Driving in Italy

We drove from Rome round the heel and instep of Italy to spend a week with friends in Palermo.  I was expecting driving in Sicily to be challenging - I had heard that motorists here were wild and dangerous.  But on the whole, it was wide open roads with some spectacular scenery and pleasurable driving.

Coming into Palermo, I must admit that the Monday morning rush hour was very busy, with all sorts of vehicles and pedestrians weaving in and out of each other vying for position.  But in all this chaos there was an amazing amount of give and take.

In the UK, I would have seen much more aggression and attempted intimidation.  Here, a car will pull in front of you and take its own space, and you let it.  People will walk in front of your car, expecting you to give way.  In essence, I am seeing assertiveness in action, rather than aggression.

The Italian driver seems to have a much broader perception of the systemic nature of traffic rather than seeing themselves as an occupant of an inviolable steel box.  I cannot say, however, that I have a huge desire to get in the car and drive around Palermo - it is quite a small city, and walking is the preferred way to get around.  The same would apply in any city.

And the roads in southern Italy... miles of empty new autostrade - and all carved through mountainous terrain with hundreds of brand new tunnels.

 

They must have cost the EU about as much as the average HS2. And all leading from one sleepy seaside town to another. Quite staggering infrastructure after the frenetically crowded UK system.  Once out of a city, driving is pleasurable.

Me and Voting

For the vast majority of my adult life, although I have had a chance to vote, doing so has been at best a symbolic gesture. The only time my vote (or indeed any kind of political activity) had any meaning was October 1974, when I was living in Beeston. The sitting Tory was re-elected with a majority of 121.  Afterwards, I played with the fantasy that if I had spent a few weeks energetically canvassing, and persuaded others to do so, I might just have made a difference, one person at a time. It was the only time that I had any sense of agency or meaning in the process.

Since then, I have had the pleasure of being represented by (in turn) M.Heseltine, B.Johnson and D.Cameron. All with safe, nay unassailable, majorities. And the sense of futility which goes with any prospect of doing anything other than protest.

If I lived in a constituency which had a chance of doing anything other than reflect the Mail/Telegraph/Murdoch reactionary worldview, I think that I would be more galvanised. As it is, we have joined and donated to the Greens, and are showing Green posters and a placard.  Holding my nose and voting for pro-Trident, pro-austerity Labour would have no more effect than voting Green.  In effect, a minority rebel like me in a solid Tory seat can't make a difference.

Katy's considered account is more detailed, and on the principle that if you have a skilful resident pundit it's no good attempting to match the passion and commitment, it's here:

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Why I am not voting Labour, I'm voting Green

Several people I respect, and whose views I mostly share, argue that anyone who doesn't want to see another Conservative government must vote Labour, even if we have to peg our noses to do so, since a vote for anyone else, such as the Green Party, would be wasted or, worse, could let the Conservatives in again.

If the Labour party had continued to stand for the values, principles and policies which I believe in and support, I would be only too happy to vote Labour. Today, though, the Labour party has moved a long way to the right, and the Green Party, instead, almost exactly matches my position.

If, purely in order to keep out the Tories, I were to vote Labour, I would appear to be endorsing many policies which I find simply wrong. And if, as a result of my and other nose-peggers' votes, the Labour party formed the next government, that government would be able to claim that it had a mandate from the country for policies which I deplore, even if many of the people who had voted for the Labour Party actually disapproved of some or most of their policies. Correspondingly, they would be able to look at the smaller number of people who had stuck to their principles and voted Green, and ignore or dismiss any perceived Green concerns because it would appear, on the basis of the vote, that fewer people shared those concerns than is in fact the case.

So the only possible reason for voting Labour is simply that it's not Conservative. That's a pretty poor reason; but more than that, if people are prepared to vote Labour for no other reason than that it's not Tory, the Labour Party has no incentive to reverse its slide to the right, increasingly towards a neo-liberalism driven solely by the interests of international capital, and differing from the Conservatives only in minor details.

Before the 2005 election, I wrote the following; it still applies, but I am shocked on re-reading it how rapidly the policies and principles which I had previously expected of the Labour Party have now completely disappeared from anyone's expectations:

The last time, I voted Labour

I voted Labour because it promised an ethical foreign policy

I voted Labour because it promised open government

I voted Labour because it promised the abolition of the House of Lords

I voted Labour because I believed it would reform the electoral system

I voted Labour because I wanted Britain to join the euro

I voted Labour because I wanted an end to privatisation and to ‘contracting out’

I voted Labour because I wanted the railways returned to public ownership

I voted Labour because I wanted a diminishing gap between the richest and the poorest

I voted Labour because I wanted uniformly high quality schools and hospitals everywhere, not ‘choice’

I voted Labour because I believed it valued teachers

I voted Labour because I believed it would safeguard grants for university education

I voted Labour because I believed it would stop the trivialising of corruption and deception as ‘sleaze’ and ‘spin’

I voted Labour because I was sick of ‘yah-boo’ adversarial politics

I voted Labour because I wanted politicians who admit they sometimes make mistakes

I voted Labour because it promised a ban on fox-hunting (Bingo!)

I voted Labour because I wanted the UK to have a minimum wage (Bingo again! Oh wait …. two out of fifteen is … not very good)

I didn’t vote for a Labour prime minister to become the side-kick of an extreme right-wing Republican US President

I didn’t vote for a Labour government to take us into a war unsanctioned by the UN

I didn’t vote for a Labour government to introduce indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial

I didn’t vote for a Labour government to have its policy on refugees dictated by The Sun

I didn’t vote for a Labour government to sell control of state-funded schools to Creationists

I voted Labour because I thought I could trust them.

That was the last time I voted Labour.