Of course, you all recognised that quotation from Childe Harold, didn't you? Oh, you didn't! Good, neither did I, but thanks to my trusty Oxford Dictionary of Quotations I found it. Frankly, I find Byron a bit hit and miss even if I admit that at his very best he is sublime. The full quotation is as follows:
Italia! oh Italia! Thou who hast / The fatal gift of beauty.
Well, if anyone could spot a beauty at a hundred paces it was Byron but I am not concerned here with poetry, but with the nation of Italy which has been a sad disappointment to me. I have warned you all before that you will never make money backing my prognostications and Italy serves as an example. Some time ago, I forecast, with an excess of confidence over wisdom, Italy's imminent departure from the Euro which I prayed would lead to a mass exodus and the collapse of the whole rotten edifice. Oh, well, wrong again - so no change there, then!
Even so, like Byron, I cannot resist a beauty and so I was a little encouraged by an essay from an unknown writer (to me) called Tim Hedges, who won a writing competition at the Spectator's Coffee House site, in which he explains very clearly the dreadful endemic problems that beset that most alluring of countries. He gives Berlusconi the benefit of the doubt in dealing with Italy's difficulties, if only on the grounds that the Italian Left have absolutely nothing to offer by way of change. He also thinks that the current economic malaise with which everyone is suffering might be the excuse Berlusconi needs to take Italy out of the Euro and thus prove beyond doubt that David Duff is a great seer!
Definitely worth a read, including the comments.
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