Free to not be free

Ignazio Maria Benito La Russa, the new president of the Senate, and doughty remnant of the neofascist movement has announced that, as President of the Senate – the second position of state after the President of the Republic, he will not be celebrating the 25 April.   The holiday in Italy is usually known as Liberation Day and celebrates the vanquishing of Nazism and Fascism at the end of the war.   He says that to participate in the marches is a prerogative of the left.  It will be interested to see whether his personal beliefs and his duties as Statesman will align before April.

In other news Il Presidente Meloni, as she wants to be known, is still working hard to help the Italians with their bills.  Which is just as well, as up till now she has done precisely nothing.   She is still working on appointing the myriad of under secretaries and assistant ministers, so time for things like stopping the entire economic collapse of Italy is obviously in short supply.  To add to her list of things to do is to deal with the gigantic tub of lard Salvini, who has decided that he as deputy can announce policy that hasnt been agreed or discussed with his allies or the PM.  This is narking Meloni not a little.  Thus far Salvini has announced a change to the amount of cash you’re allowed to use (currently 1000 euros),  and to up the maximum to 10 grand.   Now there are not many people who buy a car in cash, or carry that sort of money around in their pockets unless a) you’re a drug dealer or b) have earned it illicitly and are unknown to the tax man.  Meloni backtracks to suggest 5000, but still has yet to do it.  Their Trusslike reasoning is that people will go shopping and it is a sign of giving the power back to the people.   If the politicians could buy their coke with cash, it would certainly help us all.

Then Matteo said they would be stopping the reddito di cittadinanza for 6 months – again, without any consultation or agreement – Meloni got a bit iffy about this, and said that he could have at least called her and warned her.   Its part of the Salvini playbook, make lots of promises he cant keep, but at least he’s grabbed the headlines for a few days.  His other big promise this week is to declare war on NGO’s – which seeing that he is currently in a courtcase on a charge of kidnapping a boatload of refugees is hardly surprising.     The senile loose cannon  Berlusconi tells us that we need to stop sending arms to Zelensky and then he’ll sit down to peace talks, so the solid coalition seems to be already fraying at the edges.  They’ve only been in power for a week – a long time compared to British politics lately – but it doesnt bode well.

Author: rammers