Author: mc7858attitude

10 years

I started this blog 10 years ago, to practice written English.
I was living in Barcelona and had confuse ideas about my future.
Ten years later, I am in Belgium and the future is quite written. My English still need improvement, even if I use it every day.
Ten years is quite a long time, several things changed, blogs are now old-fashion and several new communication tools have been developed. Too intrusive, though; at least for myself.
There are almost no comments to this blog, but many contacts, now almost 94.000. I wonder who are them.
Let see in other ten years where we are….

L as Law

I studied the law. Not sure why.  Other options seemed less practical.  It was the time of the ‘assault praetors’ who were trying to make justice something more concrete and close to people’s preoccupations.

The most famous of them ordered the requisition of the empty apartments in Rome in order to  rent them at ‘equitable lease’ to people in need.

Even if I didn’t perceived it clearly at the time, there was surely a family soft pressure towards what was considered a safe area to get a fine job, possibly in the public service.

Another factor that had some relevance was a conference with Stefano Rodotà, who came to my school to talk about working with the law.  He was quite inspiring.

I never worked in the classical law professions.  Yes, my first job was in a juridical organization but my role was marginal.  And I worked in Guatemala for the UN mission on human rights.  There we dealt with legal matters, tribunals, judges and especially victims,  but I stayed only few months.

Something from these studies remain in my forma mentis, I consider the respect of rules as an important factor, both in the personal life and for the society.  And this has certainly been a permanent reference in my different jobs.  Including when I was a steward in the London stadiums of Wembley, Millwall and Chelsea.

It is not possible ….

The only strong point of Mr Renzi was to present himself as a new one, different from the old politicians and their tricks.

And now he is doing the same as those he wanted to dismantle: going to government without a vote, stealing the post to a fellow (and relatively ‘fresher’) party man and going to government with the support of ‘diversely berlusconian’ party.

Moreover, the alleged list of ‘new’ ministries is a collage of approximation, partisanship, opportunism and spoil system.

How be surprised by the support for populist movements and anti-system figures (ready to accommodate themselves to the system privileges and practices)?

One of these movements arrived in the Parliament proclaiming complete transparency on decisions and boycott of media, and now they are obviously pleased to stay all time in television, while their decision are taken in the most obscure of ways.

Few steps separate Italian situation from an institutional collapse and unfortunately there are not many working against that perspective.

Family tradition: the ‘mele annurche’ from the garden

annurche

As every year at Christmas time we go to the old garden just in front of the house and collect some of the apple of the ‘melo annurco’ that has always been there.

There are apples for anybody willing to do the effort to catch them from the ground.

Now we have planted 2 trees in our garden in Belgium too, and are looking forward to the first harvest.

Biological diversity in action.