Once upon a time I had considered the legal profession as a career, starting out with A level Law back in 1972, but I found it difficult to have a great deal of respect for 'lawyers' who appear to have very little useful function in life other than to make shitloads of money by being utterly incompetent in everything - including being lawyers. Here's a challenge: list ANY useful purpose performed by solicitors or barristers. Coffin occupation doesn't count. And neither does turning whisky into piss.

Back to Italy: some of Berlusconi's acolytes might need the service of lawyers very soon, according to this report. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/13/italy

Why is this insinuative type of reporting not stamped out? It really is most abhorrent: An Italian senator and top aide to Silvio Berlusconi has been forced to deny reports linking him to an alleged Mafia-run plan to hand Berlusconi 50,000 fraudulent votes, as voting gets under way today in the Italian elections. If the allegations aren't true then he has only been 'forced to deny' them because they have been made in the first place! If they are true then they will have to be proven and no amount of shite journalism can change that. Do I expect anything better from the Grauniad? No.

More on Santanche and Berlusconi, here. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/acceptable-face-of-fascism-may-cost-berlusconi-victory-808488.html

Hopefully Berlusconi is finished. if not in this election, but very likely soon after. Running a country is not the same as running a business. In business one person can make all the decisions and can hire and fire almost at will if the payoff is right, but the voters and the economy don't work that way. He is destined to failure and deservedly so. Santache is an interesting character, it will be most enlightening if she gets any degree of success - she certainly has more appeal than our own 'nationalist' offering.

Yes, much more appealing than Kilroy-Silk, most definately!

What has he got to do with it? Or are you suggesting that your Gryphon has enough appeal to the British public to give you success in the future? Or how about your wonderful Barnbrook - he should go down a storm on Hampstead Heath!

I've upset you again, Tony. However, instead of being so cryptic about who the 'nationalist' contenders are, spell it out, so we can all see who you mean. It's not my fault I thought you were talking about Kilroy!!

Given that you have never in the past upset me, Jack, it would be impossible for you to do it again! :lol: On your point about 'nationalist contenders', Kilroy is a has-been with no political future, either in Europe or the UK, so you are being, as you are so frequently these days, seemingly, disingenuous. UKIP don't appear to know who they are or who they want to be; the other parties, ED, Veritas and the few other nonentities are too busy trying to piss on the other's matches that they have no chance of being anything other than an occasional noise in an empty drum. Which leaves us with the BNP and the Greens. Neither of which the majority will ever vote for because they are either too extreme or decidedly lacking in credibility to be any more than a pro-*test*-('") vote. The moment either gets any degree of success will be the moment their cloak of invisibility gets shredded and all of the warts will be exposed for the public to gaze upon. Ironically enough though, the fact that Gryphon is still the leader is probably their best chance of getting a few more seats at local level. If nothing else, he does draw the fire of the media and keeps them from ever being taken as a serious threat. Now get a decent leader, chuck out the donkey-written policies, keep the ones that make sense and THEN the BNP could be a massive threat to the status quo.

Thanks for the advice, but no thanks!

It wasn't advice, it was a statement of fact.

No, opinion!

Anyway, back in the real world, Berlusconi sweeps to power. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/15/italy1

It will become an opinion on the day the BNP gets an MP elected with Gryphon as the leader. Until then it is a fact.

It's difficult to see how a demagogue like Berlusconi can give out money to all sorts of needy people AND cut taxes as he's promised. Still, perhaps people won't notice if they gets enough glimpses of stocking-tops on television! I think that Italy is in for some hard times but whatever happens Berlusconi will do very well out of it.