Silvio Berlusconi wants his conviction, and his possible conviction overturned and stopped. Then he wants a constitutional revolution in which the Head of State is directly elected to be the political leader of the country, as in the French Fifth Republic. And he wants it now because convicted criminals are excluded from political office, and because he's old, though not as old as our current Head of State (who he plans to succeed and who could fall off the twig anytime.)
In the recent ructions he's managed, as part of their settling down, to have the hearing confirming his conviction and four-year prison sentence halted while earlier parts of the conduct of the case are reviewed and, he hopes, a ruling sets aside the conviction, after which the statute of limitations will once more ride to his rescue as any fresh trial is cut off mid stride. As for Bunga-Bunga and under-age prostitution, well that's already halted as he's too important and busy a politician to be disturbed by having to go to court while he's fixing up his future (there's some high falutin' legal language for this but effectively it's 'not going to court because too busy').
So, he gets what he wants now and, to keep us all quiet we get our property taxes back and are promised never again - or he pulls the plug on Wormtongue and we all vote on the beaches - when the offer of our property taxes back and a promise never to do it again will beckon (even now the polls are very much in favour).
It's either Berlusca is let off the hook and given a presidency to stand for or the Stability and Growth Pact.
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It's worth reading Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in this morning's Telegraph on the subject of the mistreatment of Italy by, well, Germany I suppose.
Absolutely, Dearieme.
Germany has something to gain further from the continuance of the status quo but there is nothing more than staus quo-gain left. No further huge benefit and quite a lot of grief in the form of wealth transfers if they want the status quo to continue.
Which is politically unsaleable in the face of general elections. Germany's greatest advantage now lies in returning to their own, German-controlled currency - with or without some greater-Germany collaborators - Austria, Benelux, a bit of Nordic fringe. Poland??
Mediterranean Europe's advantage lies in wealth transfers from Germany et al, or a Mediterranean bloc whose leadership is being disputed by France and Italy (English views of France as being just across the Channel, and northern are blinkered. France is Mediterranean and North African, like Italy, though Italy is also Balkan and Grecian.) Spain? Is isolated with Portugal. The fact that it's being torn apart by the Eurozone doesn't make it at all like Italy and France; Spain is in really serious trouble.
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