Pedants' Corner.

As we get our English news from Radio 4 and the Guardian and our Italian news from the Corriere della Sera we use television for entertainment rather than information. And in our case that means crime drama, ranging from gripping Scandinavian thrillers - The Bridge being the most recent -  to the lightweight Death in Paradise - Midsomer Murders with sunshine. Among them are two period dramas, Inspector George Gently set in the sixties, and chiefly notable for Martin Shaw's ludicrous attempt at a north country accent, and WPC 56 set in the fifties. Although a rather more engaging drama than Gently, last week's episode of WPC 56 contained two glaring anachronisms - and I think their presence says a lot about contemporary culture.
   First there was the repeated reference to the 'train station'. To anyone of my generation the expression sticks out like a sore thumb. I can't really remember when it replaced 'railway station', but I guess it can't have been before the early seventies. In my childhood one listened to the wireless rather than the radio, but the fact that I've never had an objection to that particular change of terminology  suggests it happened much earlier, probably in the late fifties when I was still young enough to see change as an unremarkable part of everyday life rather than as a threat to my known universe.
  The second, less glaring, error was finding a covertly gay man's  wedding ring in his pocket. In 1950s Britain men did not wear wedding rings. I first came across the practice when a friend and colleague got married in the mid-seventies. His wife is German, and the fact that all my married male Italian contemporaries wear them suggests the custom was well established on the continent by then. However in the UK, even today, it is far from universal: my son-in-law was quite astonished when my daughter suggested they should both wear rings. He was only persuaded to do so because she claimed, erroneously, that I wore one.
   Why does all this matter? After all Shakespeare notoriously has a  clock striking three in the second act of Julius Caesar. I would suggest that was an entirely different matter: Shakespeare wrote for the public at large, and I would imagine the average Elizabethan was as ignorant of the fact that the ancient Romans didn't have clocks as I was of the fact that  horse chestnut trees only arrived in Britain in the 17th century. Accordingly, their appearance in Zinnemann's film of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons neither spoiled my enjoyment of the film when I first saw it, in blissful ignorance of its botanical anachronism, nor subsequently when a fellow pedant pointed out the error. For I wasn't alive in the sixteenth century and accordingly couldn't feel affronted by a false depiction of an experienced reality. More importantly, for Shakespeare and Bolt the period in which their dramas took place wasn't the central issue: they were both concerned to retell profoundly important historical events which simply happened to take place when they did. The focus in both dramas was on the character of those engaged in the events.
   However, following in the footsteps of my fellow OE, Ashley Pharoah's, Life on Mars, WPC 56 foregrounds the period in which it takes place: the setting is as important as the fictional events depicted. It aims to highlight the differences between the 1950s and the present day. Unfortunately a considerable proportion of the people viewing the programme were alive during the fifties and will immediately spot the errors I referred to earlier, because they relate to the everyday life of the time, not some area of arcane knowledge.
  It would have been very easy to have avoided the mistakes by simply running the programme past some seventy year olds before broadcasting it. Just as it would be easy for Italian firms to avoid publishing unidiomatic and inept English translations of their Italian guide books, apps or webpages  by asking a native English speaker to check them before inflicting them on the English-speaking world. England isn't short of seventy year olds, or Italy of English ex-pats.
   But today we live in a world where everyone is an 'expert', tweeting his half-baked opinion or sharing it through FaceBook or some other variety of social medium. And the traditional media in a desperate attempt at 'relevance' encourage the dumbing down by trying to 'involve' their public. So articles in the on-line version of the Guardian are followed by 'comments' in which the semi-educated favour us with their mis-spelled and ungrammatical invective. Every morning Radio Three poses a pointless 'brainteaser' to which their listeners are invited to tweet their solutions. Every Sunday a listener is interviewed about why a particular piece of music appeals to him. Who, apart from his family and friends cares? I listen to Radio Three to hear music and be informed about it by experts in the field. Just as I expect anyone producing a television programme purporting to show life in the fifties to avoid obvious howlers.
  But when you can find out all you need to know about the fifties by going online and looking at Wikipedia why bother to consult a real live person? Especially as it would involve consulting the elderly, and, as we all know, anyone over forty-five is past his sell-by date in our brave new world.

Two peas in a pod.

To adapt St Matthew's gospel: 'by their friends ye shall know them'. 

Blair famously enjoyed Berlusconi's hospitality:

and the support and friendship of the media tycoon Murdoch. Margaret Thatcher was another admirer, considering him 'probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved.' How right, she was. Like Renzi, Blair was adept at capturing the public mood, however asinine - 'The People's Princess' immediately springs to mind - a talent which led him to win three successive elections. This was good for the Labour Party but disastrous for the interests it was founded to represent. 

  Just as Tony Blair abolished Clause Four, so paving the way for Miliband to cut the direct link between trade union members and their former political wing, Renzi the 'Rottamatore' proposes to scrap the 'old-fashioned' socialist ideas associated with the Democratic Party.  To give one example, he intends abolishing article 18 of the employment law which prevents employers firing workers without good cause.  A provision which clearly has a stultifying effect on Italy's progress towards that brave new world we Anglo-Saxons so cheerfully inhabit, where any impediment to the interests of globalised finance is to be removed as speedily as possible.

  Not only were Berlusconi and Blair friends, the former Italian leader, according to one of his inner circle also has time for Renzi: 'Ha apprezzato lo stile del suo linguaggio, diretto, chiaro, comprensibile da tutti, manifestazione di un uomo dal carattere deciso, e si sa che Berlusconi è attratto da persone così.' [He has appreciated his way of talking - direct, clear, easily understood - characteristic of a someone decisive, and one knows this sort of person appeals to Berlusconi.] 

  Together, they have devised a new electoral system, the so-called Italicum, which is as undemocratic as the Porcellum it proposes replacing. In the Italian system, parliamentary candidates are imposed directly by party headquarters rather than being chosen by the constituency party from a list supplied by the party.  Each constituency is assigned a number of seats proportionate to its percentage of the total population of Italy. The winning coalition receives at least 55% of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the Italian equivalent of the House of Commons, whilst the remaining seats are proportionally divided between the minority parties. The seats won by each party in the Chamber of Deputies are then allocated at constituency level. Candidates on each party's list are ranked in order of priority, so if a party wins for example ten seats, the first ten candidates on its list receive seats in parliament.

   In the UK it is possible to decide not to vote for a particular parliamentary candidate because, although you support his party, you don't rate the individual highly. In Italy you can only vote for the party, not the individual MP. Even worse, under the proposed change to the electoral system a party would need to obtain at least 8% of the votes cast nationally in order to have any candidates elected. This is a fundamental affront to democracy. Much as I despise their racist and xenophobic policies, the Northern League enjoys considerable support in northern Italy. Under the British system they would, quite rightly, elect representatives to parliament. However, as they enjoy less than eight per cent of the national vote, averaged across the whole of the country, under the proposed system they would not. If the Italicum operated in the UK I guess there would be no Scottish Nationalist MPs which, whether or not one agrees with that party's aims, would clearly deny their supporters a voice.

   Back in July an Italian blogger put his finger on the essential similarity between Berlusconi and Renzi. I would add Blair to their number:

'Quando si dice che il sindaco di Firenze è un Berlusconi traslato al PD si dice una cosa vera perché, esattamente come accade per il Cavaliere, alla gente non piace Renzi per le sue proposte; alla gente piace Renzi perché è Renzi, non un politico ma un prodotto: guascone, affabile e dinamico, studiato fin nei minimi dettagli, dalla camicia senza cravatta con le maniche alzate all’attenzione opportunista al cosiddetto “popolo del web”, …'

[It's absolutely right to say that the Mayor of Florence is the Democratic Party's Berlusconi because, as was the case with the former prime minister, the general public don't like Renzi because of his policies; they like Renzi simply for being Renzi - he's not a politician but a product: an affable and dynamic braggart, whose appearance and every move is studied to the last detail, from his open necked shirt and rolled up sleeves to his opportunistic attention to the so-called 'people of the web' …]

In the meantime, as an article in yesterday's Corriere della Sera pointed out, one in four Italian families is economically deprived, and inequality is growing with the ten per cent of wealthiest families owning 46% of the country's net wealth, while globally 0.7% of the world's population own 41% of its riches. Shelley pointed out that 'we are many, they are few'. If Renzi (and Blair in his day) really wanted to change things for the better they would harness the power of the many to realise the vision of the mother of the founder of the religion they both claim to practise:

He hath put down the mighty from their seat :

 and hath exalted the humble and meek.

 He hath filled the hungry with good things :

 and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Now that really would be a rottamazione worth seeing!