What a week for Italy. The rubbish and sanitation crisis in Naples and Campania has continued to bubble away, making international headlines and drawing attention to Naples for all the wrong reasons. Anecdotally friends are telling me that tourist numbers are already suffering as a result. Then they unearthed a bomb in the historical centre of Naples, a left over from World War II. Now the Italian government has collapsed. Berlusconi is again circling like a hungry shark, pushing for spring elections.I 'm afraid for Italy's future. I'm not alone. The BBC website states, 'yet today, Italy remains one of the worst governed countries in Europe'. No amount of good coffee, pasta, pizza, art, crumbling Roman ruins and sunshine will make up for the fact that public services are in a dire state, cronyism and corruption are rampant, unemployment (and underemployment) is out of control and the economy is suffering. Chaos rules across the peninsular.
Someone told me last night it was a great time to be in Italy. Everything is on a knife's edge. It could go either way. Other friends are predicting a civil war, or a revolution, where the people take to the streets. The idea that things are about to either improve or completely crash and burn though seem to me to be optimistic. It is my suspicion that Italy will continue to make an even bigger mess of things, while the European Community watches on, threatening to impose fines (like a fine is going to have any impact on the reality of what is an economic, political and social disaster), menacingly waving it's big blue and yellow stick around.
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