Vox Polis

It seems that the final televised fist fight between Prodi and Berlusconi was once again worth missing Eastenders for…it was full of excitement as genial Berlusconi decided to announce a new policy in his closing remarks (which i’m sure he will keep if elected) to get rid of council tax, meaning old cool and aloof Prodi couldn’t reply. What a great move.

Prodi also said that Berlusconi was “a drunkard clinging to a lamp-post, not for illumination, but to keep him standing up.”

Happy with his performance Berlusconi decided to bounce back and call all those Italian’s who plan to vote for Prodi “Dickheads” (the Italian word is “coglioni” which means testicles). Maybe the Italian’s like being insulted!

With ID cards now seemingly inevitable (half-hearted promises from the Conservatives don’t count) the thoughts of those of us who aren’t keen to be numbered and recorded by the government turn to how to avoid our fate. The most obvious tactic is to get a passport just prior to the database and passport package becoming law. However it seems that the UK Immigration and Passport Service (err.. the UKIP service?) are one step ahead and quietly changed their conditions for renewal of a passport to prevent this:

“You do not have to wait until your passport is nearly expired to renew it, but we can add no more than nine months unexpired validity from the old passport to the new one. You can renew your passport whenever you wish, but you must pay the full fee and no refund can be given on the unexpired validity in the old passport.”

After this change was reported the offending paragraph was quietly changed back but it does show that the passport service are aware that people are going to try and avoid going on the database.

Of course after the next election all bets are off with Labour being free of their manifesto commitment to non-compulsary ID cards. Whether that means we’ll see ID card enforcers hunting down groups of resistors with giant nets and black helicopters is anyones guess.
More at The Register.

I’ll have to remember this trick when i’m caught with my trousers down. It seems that sex deprived Berlusconi has been conducting his own poll this week- that of call girls.

You can imagine the conversation can’t you:

Mrs Berlusconi: Silvio, Silvio! Why is the phone bill so high?

Silvio Berlusconi: I…I’ve.. i’ve been conducting a poll. yes that’s right a poll…of.. call girls, and they all think i’m great! Therefore i’m going to win the elections. They especially loved my policy on the black economy.

Well at least someone likes him.

It looks like Berlusconi really is Jesus- he’s performed his first miracle. will he be able to perform another at next week’s election?

Surprisingly there’s a number of reports this week that Berlusconi has been getting more TV covereage than his rivals- how does he do it??!!! Its like he owns them or something! Oh wait he does!

On Friday Berlusconi returned to his fall back poisition of blaming all Italy’s woes on the Euro, which of course was introduced by Prodi. At a meeting of the European People’s Party (the biggest right wing party in the European Parliament) he said:

“In periods of economic stagnation, the opposition always wins. There is only one exception, Tony Blair, because of his personal charisma, and because he still has the Pound sterling. Here, there has been an unprecedented increase in prices since the introduction of the euro.”