Claims of bribes, kickbacks and false accounting at Italy’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi (MPS) based in Tuscany – a bank closely associated with the left wing Democratic Party which hoped to win next month’s elections on a pro EU “save the Eurozone” ticket. Indeed until a few days ago it was run by a leading socialist, Giuseppe Mussari

Moreover questions are now being asked about the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who was in charge of the Bank of Italy in 2010 back when regulators went through the MPS books and claimed it was all kosher. Draghi is supposed to be the big cheese who will control the revamped Eurozone via the ECB so this brings into question his powers of judgement.

MPS is closely linked with liberal/left elite of Tuscany, the Italian equivalent of the high minds of WaPo/NYT in the US and Guardian/BBC in the UK so Berlusconi (loathed by the left) and other Italian politicians suspicious of EU schemes to prop up the Eurozone are rubbing their hands with glee.

Bribery, corruption and lies from the Italian left? Nothing new in that……

Look at the sea of Surriento,
what a treasure it is!
Even who has travelled all over the world,
he has never seen a sea like this one.
Look at these mermaids
that stare, amazed, at you,
that love you so much.
They would like to kiss you,
And you say: “I am leaving, goodbye.”
You go away from my heart,
away from the land of love,
And you have the heart not to come back.
But please do not go away,
do not give me this pain.
Come back to Surriento,
let me live!

We did something romantic for our Ruby Wedding in 2007….all lovers should try to see Sorrento at least once. It’s a fascinating town in itself and there is so much to explore in the surrounding area –a great place to visit…

….you can easily reach the Isle of Capri…

….Naples…

With the warning shadow of Vesuvius always there in the background…

Alternatively you can look down on Naples from the volcano’s summit…

Then look into the crater…

Pompeii reminds us of the power of Vesuvius..look what happened to this Roman…

Perhaps he’d been walking along this street when he was caught by the eruption…

Nearby Herculaneum is even better preserved….

Of course from Sorrento you can also travel south to Amalfi..

Then back to Sorrento to just sit and watch the seagulls…maybe even catch the eye of a mermaid…

The BBC has, of course, reported on these protests but in a strangely disconnected manner. The levels of anger and frustration are made obvious and the fact that the austerity programmes are the result of pressure from the EU (aka Merkel/Sarkozy) is clearly noted.

But that’s where it ends. There is little background or follow up – the journalism is very two dimensional. Now this is odd because there is nothing more that the BBC likes to do than to dig deep into any protest/riot. G20, Tottenham/Croydon August 2011, Occupy and Syria…..the agitation is lovingly filmed and often carefully choreographed for the cameras, just in time for the evening news. Individual protesters (usually young and photogenic) are interviewed with a hushed and reverential air and over the days there springs from out of nowhere a veritable tsunami of in depth analysis which is usually skewed against the powers that be. Within a fortnight or so there appears the Panorama documentary and six to twelve months later the play/film/opera dramatising the whole event with a cast of heroes…and villains.

The villains – they are always central to the whole performance. Bankers, Oil companies, government ministers – all wheeled out and deconstructed in the name of truth and journalistic rigour. Yet the script has been changed for these Mediterranean protests. There are no villains in this epic – no shadowy figures to abuse, excoriate or condemn. No implication of a deep laid conspiracy to suppress freedom.

Nobody to blame.

Of course you and I know only too well who to blame. They are the cartel of bureaucratic bunglers and con artists who cobbled together the gigantic scam that is the Euro a decade or so back. They are the guilty men and women. In any other situation the BBC would be hunting them down with mike and camera, confronting them in their glittering taxpayer funded offices in Brussels, metaphorically tarring and feathering them in the name of justice and revenge.

But the BBC could never perform that function against the EU, not in a million years. For it is essentially the PR arm of the EU. It has shamelessly pimped this raddled harlot across our airwaves for decades. It would be like the pope flourishing a condom. To admit this monumental failure on the part of the EU elite would demand a degree of honesty and conscience that is simply beyond the pale for any BBC chattering class apparatchik.

Sorry, people…move along there, nothing to see here. Why not look over there at Tesco or that travellers site or the anti capital protest – we’ve already got scores of reporters and the whole team of Today and Newsnight presenters covering those much more important stories…
You see all that criticism of the EU is simply not…helpful….it undermines the narrative and we at the BBC always appreciate the big picture….