In the (always entertaining) off-pitch world of Italian soccer, the largely unsuccessful Serie A team Bologna have suspended four members of the club staff after they forgot to collect their shiny new Brazilian player, Ibson, from the airport, Italian newspapers reported yesterday.
Club president Albano Guaraldi was understandably pissed after the club’s newest would-be saviour arrived on Sunday, only to find there was nobody to greet him or pick up him.
Bologna are 17th in Serie A with 18 points, one point & just one place above the relegation zone.
Former Porto & Spartak Moscow midfielder Ibson, has joined Bologna from the famous (& successful) Brazilian club Corinthians; he was apparently not amused.
Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a few words of support for his old drinking chum Silvio Berlusconi, saying that the former Italian prime minister would not have faced trial for having sex with a minor if he were gay.
Vlad’s comment provoked laughter in the audience over what appeared to be a reference to criticism both at home & abroad over a Bill he signed into law this year banning the spread of “gay propaganda” among minors in Russia.
Silvio “The silver fox” Berlusconi is currently appealing against a conviction for paying for sex with a former nightclub dancer when she was under 18, a conviction for tax fraud & an upcoming vote to expel him from the Senate. (“It never rains but it pours,” as my old granny used to say.)
Silv & Vlad apparently regard each other as “friends” & the erstwhile KGB spy has proved loyal to his (strictly platonic) chum, telling a conference in 2011 that “however much they nag Signor Berlusconi for his special attitude to the beautiful sex … he has shown himself as a responsible statesman.”
If ever there were two men destined to share a beautiful life together, surely this is that pair!
In the early hours of yesterday morning thieves broke into a prison in northern Italy & made off with a safe containing over €5.000, it was reported.
The theft occurred shortly after midnight when the robbers managed to avoid detection by sophisticated surveillance systems & broke into the governor’s office at the prison in Pavia, near Milan, the newspaper Corriere della Sera said.
The safe was removed whole from the wall & carried away. Police are investigating the incident.
It has been suggested that the criminals apparently detailed knowledge of the prison’s layout & security systems may mean that the robbery is an “inside job” & it is believed that there may be a strong criminal element amongst the inmates.
Rumors that Sr. Berlusconi will appear on one of his many TV stations to deny any involvement could not, as yet, be confirmed.
“Bad news I’m afraid. It’s definitely not there…..”
Yesterday, in the teeth of the cold winds of recession, 5 Italian businessmen removed their trousers to protest outside parliament against a tax collection agency they blame for the suicides of more than a hundred of their colleagues & competitors.
The men strutted their stuff for the cameras in (largely designer label) shirts & underwear, carrying signs that read “You are killing thousands of jobs”.
They belong to Cobas Imprese, one of two groups demanding a referendum to abolish Equitalia, an agency that collects back-taxes & fines. They accuse it of exacerbating the economic crisis by hounding the indebted owners of failing businesses. (As opposed to exacerbating it by denying the state its legally-due revenues.)
“In the past 18 months, 162 businessmen have committed suicide because they have ended up in the jaws of this agency,” Giuseppe Graziani, president of Cobas Imprese, told smirking reporters.
Italy’s economy is bogged-down in a recession that has been dragging on since 2011, ratcheting-up unemployment & forcing the closure of thousands of businesses.
No political parties have yet joined the referendum campaign, Graziani said, although former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (of long overdue “about-to-go-down-the-river” infamy), whose party belongs to the coalition led by Enrico Letta, has previously demanded that the agency be closed.
Equitalia was the target of firebomb attacks last year.
Good to see that business men everywhere can be relied upon to look beyond narrow self-interest, as they struggle to contribute towards economic & fiscal recovery, even in Italy.
Italy’s highest court this week rejected an appeal by a couple who contended said they should not have been convicted of “obscene acts in public” because they had sex outdoors while the rest of their town was inside watching a soccer match.
The couple, then aged 60 & 40 respectively, were arrested while having sex in a piazza in southern Italy in 2006 while the national soccer team was playing in the World Cup soccer quarter-finals in Germany.
Their defense at a previous trial was that they had managed their encounter for a time that would not offend anyone, because everyone else would be at home watching the game on television.
They were convicted & subsequently brought their case to Rome’s Court of Cassation, the highest appeals court, where they lost again.
For the record, Italy played Ukraine that night and won 3-0, going on to win the tournament in a final against France. So at least the neighbors got to have a good time too.
The beautiful game is played with a little extra “con brio” in Italy
When in Rome, you get a little hit of cocaine with every breath.
A study of psychotropic drug levels in ambient air from eight Italian cities found background levels of cocaine, cannabinoids – the active ingredients in marijuana – nicotine and caffeine in every urban centre.
Turin had the highest concentrations of cocaine, says Angelo Cecinato at the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research in Rome. Meanwhile, Bologna and Florence had some of the highest cannabinoid levels, which Cecinato attributes to the large student populations in the two cities. The drug concentrations are much too low to have an effect, though.
ThursdayAgain 
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