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
