Italy Blog

Tweet Berlusconi is still beavering away trying to piece together Austerity Measures Two – the sequel.  Today just what has been cooked up may become slightly less opaque.  The amount of money Italy stands to save has more than tripled from the Mark 1 austerity package’s €40 billion to around €131 billion. Berlusconi is his usual optimistic self and seems to have resolutely refused to involve opposition party politicians in the cobbling together of the new round of austerity measures for Italy.

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Italy’s Austerity Measures becoming Clearer, Sort Of

Custom Teaser:  Italy: The country that’s taken the crown of the biggest producer of wine in the world. But what are the factors behind this achievement?..

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A Win Wine Situation

Tweet If you can run to a $65 million castle in Piedmont, in Italy, then you’ll probably need a car which looks the part too.  Enter bespoke coachwork specialists, Fenice of Milan , Italy who can give your Rolls Royce Ghost a suitable makeover. And, yes, there is such a castle for sale.  You’ll find a link to visit later on. Prospective owners of castles in Piedmont will probably be happy to hear that Milan is not too far away from most of Piedmont, being a neighbouring region.  This means a visit to Fenice should be on their agenda

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The Car for Castle Owners

Tweet Last year I ended up with a cute little Fiat 500 hire car, or rental car, as my American friends would say.  This year, for my Abruzzo trip, I ended up with a van.  Well, almost, it was a dark blue Fiat Qubo people carrier MPV thing. What I would have liked though, was one of the new Alfa Romeo Giuliettas .  In fact, I saw one parked in the hire car lot at Pescara airport and thought about making myself unpopular by asking whether one was available. There’s a new Giulietta which lives near me in Milan, and I often admire it when taking the dog out.  I was not all that keen on old-style Giuliettas, I have to say.

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My 2011 Abruzzo Scoot – A Fiat Qubo

Tweet While happiness may not be one of the most scientific measures of how well a country is doing, it is a pretty practical indicator of how good, or not, life in a particular country is.  Major survey and poll company Gallup appears to agree – hence its 2011 survey. It could also be argued that how happy the population of a country is, reflects how well the nation in question is being governed. Gallup published a kind of world “happiness” ranking a little earlier this year, and it makes for interesting reading.  The results also take into account what people feel about their prospects for the future.

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How Happy is Italy? The Gallup Survey

Tweet OK, so you’ve decided to make the break or have found a potential holiday home in the Italian region of Abruzzo somewhere not too far from the attractive town of Vasto and Abruzzo ‘s trabocco fishing platform lined coast. You’ve picked up, or are about to, a house with bags of potential – ripe for restoration – and you need a builder.  Your Italian is either non-existent or maybe not too hot, and you’ve heard that homes in Abruzzo need to be earthquake resistant.  In other words, you need a builder who knows the area, and who speaks English.

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Need a Builder in Abruzzo, Italy? Here’s One!

Tweet Confused and confusing are the best two words to describe what is happening in Italy regarding the second round of austerity measures for the peninsula. Absolutely nothing is concrete yet.  Proposals are legion , as are disputes over what needs to be done.  Opposition parties have been coming up with alternatives to the much criticised manoeuvres being broached by the Silvio Berlusconi led government. Criticism is not only flowing from Italy’s opposition parties either.  Members of Berlusconi’s own party are unhappy over certain proposals, as is the leader of the Northern League party which is part of the government coalition.  The vociferous Umberto Bossi has been coming down hard against certain austerity proposals, such as measures which might affect Italy’s pension system.  Bossi, however, tends to do u-turns with remarkable regularity, and without Berlusconi’s support, the Northern League can do nothing

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Italy’s Second Round of Austerity Measures – Update

Tweet Italy has a world wide reputation for its cuisine and deservedly so in my opinion.  The variety Italian cooking can offer has to be eaten to be believed.  After well over a decade in Italy, I’m still discovering mighty tasty Italian dishes . As a general rule, Italian cooking is not an overly time consuming process either and it is healthy too.  Italians tend to be a slim people, which is something you may have noticed if you’ve ever visited Italy.  The trim figures is partly down to the fact that Italians do not go overboard on alcoholic drinks – of which there is no shortage in Italy – but is also down to Italians eating healthily . Yes, I admit it, I am a huge fan of Italian food , so to help others discover the joys of Italian cooking, here is a list of best selling books I’ve harvested from Amazon.com.

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Italian Cooking – 15 Best Selling Books

Tweet Humanity is short-sighted.  It rarely considers the effects of what it does today upon the future.  Unfortunately what was done yesterday has a nasty habit of fermenting for years and maturing into something distinctly nasty which will, sooner or later, rear its ugly head and bite hard. The riots which rocked the United Kingdom in early August are very much a case of the past messing up the future.  The United Kingdom has been in a state of decline for many, many years.  Thatcher, in the name of free enterprise, started the ball rolling steadily downhill, and the brazen and trendy Tony Blair gave the ball another firm push.  The obstinacy of Britain’s trades unions helped inflate the ball in the first place. Consumerism is Consuming Society Prior to the riots and prior to my leaving Britain, warning signs were all over the place: high unemployment, little chance of finding a steady job, blatant marketing telling us to buy, buy, buy.  Easy credit.  Yet money, in the words of the song, cannot buy us happiness.  Worse still, those without the cash to satisfy the artificial desires created by marketing to fuel consumerism, became discontent.  The haves, and the have nots.  An Italian friend of mine who visited the UK a few years back noticed a yawning gap between those with and those without money.

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Italy is a Paradise Compared to the UK and the USA

Tweet How about visiting Italy in the autumn ?  It will be cooler and much less crowded than in the summer, and it will be colourful.  As I mentioned recently, the autumn colours of the green Italian region of Abruzzo really caught my eye.  Luckily, quite a number of photographers have be capturing the mood and colours of autumn in Abruzzo and here are ten of their photographs. As you will discover, the Italian region of Abruzzo, which is photogenic all year round, becomes an absolute photographer’s delight in Autumn.

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Colourful Abruzzo in the Autumn