Tuesday 13 April 2010

Recycling

The town I live in, Fondi, has a brand new town council. Well, not quite brand new. The freshly elected mayor (with over 55% of the vote) is a Mr De Meo - you may remember him from the election material I posted some time ago; he's the one with the unnaturally blue eyes, bald head and air of enthusiastic idiocy, as though he'd like to take your children's toys and smash them to bits with a hammer. This might be his first shot at mayoralty, but he's not exactly unused to the corridors of Fondano power: he was responsible for town planning under the previous council, the one that resigned before the government got round to dismissing it for mafia infiltration. De Meo, not surprisingly, appears as a suspect in the accusatory documents - town planning is mafia shorthand for one of those magical pots of gold - you know the kind: the more you take out of them the more there's left to take. He's not alone either. Eleven of the new department chiefs in the new council, responsible for all kinds of lucrative civil activities, have simply been recycled from the previous one, as though re-election had the same kind of cleansing qualities as full confession (and, who knows, perhaps it does). The photograph above is of my local bins, which also preach recycling but don't seem to know quite how it's done.

2 comments:

Reed Sanders said...

"...as though re-election had the same kind of cleansing qualities as full confession (and, who knows, perhaps it does)". That's a fine line.

Charles Lambert said...

Thanks, Reed.