New Berlusconi shock

Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi has reacted strongly against claims that he consorted with miners. The European leader, 87, today denied reports that he spent last summer in blackface with a light on his forehead, chipping at the foundations of his spacious country home with a pickaxe – despite photographic evidence that appears to suggest otherwise, and which also indicates the presence of similarly attired men.

Mr Berlusconi had claimed that he was alone all summer, but these photographs would appear to indicate otherwise. They show upwards of ten men caked in grime, shaking their axes in what appears to be an improvised tribal dance – to the apparent delight of the media baron. The Bulgarian newspaper Tongue of Truth claims it has talked to Welshmen that were held by Mr Berlusconi for much of July and August in 2008, and that it will begin publishing the accounts of their ordeals in due course.

“These men are tormented,” claimed a spokesman for the Tongue. “What they have gone through is beyond anything normal man can imagine.”

He went on to comment that their union leaders had been contacted, and were considering an appropriate response. Mr Berlusconi refused to comment.

New laws in Italy revive weirdo tradition, puzzle holidaymakers

There was a time when the News Hour offices were in frequent receipt of email collections of wacky English laws – one can shoot a bearded Welshman with a goat’s head arrow when the clock strikes 12 and the Moon is the 8th house, etc. You always imagine they are from a bygone era, the remnants of top heavy despots with too much time and anger, or the misunderstood fragments of long-orphaned legislation. So imagine our surprise at learning the practice was still alive and well in Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy, where individual mayors have been encouraged to generate their own, wildly differing bye-laws in the name of ‘security emergency’.

For instance:
-no sandcastles in Eraclea, they ‘obstruct the passage’; nor diving outside ‘permitted areas’
-smoking on the beach in Sardinia could cost you £280
-helicopters patrol the skies in Ostia on the lookout for fake Fendi salesmen
-in Novara, if two people are joined on a bench by a third after 11pm, all three are firmly in the legal wrong

This is the tip of the iceberg although, like the rules concerning Welshmen, one imagines they are not rigidly enforced (although they certainly have been). Italy has a great history as nation of individual nations, of proud city states (as Greece once was), all jostling to outdo one another. Still, the wonderfully contradictory thing about the whole scenario is the existence of a minister for ‘legislative simplification’ a post allegedly <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7389695.stm
“>created to get Robert Calderoni into office without entrusting him with anything too tricky. Allegedly.