Italian comic opera

Politics is serious business, especially when the world’s economy is at stake, but so much of what’s going on in the eurozone now – especially in Italy – resembles opera buffa. Today in Rome, amid rumours that Berlusconi would throw in the towel in January (but not because of bunga bunga, because of bungling over economic reform), a few deputies in parliament came to blows.
 
The fisticuffs was over that hotly contended if not-very-sexy issue – the retirement age. At least two members of the Northern League, a key party of Berlusconi’s coalition, fought with members from the opposition FLI. ‘Two deputies grabbed each other by the throat as other parliamentarians rushed to separate them,’ reports Reuters.
 
It appears the FLI’s Gianfranco Fini had appeared on television the night before, making acidic remarks about League leader Umberto Bossi’s moralizing on raising the pension age. Bossi’s wife stopped working at age 39, Fini noted.