Hate (crimes) postscript

Come on, you don’t need me to translate this for you. Make an effort. Sweat a little. After all, you never know how useful these very words might be on your next trip to Italy. You might bump into a cardinal and want to introduce yourself. You might glance up from the deck of your yacht to see Mastella sunning himself with a bevy (as I believe they’re called) of topless lovelies. You might be shopping for souvenirs at the SM counter of a sexy shop (yes, that’s what they’re called) and see Binetti hanging round the harness section. You might be on the receiving end of a homophobic gang attack and have nothing but words to defend yourself with. Because there won’t be any law there to help you.

Hate (crimes)

The Italian government is in one of its periodic kerfuffles about gay rights and the lack of them. A clause introduced into the long-suffering security bill currently passing through parliament aims to impose sentences for acts of violence or discrimination on the basis of race, sex and sexual orientation. Analogous to the kind of hate crime legislation that’s disturbing sensitive family-loving souls in the States, it’s based on the Treaty of Amsterdam and is as bland as semi-skimmed milk.

But you wouldn’t think so from the way self-mortifying catholic Paola Binetti (see illustration) sprang into action, refusing to vote with the government, rambling on about natural law, etc. She was followed by the usual suspects, not least the ever-present justice minister, Clemente Mastella, a man for whom nepotism and corruption are essential components of the air he breathes, who doesn’t appear to see that justice is only justice when applied to all. Giulio Andreotti, man of honour and best buddy to the Vatican, also piped up with a moral qualm or two.

Now it turns out the clause refers to the wrong part of the Treaty, so doesn’t exist. This may be a way of solving the problem (in the sense of burying the whole business beneath a ton or two of sand) or of prolonging it. I suspect the latter. But the real problem isn’t this scrap of legislation, which any normal country would have voted through unblinkingly. It’s the presence of people like Binetti in the newly-formed Partito Democratico. There may be a place for religious bigotry in the government (though I doubt it), but that place shouldn’t be a centre-left grouping that has absorbed a sizeable chunk of what’s left of the Italian Communist Party.

If she wants to preach her poisonous nonsense in parliament wouldn’t it be fairer to herself and everyone else if she joined one of the parties for whom prejudice and discrimination are daily bread? Ex-bovver boy Francesco Storace has just set up a little party for himself and a few chums called, in a moment of exceptional candour, La Destra (The Right) – presumably because there’s no money involved. Wouldn’t that dark but cosy enclave provide a more congenial home for the wearisome bigot and and her bible-thumping family-values-loving friends? And wouldn’t it be refreshing if the newly-appointed leader of the PD, Walter Veltroni, interrupted his ongoing tête-a-tête with Silvio B. to suggest that she take her criminal hatred elsewhere because no democratic party worthy of the name was prepared to tolerate it?

Ducks

Something restful to look at after a hard few days’ work, although these ducks, bucolic as they may seem, are actually protected by foxes from an electric fence and have seen their numbers rise and fall in the most precarious and bloody way. They’re only a few miles from the sea and a splendid estuary, but clearly prefer their pond and its mediated dangers.

Off picture, to the left, is a cunning structure of chicken wire and struts, which protects the ducks and their eggs from marauders, although I can’t remember what these are. Presumably, they arrive from above. Crows? Magpies? The structure also makes it possible for their owners to steal their eggs whenever they choose, which, post 9/11, comes under the heading of ‘the price we pay for freedom’.

The female ducks have curly tails, the male ducks don’t. Or is it the other way round?

All broken items must be paid for

Just under fifteen months ago I broke my shoulder. It wasn’t really my fault. I wasn’t doing anything dangerous. I wasn’t drunk, or cycling, or clicking my heels in the air: activities that have led to injuries in the past. I was crossing an urban road in the rain to cancel my place in a taxi queue (please, this is all true) and was forced to leap out of the way of a car turning onto the road. The driver leant across and wound down the window. ‘All right, mate?’ he said. Sprawled hopelessly, surrounded by shopping from Marks and Spencer’s, I must have done something reassuring because he wound up the window and drove off before I had a chance to ask myself if I actually was all right or not.

I wasn’t. When I tried to put the shopping back in its bags I realised my right arm didn’t work. It didn’t exactly hurt, just dangled in a lumpen way from my shoulder, as though denied all rights. My fingers still jiggled to order, which was a relief. I watched two middle-aged women gather my shopping for me, feeling oddly light-headed, struck by the suddenness of it all.

My mother, sheltering at a bus stop, was frantic. She was the one who’d decided there was no point trying to get a taxi mid-afternoon because they would all be doing the school run. Apparently, it’s now normal practice in provincial England for children to be carried home in taxis. For a moment, hearing the screech of brakes and the multiple intake of breath, she’d thought I was dead. When she understood what had happened, she held herself to blame.

There’s a long story about medical inadequacies and maltreatment that I’ll save for another post. Because today I’m happy. Today, after two mislaid cheques, innumerable faxes and irate telephone calls and, even worse, irate non-telephone calls because all I could get hold of was a recorded messsage, after two visits to the insurance office in Latina, an hour and a half from here, the first infuriated and then mollified, the second (today’s) incredulous and relieved, I have the money I’m owed. It’s not as much as some people get for accidents of this kind, I’ve been told by wiser (Italian) friends, but I have it in my hand. My right hand. Which I can raise without effort in the air and wave about. The only thing I wouldn’t be able to do with it is fasten a bra, so it’s a good thing I never wear one.

The humerus in the photograph above belongs to a pig.

Gazebo madness

While I was away last weekend, Silvio Berlusconi got up to one of his customary wheezes. The jape was a replica of the one he organised a few weeks ago, when the corrupt buffoon (Mail on Sunday) covered the country with Forza Italia gazebos (gazebi?) and held a private ‘referendum’ to send the Prodi government home, wherever that might be. According to the ex-crooner, millions of Italians flocked to the gazebos to vote, while those who didn’t availed themselves of his dedicated phone vote lines (€1.88 plus VAT). Sounds like I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here? Well, of course it does, although here the intention was to get a politician out and a celebrity back in. We’re used to leaders like Putin and Mugabe rigging elections so the final figures weren’t surprising, though Berlusconi’s referendum bore as much relation to a political election as Berlusconi does to a politician.

Shortly after, he announced the founding of a new party that would finally express the will of the people (seem familiar? try saying volk). In order to ensure that this will would be expressed with perfect unanimity he elected himself leader of the new party, established its internal structure, announced its programme and told everyone who would be in it and who wouldn’t.

But, as everyone knows, it isn’t the product that counts in politics so much as the packaging. Which is why he turned to the people to decide the new party’s name. He didn’t want to make things too complicated: Berlusconi fans tend to be bears of rather little brain (or people who stand to gain). He kept the choice simple: People for Freedom or Party for Freedom. Both have the same acronym (PdL), so he can get to work on the pencils and flags right away. In the meantime, it was out with the gazebos. And the phone lines (€1.88 plus VAT). And the lies about turn-out.

And would you believe it? The name Berlusconi wanted to win came up trumps. Bless.

Weekend break

I’ll be away for a few days. See you next week. Behave.

Here’s something to look at while I’m gone.

Sick building

The university language centre, where I work, is on the seventh floor of one of Rome’s ugliest buildings, halfway between the Pyramid and St Paul outside the Walls. Thrown up in the 1970s, it manages to seem both shoddy and hulking. It might have been modish at the time, with its matt grey panels and brutal silhouette, but time has done it no favours. It houses, among other things, Rome’s traffic police, where people pay their fines, and the local tax offices. Not surprisingly, it’s an unloved place. Which may explain why we all had to leave the building at 5 pm on Monday, following an anonymous call to say that someone had left a bomb. We stood outside for a while, then headed home.

Recreational drugs

This is painted on the outside wall of the basement of the building in which I work.The care with which the mushroom has been rendered, in all its – how shall I say this? – hallucinatory splendour is in stark contrast to the building itself, which seems to be held together by rusty wire, polystyrene and asbestos. All nine floors of it. I have photographs and I’ll be posting them tomorrow. Prepare yourself.

Free speech

In today’s Guardian, Brian Klug makes an interesting point about the brouhaha surrounding the Oxford Union’s decision to invite two fascists – who shall here remain nameless – to participate in a debate on free speech. He points out that if these two have a right to contribute to the debate then so has he, and so have you, and so has everyone else. And if they don’t have a right, then that right can’t be denied them.

So what are they doing there? Other than advertise the Union and its attention-seeking president, whose name I shall also not provide.

Little Monsters update

1. Little Monsters has been described by a certain Caitriona (thank you, Caitriona!) as a tear-jerker on the Picador blog. The novel’s made me cry in the past for a variety of reasons, but it’s slightly disconcerting (and, of course, wholly wonderful) to discover that it can have the same effect on others. The post is called Everybody Hurts and is well worth a read, comments and all.
2. Little Monsters now costs £11.99 on Amazon. If you didn’t pre-order it at the earlier price of £9.89 you have only yourself to blame. And don’t say I didn’t warn you. Get a move on before they hike the price up again…
3. That’s it.