The Dentist Advertises His Product

23 January 2009

In the Bari newspaper, La Gazetta del Mezzogiorno, a dentist is advertising his services, as in the picture to the right.

I love the mad-looking cartoon character, who looks as if he’s about to do something wicked with that toothbrush.

The dentist’s website has some more amusing drawings on it, mainly of glowing teeth. Once you’ve got the website, click on ‘Educational’. It’s a Flash Movie website, Flash is much beloved of Italian website designers, I’ve found, ie is much longer on the fancy graphics than it is on the information, and the cartoons on screen are correspondingly rather little. Peccato!

Stray Dogs in The South

19 January 2009

The reader’s letter published in the Bari newspaper, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno talks about the problem of stray dogs in the South of Italy. Certainly that does seem to be something of a feature in certain areas, and it’s yet another thing that gives the South of Italy rather a distanced feel from the rest of Europe. Of course, you get stray dogs everywhere, but if they tear an old lady to pieces, as this reader’s letter reports, then they’d tend, in the more northern parts of Europe, to be pretty swiftly dealt with by the authorities I would think.

The letter translates, in my own translation, as follows:

An old lady dies in Sannio, torn apart by stray dogs. [Sannio is presumably the Sannio in Campania, although this is a Puglia newspaper] A horrible death to happen to a defenceless person on foot, who had difficulty walking, attacked by dogs who had no owner.

Yet another problem with strays, abandoned and ignored in the south of Italy, ending in the spotlight. But how many more people must be attacked and torn to pieces before we give take it seriously and possibly consider how to contain the problem?

The outskirts of cities, the countryside, rural and inland areas (Murgia, Gargano) are ever more besieged by dogs without owners, stray if not gone wild. The problem is well-known by those people who venture out alone or in small groups, to run or to ride a bicycle on the secondary roads.

Increasingly these days for example in Puglia people are becoming interested in cycling and there are initiatives for signage, for promoting itineraries on secondary roads, for producing maps and guides, not only for the local cycling market but also nationally and internationally, there is a need for major and serious consideration by various public organisations and institutions to work more closely together on the phenomenon of health and animal well-being. [Er, yeah, though understandable signposts and maps that are available in the shops might make the writer’s case more convincing. Walker’s maps in Italy tend to be bizarre in the extreme]

They should certainly punish those who, accustomed to the throwaway culture, discard dogs, big or small, at the slightest excuse, like an old toy that’s of no more use. Campaigns should be put in place to respect domestic animals and there should be more resources put into the sterilisation of stray dogs. We know that you cannot combat an aggressive dog with kennels.

As usual in this newspaper, the letters editor prints a reply:

Yes, something must be done, and not, I’d say, only by the walker who has to face the hazard. My fear, however, is that the direction will be lost between the sterilisation of the dogs and the solution to the problem, because the conditions are getting worse for ever more accentuating the aggression of the dogs. Conditions, I must not omit to say, that depend on us humans, ever less respectful of the space in which we circulate.

Until we are able to rebel against this space, with its thrown-out inhabitants. Commencing with the animals, or rather the strays. They are neither good nor bad animals, they are strays.

That final paragraph went a bit haywire didn’t it. Perhaps he was running short of space. But you get the idea. Stray dogs in the south of Italy are a problem, and no one seems to be doing much about it. They give the south of Italy a wild and lawless feel (or are one of the numerous things that do that). Just be careful when out riding your bicycle.

Taking the Pizzo?

19 January 2009

The ‘pizzo’ is the extortion fee extracted by racketeers in southern Italy. One hears that it is widespread, and if it is then it is surely one of the things that holds the south of Italy back; that makes the south of Italy a different land, a land that in so many respects appears to be outside the mainstream of western Europe.

The letter-to-the-editor reproduced on the right was published in the Bari newspaper, La Gazetta del Mezzogiorno on 19 January 2009, it talks of a slightly different take on the ‘pizzo’, one which, if true, should really be stamped on, but who is to do the stamping?

The corresponent’s name is rather splendid: Margherita Magnifico. If that really is her name, then it’s surely a name to be coveted.

‘Margherita’ lives, or purports to live, in Trani, which is quite a sizeable town on the coast, north of Bari. One of the main products of Trani is stonework: marble and granite (and don’t take marble for granite, as the t-shirt slogan once said). Marble- and granite-works line the streets on the outskirts of town, and these will be small-ish, local enterprises, who will be accustomed to the local ways of doing things. One assumes that the big stores that are beginning to make inroads into the region: Ikea, Carrefour, Lidl; will be careful not to get involved in the sort of thing that Ms Magnifico reports, though of course it is very difficult to know the extent to which it goes on at all.

The article translates (my translation) as follows:

Even workers have to pay the ‘pizzo’

The pizzo does not get to be paid only by companies, but also by workers on the payroll, a hidden persecution by employers. They [the employers] illegally hold back up to half of the pay packet and, extraordinary though it sounds, blackmail the employees with threats of being sacked. This swindling mentality is widespread. Reporting them would mean unemployment for life, reaching the realms of a sewn-up case.

I am not an example, seeing that I've been waiting for recognition since I was 18-years-old to earn a living other than by handouts from the state, and actually I am out of work. The bosses go out on the towm while the worker cannot pay his mortgage. I appeal to minister Brunetta, who I admire for his anti-hooligan decree: have the same courage in the Senate in support of those who do an honest day’s work, vote against the taking of a slice of the pay packet, so that the pockets are enriched of those subject to extortion.

Letters to the editor, even in one’s own language, can be a bit hard to follow as the writers often ramble and contradict themselves, and I must say I did not find this too easy to translate – all corrections most welcome – but you get the general idea.

The letters editor, as he or she always does in this particular newspaper, makes a comment on the letter, as follows:

That there are employers of this type, unfortunately has been noted. I hope that the phenomenon is not as widespread as claimed by the writer of the letter. This is however not to say that one must reject the bonus planned for families, workers and pensioners without an income.

Whether the rather mad-sounding letter-writer is referring to taxes, as opposed to illegal deductions from the pay packet, is perhaps not entirely clear, but the suggestion from the editor’s reply is that some type of illegal and immoral practice is known to go on. Kind of symptomatic of the south of Italy, that this letter should appear in the paper at all.