Guide to The Ducati Museum – Bologna Were Emilia-Romagna to declare independence from Italy in the morning, in one fell swoop Italy would lose the vast majority of its luxury car and motorcycle production. Emilia-Romagna is one of the richest regions in the country, in part precisely due to the fact that Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, […]
It was inevitable that, sooner or later, someone in the Italian press/blogosphere would link Euro 2008 and the recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish electorate. Giordano Bruno Guerri, self-declared ‘anti-modernist’, blogger and journalist with il giornale, steps into the fray with a none-too-convincing argument on his blog.
Tough talk, characterised most often by the phrase ‘amarezza‘ (bitterness) from Italy’s leading politicians following the news of Ireland’s ‘no’ vote to the Lisbon treaty. Ex President of the EU Commission Romano Prodi pulled no punches: “We can’t go on with the unanimous vote in a Union of 27 countries, and let’s stop saying that […]
This monkey just managed to get his hands on a copy of NaziRock, the new documentary by film-maker Claudio Lazzaro. The film takes a look at the neo-nazi scene in Italy, focussing in particular on a number of bands that produce ‘rock identitario’ or ‘identity rock’ the hallmark of which appears to be angry slogans, […]
Underneath the mountains of rubbish that litter the streets of Napoli and surrounding towns lies a complex, profitable, and extremely dangerous system run by the Camorra. In essence, for years this organised crime outfit has taken toxic industrial waste from Northern Italy, at bargain prices, and dispersed it throughout the Campania region – profiting from […]
One of the first moves of Berlusconi’s new government was for the Finance minister Giulio Tremonti to announce that an agreement had been reached with the Italian banking association (ABI) to allow for cash-strapped mortgage-holders to renegotiate their variable-rate loans into fixed-rate ones. It looks set to be a highly popular move, alongside the abolition […]
It was, in a sense, a political exorcism. At least Fabrizio Cicchitto, a leading member of Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà would have had us believe. On the 14th of may, at the first sitting of the newly elected parliament, Cicchitto (who in 1981 admitted to being a member of the Masonic Lodge P2), speaking for […]
By chance this week, this monkeys saw an episode of the truly terrible Francesco’s Italy (worth watching, if you turn the sound down), where host Count Francesco Da Mosta pulled his alfa-romeo spider into Verona. In keeping with the rest of the series, Da Mosta gave us a keen insight into the city’s history and […]
Rosa Luxembourg, the Polish-German socialist famously theorised ‘you lose, you lose, you lose, you win’, and that will be of a certain consolation to Walter Veltroni, the first leader of the new left-wing party Partito Democratico, particularly given the shock news last night that the party’s ‘sure-fire’ Mayoral candidate for Rome, Francesco Rutelli, has been […]
On Friday, the 25th of April (liberation day), an estimated two million people gathered in over 40 cities in Italy to protest about the state of journalism (print and television) in Italy. Over 500,000 people in one day queued up to sign a petition calling for three specific referenda to change the way information is […]
