52. Naples: Trash Ultimatum From European Court

My Village. It takes effort to clean up your own shit.

Emilio Fede (my favourite news caster) of Rete 4 said on yesterday’s news that a press agency stated that the European Court of Justice has given an ultimatum of a month to the Italian government (is there one???) to clear up the thrash in Naples? (n.b. for future readers: the left-wing government under Romano Prodi is in power from May 2006 until May 2008)  It’s a joke! I don’t mean the ultimatum, I am referring to the clearing up because it is somewhat never ending- just like when Pope Julius kept asking Michelangelo “when will there be an end to it?” as Michelangelo never seemed to come to a conclusion in his painting of the Sistine Chapel.

The basket for the paper was provided
 by the town hall. I keep it in the shed so it doesn't get wet

The Sistine Chapel was something of a wonder and if Michelangelo took his time over it, he can be pardoned for it; but there is no wonder or glory nor beauty in the trash of Naples and no pardons should be dispensed to anyone involved- including its citizens!

 A place for everything and everything in its place

It is my hunch that the problem began piling up some years ago when local authorities were told to collect rubbish in categories, so people could no longer dump everything from the baby napkin to the bread wrapper in the same black plastic bag. Us muggings up here in the North usually do as we are told and started putting the baby napkin in the yellow plastic bag, the bread wrapper in the yellow basket, the plastic yogurt carton in the blue bag, the cat tin food and wine bottles in the green bin, the recipients, all of which were provided to us by the Town Hall.

those in the country have the alternative
to have their own compost heap

They established different days for each item: Wednesdays to pick up the green bin, Friday, the yellow basket, alternating with the blue bag and Tuesday for the yellow bag. There’s also a tiny, brown plastic bin used for food waste, but for those in the country we have an alternative, a compost heap and so we are exempt from the payment for that service.

At first everyone hated having to do all this and if it was disliked, complicated and infuriating for us muggings up in the North, you can imagine what it was for those Barbarians done there... the result is this mess we have now because people first and foremost rebelled and did not cooperate and then the powers that be did not impose their authority on the citizens probably because they too were half asleep and it took too much effort for them to wake up.

Hence, I welcome the European Court of Justice Ultimatum (if it’s not a joke) as I have not heard anyone else apart from Emilio Fede mentioning it who by the way is a Sicilian, (just to show I’ve nothing personal against Southern Italians). Some intervention has to come about because people are starting to get ill and the only remedy will be to set fire to the city like they did in 1666 with the Great Fire of London which put an end to the plague. At any rate, I hope they, in the European Court, don’t think it’s going to be a walk in the park, they’d better contemplate employing the U.N. forces because the Italian Army have been so used to being a Peace-Keeping Force elsewhere that they don’t know what guns are used for anymore.