MN Little Italy 17

[Rosa]

Starting schools, North vs South and books ...ci siamo !

why is ignorance so accepted? It's obviously a recent thing - til i was at school and home so much enphasis was put on education, why the sudden change? I have notice the mickey mourse uni courses there too, so maybe it's quality more than education itself?

miss scopone scientifico....

Again, I blame berlusconi... etc etc etc. It's a vicious circle.

oh, franca, poor berlusca, http://www.corriere.it/spettacoli/speciali/2009/speciale_moda/notizie/menkes-moda-veline-berlusconi_ f532d236-ac65-11de-8068-00144f02aabc.shtml sempre colpa sua

maybe this works

Morning all.....reading your astute analysis with interest....

I thnk both the UK and Italy have the underclass thing going on....my hometown in the UK was solidly working class when I was growing up- but at least everyone was working....now, thanks to our very own Berlusca (la Thatcher) the people who were never going to go into white collar jobs don't go into any jobs at all...they just breed....(eeek at posting this anywhere else on MN with its bleeding heart liberals!) The govt gives them money ostensibly to bring them out of this underclass, but it doesn't work.....I see all these "families" walking round, skinny "men" in their late teens, early 20s, with their revolting clothes, pushing pushchairs, smoking, shouting at the poor children.....ach....

Here, in the centro storico, on the other hand there are literally kids barefoot running in and out of shops stealing bits of bread.....old people living in monolocales which open onto the pavement with no running water or luce in some cases....They're not going to be upwardly mobile any time soon either....

I've just been to the biggest supermarket in town and it's rubbish...I think if Italy isn't careful, it's going to go the way the UK did in the 70s with convenience foods and merenda-crap being marketed to such an overwhelming extent that it's going to take over....I taught a doctor, primario in urologia, his wife (a teacher) and their kids...I met the wife at the supermarket and her trolley was full of findus and merenda....(if they'd have been available I'm sure there would have been some of Jamie's turkey twizzler things as well!)

In short I reckon pretty much both the UK and Italy have gone down the pan.....maybe we should all decamp to somewhere like Spain....(and all this google-earthing has given me the idea that I want to go and google-earth where I spent the happiest year of my life, way back in 1986....so off I trot!)

Agree re UK and underclass. My Dad is from a mining town in Scotland and his family from my Grandad back for generations were all miners.The whole area depended on mines, ship building on the Clyde and the steel industry. When these went grazie alla Iron Lady (don't get me started on her)and nothing was provided in their place, my Dad's town which was a vibrant, typically working class community became a shell, with the kids I used to play with either having moved on in desperation or never having worked. So the whole system my Dad grew up with has gone and they were, as far as I can see, left to rot and breed!
Re Italy it's harder for me to comment as I live in an affluent area of Rome and DP is from a comfortable family background etc so I don't have the immediate experience as in the UK however I do agree with MM that there are starting to become issues with gangs hanging around, vandalising playgrounds etc so you can see it starting here. You can't have generations without work and a sense of being able to provide and not see society crumble.
Re food - still think is better here as fruit and veg still tastes of something rather than just looking perfect. Is definitely a move towards convenience foods though.

PS ds waved me off at school today and smiled
Oh and I loooove playing Scopa. Me and DP spend many an evening playing like 2 sad old vecchietti!

Oh I would decamp to Spain at the drop of a hat... I think it's a beautiful country. Though the food in Menorca is awful

Yes, I totally agree with everything you all said (too tired to elaborate today ... I couldn't fall asleep yesterday night thinking of all the problems haunting southern italy and the whole country in general)

Gio , I hope ds has a lovely day today. ANd at you and your dp playing scopone at night!

Camo, I missed the Suzy Menkes comments on the fashion shows! ... again I see the evil Santanche' (she is divorced from santanche' - a plastic surgeon - by the way... why does she keep the surname I wonder) has been mentioned...

Rosa, your wisdom is needed here

She (Santanche) could do with getting back with him...another inch off that cheeseslicer chin wouldn't go amiss.....

... apparently she has an indoor swimming pool in her Milanese town house because her son (Lorenzino il Magnifichino... a nickname given by Gian Antonio Stella) loves swimming...

Oh how depressing to hear all these about our beautiful italy...

Gio I am sitting here imagine you and dp vecchietti playing scopa with a bicchiere di vino .

On a lighter tone I wanted to be Julie the cellist (sp?).

basta must go and clean house...

Oh yes, Julie! I wanted to be one of the Bradford sisters!

I have already cleaned the house just need to cook for tonight... ufffffaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Interesting convo last night, shame I missed it. Agree with you all, but wondering if it isn't too easy to blame Berlusca for everything. Much as I hate him I wonder if he isn't a symptom as well as a cause (vicious circle kind of thing).

Despite all the merendine and crap I still think Italians eat much better than Brits still. And I am beginning to see that there is quite a difference here between town and country.

Yes Thatcher to blame for rise of underclass in the UK, as well as rise in obnoxious over-bonused financial sector type class.

Yes, it is a vicious circle, and I agree it's too easy to blame berlusconi or just Craxi or the old DC/pci, etc etc.
There are so many reasons... Italy is a young country, in a way. We don't have a long experience of being a democratic country. We've never had a middle class used to manage a country like the UK. The economic divisions N/S have never been corrected and the South is getting poorer. Organized crime is alive and kicking and has been so for centuries. The Vatican. capitalismo amorale. etc etc etc.

At the end of it all politicians only want what makes them look good do they really want to benefit the population overall? YEs its impressive the houses that have been built in Abruzzo - Compare to the Uk who gave little or no hand outs when they had the big flood - but there it is normal for people to have insurance on homes here nobody ( or few) bother as tanto the insurance company will not pay up anyway.
The Uk is starting to get better food wise I think even though it is so late and they are pushing healthy eating. Here as Gio says you get fruit and veg in stagione and a peach tastes like a peach. My father ( creature of habbit) buys melon all year round and when it gets to July says 'ohhh that tastes good '. He complains when the pears are hard and he can't get grapes...... He is 78 but that is what he has come to expect. SO heaven help the younger generation.
Yes re merendine and ready made food they are increasing thick and fast but in general the diet here I agree is better ( I am not a good expample as I am overweight )Plus the school food from what I see is better but there were bastoncini di pesce the other day !
DD had bad night so off to paed she has a leggero infezione so we are aerosol and tacchi p. NO festa domani but that means I can go see my friend who had a 4240kg 52cm boy an hour ago !!!!!!!!

Blimey, I know chilhood obesity is on the rise, but a 4240kg baby!
Hope your DD gets better soon.

I know last week they thought it was about 3600kg but it was a c section - planned and baby was due on the 11th !!!

OK - I missed the interesting thread last night, and I am now really depressed. So amongst all the gloom and doom, I will try to argue the opposite (things are not as bad as they could be), to see whether spirits can be uplifted, somehow:

1. Worsening food habits, rising obesity, rise of the underclass, decreasing standards of living, rising house prices and lower schooling standards are common traits in the western world - you will see the same complaints anywhere from France and Germany to Sweden and Japan (except Liechtestein and probably Finland where everything seems to be hunky dory, however I would never want to live there). Mal comune mezzo gaudio.

1. A lot more women are working comparing to where I was small (in my local hospital, number of M/F doctors is getting closer to 50-50). Not enough yet, but it's moving in the right direction.

1. Italy's economy has not done badly relative to the rest of the world. Unemployment in Italy is about 8% avg comparing to 18% in Spain, 12% in Belgium and almost 10% in the USA.

1. Schooling not perfect, but I do not know many people here who are bankrupting themselves to send their kids to half decent schools.

1. People here can still have fun going to a sagra paesana or to a beach bar without getting pissed. This is probably getting worse, but it's still much better than anywhere else I have seen in Europe.

1. A pizza from your local is calorific but probably still more wholesome than most takeaways you can get in Northern Europe

1. Poverty exists anywhere in OECD countries, and getting worse anywhere, including saintly Scandinavia - in relative terms, inequality in Italy is still not as bad as many others (perhaps because family support still provides a "safety net"?)

1. And most importantly, I can have a decent gelato without bankrupting myself. And it's autumn now so I can have Marrons Glacees ice-cream...

OK, I tried. Maybe I failed. At least I feel better

Oh thanks Minerva !!!! That made me feel a bit better, yes. There are moments when life still feels sweet here, I agree.

Rosa, hope dd recovers asap. And congrats to your friend... new baby must be gorgeous

MI very good points.

Minerva, good points and hope you enjoyed your Magnum
The whole not needing to get pissed thing is one of the things I like most here. When we were in Follonica there was a little beer festival thing happening so we went late one pm to sample and both commented that had that been in the UK it would have been packed with groups of people on the lash and no way would I have wanted to have sat there for an hour happily let ds run around in the midst of everyone. There were only a few others there, people were basically stopping off mid passeggiata and that was it. The fact that you can have a nice time with relatively little money is another thing I love, sit out in the sun with a cheap drink outside a bar without feeling like you are about to be kicked out of your seat if you aren't knocking back drink after drink. Oh and the fact you can get cappuccino and cornetto for under ?2 instead of near on a fiver (and they are not stupid outsized buckets of hot milk!). It's the little things that I think are so nice here-which is a good job as the big things are pretty disastrous

"It's the little things that I think are so nice here-which is a good job as the big things are pretty disastrous". So true!

Second the beer festival - We went to a band festival in San Candido there were a very large number of beer stands and yes Franz in his luuuvverrrly Liederhosen ( sp) ( along with Fritz and a few others ) were a bit drunk but not the vomit , violent lets get hammered cos we have to that you get in the UK. PLus there were lots for the children to do . Painting stones, making butterflies from tissues ( they were good) and the one we loved best ... There were huge baskets of bits of wood and children could nail them together , saw bits off , sand them imagine H&S in the Uk ???? It was a great afternoon and the ommmmpah music in the evening was very animated !
DD much better thanks now minirosa has gone down with febbre so watch this space ...Its only just October heellllllp