are bad revolutionaries". [I rather hope I am one myself!] Here is what Miss Hellman has to say about such souls:

"Rebels seldom make good revolutionaries, perhaps because organized action, even union with other people, is not possible for them."
- Lillian Hellman:  An Unfinished Woman

Anyway, in April Mr Grillo, whose anti-corruption Movimento 5 Stelle party has been winning important local elections in Italy, offended Sicilians when he said that even the Mafia doesn't strangle its victims but takes 10% protection money instead, the implication being that the government, with its anti-crisis measures, is "strangling" the electorate.  Obviously this is a hurtful remark, especially to those who have lost loved ones in anti-Mafia campaigns, and a storm of criticism ensued.

Rosy Bindi

Next Mr Grillo turned his attention to Rosy Bindi, the President of the Pd [Democratic Party]. Ms Bindi has been much maligned in the past, most famously on television in 2009 by Mr Berlusconi, who said she was "more beautiful than intelligent". [The saddest thing about this remark, I've always felt, was that Mr Berlusconi probably genuinely believed it to be a compliment.]  In July Mr Grillo, referring to the Democratic Party's stance on gay marriage, said that Ms Bindi had "probably not had cohabitation problems with the love of her life", earning himself the accusation of being "worse than Berlusconi" from Pd Secretary Pierluigi Bersani and winning few women friends in the process.

As if all that were not bad enough, now Mr Grillo has launched an attack on the Olympics with the following statement on his blog:

"I don't know, nor have I ever known in all my life, anyone who practises foil or sabre fencing, yet when the Olympics are on I'm proud if my country wins. Then for another four years, I couldn't care less.  It's not the athletes who win, but nations.  It's the trimph of nationalism."

You'd better not say that in Modica, Mr Grillo!

Italian Male Fencing Team, including Giorgio Avola from Modica, wins gold in London:

ARRIVEDERCI, RAGUSA

Under measures agreed by the Italian government last week, the administrative map of Italy will, by 2014, look very different from the one we see today and the main casualties of this reorganisation are many of the country's provinces.  

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Italian administrative system, the country is divided into 20 regions, five of which, including Sicily, have special statutes which give them a greater degree of autonomy. The regions are subdivided into provinces, made up of various comuni or town councils. The main responsibilities of the provincial tier of government have hitherto been local planning, policing, fire services and transport [the health service being administrated at regional level] but under the new measures provincial government will only be responsible for environmental planning, transport and road systems.

Any proposed change to the number or responsibilities of the provinces has always been deeply controversial and of course there are a lot of vested interests here.  There are those who worry about the possibility of government becoming too "big" and impersonal, just as there are those who worry about what happens when it is too "small" and there are also many who believe that the entire provincial tier of government is wasteful and useless.

A desire on the part of central governmment to reform the system is not new and the last government had also proposed sweeping changes.  The Monti government, with its spending review, has decided that change there must be and that it must take place in what, for Italy, is a remarkably short time scale.

It has been agreed that a province must have a minimum of 350,000 inhabitants and cover a minimum area of 2,500 sq. kilometres. The population requirement was at first set at 300,000 and for this reason it was thought that Ragusa, with 308,103 inhabitants, would be saved.  Then the goalposts were moved.  The area requirement, though, has gone down rather than up - it was originally 3,000 sq. kilometres - and this change has saved the mainland provinces of Bergamo and Pavia [ Lombardy], Vicenza [Veneto] Modena [Emilia-Romagna] and Lecce [Puglia] among others.  Sicily will lose five of its nine provinces, namely Caltanissetta, Enna, Ragusa, Siracusa and Trapani.  Palermo, Agrigento, Catania and Messina remain and Ragusa will be incorporated into the Province of Catania.

Sicily, as a region with special statute, has six months to "prepare" but in yet another of those Italian omissions which may or may not be just an oversight, no one has any idea what sanctions will be applied by central government if the region fails to do so.

Ten mainland "metropolitan areas" will become new provinces called "metropolitan cities" by 1st January 2014 and these are: Rome, Turin, Milan, Venice, Genova, Bologna, Firenze, Bari, Napoli and Reggio Calabria.

In its wisdom the govenment has decided to leave local festivals and saints' days that constitute a local holiday alone so the "new" and bigger provincial administrations will not be able to order town councils to cut these holidays.  This is not a concession made out of a "live and let live" attitude but a carefully researched austerity measure:  quite simply, not enough money would be saved by doing otherwise.

In all, 64 of Italy's 107 provinces are scheduled to disappear in order to "make Italy more efficient and give it a more modern administrative system".

Hmm.....  "Pazienza... vediamo"  ["Patience - we shall see"] as the Sicilians say.

AN ASTral ANALOGY

As rumours spread that Italy will be the next roof tile to fall off the Eurozone house of cards, in Sicily we are worried about our local and inter-city bus company, AST, which is reported to be in trouble.

AST services, we are told, are currently operating only with the forbearance of the company's creditors and it has become public knowledge that, as in institutions all over Italy from small businesses to government itself, high-ranking officials of the company have been enjoying considerable luxury whilst carrying out their duties.

Few outside Italy know that parliamentarians, for instance, enjoy privileges unheard of in other countries, from free rail tickets for personal travel to ridiculously cheap meals whilst working and these are among anomalies that the Monti government has been doing its best to correct.  But ask the man in the street what else the Monti government is doing and he will answer, "Taxation" for the popular perception is that everyone is being taxed out of existence and there is little to cheer them up whilst this is happening. Tax evasion on an enormous scale has long been a way of life in Italy and now, rightly, you may imagine, everyone is afraid of a raid by the Financial Police.  However, the average Italian businessman will say that he has to pay so many taxes - and not just once a year - that he hardly deems the effort of continuing worthwhile.

I am the last person who should advise anyone on handling money, let alone a whole country, but what Italy needs is [a] liberalisation of its economy and [b] cheering up.  I personally had much hope of the Monti government but take one look at the sombre faces of its ministers and you would not be inclined to think that they were about to brighten your day. As I remarked when the government took office, the trouble with a government of "experts" is that experts tend to have comfortable, upper middle class lives so they cannot really imagine what it is like to be totally dependent on a meagre wage which is often simply NOT PAID.  Yes, in Italy it is quite common for an employer, even a public one, to pay late or not at all and it is considered,  if not exactly OK, perfectly normal.

And here we come to another "barrier" to a mobile economy:  it is the Italians' ability to tolerate the intolerable.  Is it because almost everyone has a family to help out with the bills when salaries are not paid that they put up with such nonsense from employers?  To go back to our beloved AST, is it because everyone has a car or, if they are elderly, has a relative with a car that they put up with an abysmal local service, at least in Modica?  Why, I have often wondered, does no one complain?

"Only old people use the buses", a student of mine informed me when I first arrived here.

"Thanks very much", said I.

This brings me to another element which I observe creeping into the situation, not just in Italy but all over Europe:  it is an idea that in order to stimulate the economy for the young, something must be taken away from the old.  This idea is dangerous and pernicious and I would hate to see Italy, where the elderly are certainly more respected and better looked after by their families than in the UK, embrace it.  Dear ministers, dear youth, dear friends, old people need to live too and your own old age will be upon you quite suddenly one day and you won't know where it came from.

Of course, that old Italian paradox also comes into play in this crisis:  the very characteristics that I have mentioned above and those that the rest of the world criticises in Italians are those that we most love in them in better times:  their tolerance, their ability to throw their hands up in the air and say, "That's how life is", their determination to spend time with their families and enjoy the sun while the world crumbles around them....  Let us hope, then, that the situation brings out the best in them for no one can better Italy at its best.

Thus it is that Modica's inner city AST buses do not run on time and your driver may well stop off en route to purchase a sack of potatoes or take refreshment.  But let us be tolerant - the potatoes were a bargain and the vegetable seller will go home at 1.30 pm.  On top of that, it's bloody hot today!  Besides, such antics brighten your day in a way that politicians will never be able to do. Let us also cross our fingers - for I am sick of the expression "crosshairs" -  for Sicily's AST company.  After all, as another student of mine charmingly said last year,

"I'm so proud of those buses.  They're almost punctual."

OF MORTAL COILS AND COINS

Bidding ends today for the concession to run Modica's municipal cemetery:  yes, in these hard times even death is being privatised and cemeteries are being sold all over Italy.  In one town in Campania, as we have seen, citizens are simply not allowed to die!

The Modica cemetery is full and bereaved relatives are having to bury their loved ones elsewhere, despite the fact that 1,200 citizens have each already paid a 50 percent deposit on a burial plot in their home town.

The company which wins the concession will be able to manage the cemetery for 26 years but representatives of Italy's three biggest trade unions in the town are, understandably, against the scheme.  They say that a council-run cemetery is a fundamental need of all citizens, on a par with their need for a water service.  And the citizens themselves?  According to local reports they do not much care who runs the cemetery - they just want  it to be expanded and to be managed efficiently.

Meanwhile one business that does not appear to have been hit by the economic crisis is that of undertaking and it was strange to see a row of fairy lights outside one funeral director's premises at Christmas.  Another undertaker whose premises are near my home has his drivers sitting outside, gossiping while they wait for custom [which always comes] in all seasons, weather conditions and at all hours - all hours, that is, except those of the siesta for no one in Modica, it seems, is so inconsiderate as to shuffle off this mortal coil during siesta.

On a cheerier note, you may like to read my article on the causes of longer life expectancy in Sicily for Times of Sicily today.

HOW GAGA IS MY VALLEY?

Miss Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga, is looking for a villa in Sicily and may also record her next video, of the song "The Queen", in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, it is rumoured.

Last year the Mayor of Agrigento, Marco Zambuto, suggested that the site could be managed by private companies for limited periods during which, in return for a fee, they could use it for events and promote their products using a "Brand Agrigento" logo. They would also be invited to sponsor the site. Therefore it looks as if the Lady Gaga initiative would be a welcome one.

Now I'm a modest soul but could it be that Her Ladyship, whose ancestors hail from the town of Naso in Messina Province, has heeded my advice at the end of this article?

Tempio della Concordia, Agrigento

THE DAY SICILY STOPPED

A transport strike of goods vehicles has more or less brought Sicily to a standstill today, with intercity roads and ports being blocked all over the island.  This, in turn, has caused the closure of some petrol stations and long queues outside those remaining open, while some pupils were unable to get to school and supermarkets quickly ran out of milk, bread and other fresh products.

The stoppage, called by Forza D'Urto,  a new movement made up of members of Autotrasportatori Aias, the Movimento dei Forconi [an agricultural workers' movement] fishermen, businesspeople from the agricultural sector, indignati and others, is intended to be a peaceful protest that will not hurt Sicilians but will make people all over Italy realise that something must be done about the current economic crisis.  The banners of trade unions or political parties will not be displayed during the protest.  The organisers say that the movement is for all Sicilians who are tired of bureaucracy and corruption of all kinds and who wish to reclaim their rights. Italy's main trade unions have, however, distanced themselves from the movement in statements issued today.

Members of the movement are particularly calling for a reduction in the excise duty on fuel, which has hit their industry and, consequently, Sicilian producers and exporters, hard and the strike is scheduled to last for five days, ending at midnight on Friday-Saturday night.

THERE'S NO ESCAPE

On the day that Italy has had its credit rating downgraded by one of the absurd ratings agencies, I thought I would share with you the cheerful news that, if you happen to live in the town of Ragusa, there is no escape from the eurozone crisis, not even when you reach that great financial market in the sky.

The Corriere di Ragusa reports that, on New Year's Eve, while everyone else was preparing to celebrate, the city councillors of Ragusa held a jolly meeting at which it was decided to increase the cost of burials in the city's cemetery from €20 to €50,  that of entombment from €31 to €100 and that of exhumations - necessary because after a certain period your remains are removed to a slot in the wall - from €23 to €100.

As Dorothy Parker famously said, "You might as well live."

Update: Clarification in view of comments
Perhaps I should clarify that the costs mentioned above are for the physical acts of entombment, burial and, eventually, exhumation.  They do not take into account the additional costs of the cemetery plot or the funeral.

ANOTHER YEAR AND SOME SHOCKING STATISTICS

Image: Wikimedia Commons via ECB

Statistics released today by Istat, the Italian National Statistics Office, show that 24.5% of Italians were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2010, a figure not much different from that for 2009. As usual, the situation is worse in the South, where 12.9% of families are suffering some form of deprivation, a figure which is double that for Central Italy and three times that for the North.  Family income is a stunning 25% lower in the South than in the rest of Italy whilst the percentage of Italian families in which the 18-59-year-olds work for less than one fifth of the year stands at 10.2, an increase of 1.4% as compared to 2009.

In 2010 16% of families were finding it impossible to manage on their monthly income and 8.9% had utility bill arrears. The number who had rent or mortgage arrears stands at 11.2%.  A worrying 31.3% of families had found themselves without the means to purchase necessary clothing during 2010 and 6.3% had been unable to purchase the food they needed at some point in the year. Also worryingly, 18.1% of families had experienced difficulty in paying medical expenses: Italy of course has a free health service but hospital appointments and tests carry a nominal charge for all but the poorest and there are prescription and some other charges.  The statistics also show that 11.5% of families had been unable to heat their homes adequately and you may be surprised to learn that most of these live in the South:  winter nights can be harsh here but the figures may also reflect the fact that families in the South are more likely to have elderly relatives living with them.

Sadly, it is Italy's young people who are most at risk of poverty and deprivation and again the figure is higher for the South.

Another year and another set of statistics, yes;  but behind each of these statistics there are human beings and stories of real suffering.  It is my earnest hope that politicians do not forget this and that everyone has a more prosperous 2012.

ADVENT IN MODICA

Sobrietà, or austerity, has certainly hit the modern Sorda area of Modica where I live:  there are few Christmas lights, many businesses are closing and there is no seasonal atmosphere at all.  Down in the historic centre of Modica Bassa, though, it's a different story and I liked this depiction of the Three Wise Men on their journey:  it is made totally of natural materials and has been set up in the main square, Piazza Matteotti:

 I especially took to this fellow

 and I like the way the palm trees have been decorated, too:

But where were the Modicani this evening?  Were they all admiring the crib?  They were not:  they had rushed en masse to La Fortezza, the city's first big shopping mall.  Judging by the hour-long traffic jam on the road approaching it and the number of people there, Modicans are about to follow the British in adopting shopping as their Sunday hobby.  

La Fortezza has three floors of stores and eateries and a nifty moving floor that you can take your trolley on to get to the top.  This evening there was even entertainment and I must say they serve a good portion of calories-don't-count-'cos-you're-out chips on the second floor.

I have just one plea for the Comune:  how about putting a bus on so that those of us without cars can actually get there?

UN GRANDE SPETTACOLO

Image:  Wikipedia

In Italy we have been witnessing a "great show" all week and its finale was played out in front of the eyes of the world yesterday, when Silvio Berlusconi at last resigned.  

Rumours of the Premier's political demise had  begun to circulate on Monday on twitter, as Italy struggled to save itself fiscally by satisfying the demands of its eurozone neighbours.  But by the afternoon the Premier had denied the rumours and people all over Italy were trying to work out how to get the cork back into a bottle of champagne.

By Tuesday, however, the scenario had changed again and it was announced that the Premier would resign, but only after full approval of the "Stability Budget" by Parliament - a process which, under normal circumstances, could have taken up to a month.

This time, though, the President and the people, aware of the gravity of the country's situation and of its terrible image abroad, swung into action:  The Budget was rushed through Parliament and by yesterday afternoon everyone was waiting to watch Mr Berlusconi's last journey as Premier - to the Quirinale to hand in his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano.

The Premier's appointment with the President was, we were told, for 8.30 pm but, this being Italy, no one really expected events to run to time.  Nevertheless, as the minutes ticked by and it became known that Mr Berlusconi was holding a Party meeting, everyone began to wonder if he was about to pull a last rabbit out of the hat - and in fact he did, laying down certain conditions for the Pdl's [People of Freedom] participation in and support of a new, transitional government.  The most reported of these conditions is that Mario Monti, the academic and former EU Commissioner who has become Prime Minister while I have been writing this post, will not, as an unelected Premier, be a candidate when elections are eventually held.

At last, nearly an hour late, Mr Berlusconi was driven to the Quirinale.  He made it known that he was upset and "embittered" by the jeering crowds, who were singing the partisan song, "Bella Ciao" and chanting "Galera!" ["Prison!"] and  "Buffone!"  Ah, Silvio, thus have the mighty ever fallen.  

The announcement that the Premier had, indeed, tendered his resignation came at 10 pm, the twitter feeds went crazy and the spumante was flowing in the streets of Rome and several other cities.  Sicily is traditionally conservative and all remained quiet here in Modica, although the town has a left-wing Mayor in office [by the skin of his teeth]. 

And that brings me to the question which is always asked abroad about Mr Berlusconi:  How did this tycoon, so often ridiculed in the rest of the world, stay in power for so long?  Part of the answer is, of course, that the country has had no effective Opposition, but the real answer, I believe, lies in the personality of the Cavaliere himself: Many of his supporters would claim, with justification, that he did not amass his millions by being stupid and that he has received little credit for his business achievements.  They admire a man who can rise to the top and remain there.  Secondly, as I've written before, Mr Berlusconi appeals to a very Italian instinct - the instinct for joy -  and it is this which may, paradoxically, have toppled him.  

The trouble is that the country's young people, who feel they have no hope, can manifest little joy.  Every day I meet students who tell me that they feel they have no future and that they are ashamed of their country.  And I, as a lover of Italy, have been heartbroken at times, in the past few years, to see the country so derided abroad, largely because of the antics of one man.

That said, I do not think that Mr Berlusconi is all bad:  I am sure that he is very charming and I would rather spend an evening with him than with Nicolas Sarkozy.  My hope for Mr Berlusconi is that he will ditch the airhead models and find the companionship he so obviously needs in a kind, intelligent woman nearer his age.  [But when did men ever learn?!]

Now we are going to have a new, "technocrat" transitional government and what will happen is anyone's guess:  Mr Monti may be able to sort the whole, sorry, economic situation out.  If he needs advice, he will find no shortage of it, with those two self-appointed "headteachers" of the eurozone,  Merkel and Sarkozy, ready to fly to Italy to tell him what to do. Personally, I hope he tells Merkozy to get stuffed as some people, it seems, need to be reminded that Italy is a sovereign state.  As so often happens in hard times, we may see a resurgence of the right;  extreme right-wing parties are already advocating an "Italy for Italians" and the independence-seeking Lega Nord may prove to be more dangerous outside government than within it.  My own country, the UK, panicked by events in Greece and Italy, may even leave the EU, a policy which I believe would be domestically disastrous and which would have serious repercussions for British expatriates here.

Let us hope, however, that all will be well.  I have actually been rather proud of Italy this week, for it was not the bankers who ousted Mr Berlusconi - it was democracy in action.

Finally, for those of you who are going to miss the Cavaliere, don't worry too much:  his new CD of love songs will be out on 22nd November.  But you may prefer to spend your hard - earned cash on earplugs.

SABATO MUSICALE PER I TRENI DELLE DONNE

I am dedicating this week's sabato musicale to the women who have travelled to Rome by train today from Bologna and Palermo in order to demonstrate in defence of the Italian Constitution.

The founder of the movement, Sicilian architect Nella Toscano, points out that the country's recent troubles have hit women, who comprise 51% of the population, particularly hard and feels that it is time for Italy's women to join together to defend the Constitution, in particular Article 1, which states that "Italy is a democratic republic,  founded on work", Article 11, which repudiates war and Article 41, which states that public and private economic activity should be coordinated to social objectives.

The two trains converging upon Rome from the North and South of the country also symbolise the unity of Italy.

Sergio Endrigo - Il treno che viene dal sud

THE SOUTH IS NOT SO CHEAP

The commonly held belief that it is cheaper to live in the South of Italy than in the North may be a myth, according to a survey published this week by the consumers' association Altroconsumo:

A nationwide inquiry into prices at 949 stores in 91 cities has revealed Siracusa in Sicily to be the most expensive city in Italy in which to do a weekly family shop with Catania, Palermo and Messina being the fourth, eighth and ninth most expensive cities respectively.  Sassari in Sardinia was second in the list and Aosta third. 

Pietro Agen, the president of Confcommercio Sicilia, has commented that prices are, in general, lower in the South but that there are fewer chain stores and, where these exist, transport costs may be pushing up the prices of their products.

My personal observation would be that the survey does not take into account the low prices in some popular local markets in the South.

And the cheapest city in which to fill that family shopping basket, according to the survey? Verona.

OF DESPERATE TIMES AND DRASTIC MEASURES

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Desperate times, it is said, call for drastic measures and selling one's own mother on ebay would be drastic by most people's standards.  That is exactly what a Sicilian seller hopes to do, though and in the advertisement, placed on 30th August, the mother in question, who apparently does not baulk at the prospect of singing a lullaby at 3 am.,  is described as "new, unused, unopened and undamaged".  The seller goes on to say that she is an excellent cook whose speciality is sweet dishes, open-minded and a good listener.The unfortunate lady also has a university degree and speaks five languages.  

"Why is she up for sale, then?" you may ask.  Well, the seller hopes to exchange her for his or her dog, a ten-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier who disappeared from Castelluccio in Siracusa Province on 15th August.  Any money raised from the "mamma sale" will go towards offering a reward for the return of the dog or to ENPA [a national animal charity] in Catania.

Bidding at the moment stands at €4.50 and there is one day left to bid.

PRIVATISATION PROPOSAL FOR VALLE DEI TEMPLI

Temple of Concordia, Valley of the Temples, Agrigento

These are difficult times for the comuni of Italy:  the government has announced swingeing cuts in their funding   and schools, hospitals and other institutions all over the country are feeling the effect. Here in Modica, we have all been subject to discomfort caused by the failure of the administration to carry out its annual disinfestation process to deal with the summer's mosquito population and the courthouse is one of the institutions that we might lose    So worried are the country's mayors by the government's austerity measures that hundreds of them demonstrated in Milan on Monday.

It is no surprise, then, that mayors are trying to raise funds for their towns in any way they can and Marco Zambuto, Mayor of the city of Agrigento, is no exception:  this week he suggested that the Valley of the Temples, Agrigento's best known landmark, be managed as a "brand"  by private companies such as banks or auction houses for limited periods of time.  Under the proposals, the private companies would be able to use the architectural site for events along with the "brand" for their products and advertising in return for paying a fixed fee to the city.  The companies would also be "invited" to sponsor the maintenance and restoration of the site as well as the maintenance and improvement of its infrastructure.

Louis Vuitton, Versace and the London auction house Sotheby's are some of the companies that the Mayor is said to have in mind for the project.  Who wants a temple motif on their Louis Vuitton bag?