Looking to Scotland
Here's an intriguing little aside. (Well, I think it's intriguing, you can judge for yourselves.)
You'll recall that the recent Italian elections produced a victory for Silvio Berlusconi and obliteration for the Communists and a string of minor parties.
Berlusconi's governing coalition includes the Lega Nord, a regional party seeking greater autonomy, especially financial, for the north of the country.
I'm told that Scotland within the UK may well provide one of the role models for efforts to reshape Italian governance in response to that impetus.
Now the Lega Nord, an anti-immigration party of the right, may have little in common with the principal parties in Scotland, including the governing SNP.
But, more generally, informed observers think that Italy will look for a European example of assymetrical devolution - that is, a quasi-federal solution where powers are conceded to one geographical area of the state. Step forward Scotland.
PS: The first act of Berlusconi's new administration is ... to scrap Italy's local authority property tax.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~34~RS~)
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The problem with devolution in the EU is that every country apart from France can logically be broken up. So if all the large countries (UK, Germany, Italy and Spain) devolve there regions France would end up as the biggest and most powerful nation. Dead hand of Napoleon at work here me thinks.
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Brian , a regional assmebly for the rich northern Italians. Run by essentially right wing , anit -european and anit immigration rich capatilists.........no they dont have anything in common with poiltics in Scotland...but I suggest that it might be LONDON they want to look at since when Boris Johnson gets elected mayor thats what will be in place down there.
Scotland lives and breaths social justice, we need a country who looks after its poor and hungry , homeless and vulnerable, but we need to be able pay for that through encouraging buisness and inward investment.... It stands to reasons that a small country like Scoltand can attract this .
I like the fact that Scotland is talking itself up ....finally the death of the Scottish cringe, were Scots, were proud.....get out there and make us a Success.
Alex Salmond is certainly doing his bit to put us on the world stage, now we need to drag the coutry with us, out of the darkness, we need to get this can do attitude to filter into every home , and every estate and scheme and make the Scots get up off their backsides and make the most of themselves....
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Brian
Just a quick friendly reminder. Scotland is a country, with great history, but an even brighter future post Independence.
To compare it with a region of Italy is wide of the mark.
P.S. You did not enlighten us with what Berlusconi was replacing the property tax with. Local Income Tax based on the ability to pay maybe?
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mcjbrown,
I'm intrigued by the notion that France cannot logically be broken up. Until the revolution France was essentially a patchwork of distinct regions with their own cultures and languages. The breton and basque peoples are only the most noteworthy of a number of separatists within the French state.
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mcjbrown - You could, in fact, break France up a bit. The south-west could join Spain's Basque country to form its own little region, Brittany could go off by itself, as could the ch'ti area in the north...
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Hi Brian,
As a former Italian resident and being still an Italian citizen, I probably know better than anybody here about the past and recent political events in Italy.
Let me say that most - ALL - of the things you heard in past years about the Northern League (the correct translation of Lega Nord) are totally wrong.
The Italian press has been completely controlled by the establishment for decades, and kept telling a pack of scaremongering lies about everything that could have threatened the status quo.
Unfortunately the only Italian press you could read here, and the only Italian television you could see here was that: servants of the corrupted and dishonest.
You've been fed with lies, and lies, and more lies.
The fact is that the Norther League is a territorial party - like the SNP is; its electorate is spread over all of the social spectrum - workers, employees, employers, students, teachers, professors, housewives, retired - and throughout all of the political spectrum - from right to left.
In a recent poll between members of a Union (FIOM), once a stronghold of the left, 65% of them expressed the intention to vote for the Northern League in the forthcoming elections.
There is no racism in loving your country and the will to preserve it fro your children.
There is no violence in asking that rapists and drug dealers must be sent to prison - and if irregular immigrants sent back to where they came from to spend their jail term in their country prisons, not at the Italian public purse expenses.
And - while immigration in Scotland is a benefit against an aging and falling population - it's horribly dangerous in one of the most overcrowded areas in Europe, where there are few low skills - low paid jobs because the market is based on a high skills, high technology manufacturing economy.
There's more beyond the stereotype you've been fed with.
Therefore, before spitting uninformed and/or misled judgments, your readers should take the effort to document themselves directly from the source: please have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega_Nord.
I've been a Northern League activist for many years, and I'm still convinced the NL has always been misrepresented to scaremonger people and as a revenge for being instrumental in the demise of the oligarchy that badly governed Italy for decades since WW2.
If you need more insider info, feel free to ask.
With my best regards
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Dear Brian,
Don’t believe Bodincus.
The Lega Nord is a fake. It promotes a fictitious entity it calls “Padania” including the historic regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia, among others, along the river Po. Padania is a recent invention and has never existed as a country, region or people. The only reason that the Lega Nord leader, Umberto Bossi, created the myth was to try and rally the grudges and resentment of various reactionary forces in the north of Italy against what is seen as mismanagement by national governments in Rome, taking as inspiration a supposedly glorious Celtic past and rejecting 2000 years of history since the Roman conquest of the area.
This contrasts greatly with Scotland, a country which has existed as a united country and people since the 9th century and which has a genuinely Celtic past and present, and greater historic claims to an existence separate from the rest of the state in which it currently finds itself.
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Good post, Brian.
Indeed, some regions of Italy already have looked to the regional or Celtic 'nations' of the UK for inspiration and ideas in their devolutionary designs.
You might visit the Institute for the Study of Regionalism, Federalism and Self-Government and note that in their collection of downloadable studies of devolution in Europe and elsewhere they specifically look to the UK, and most notably to Wales, as a example of regionalism successes.
http://www.issirfa.cnr.it/1,1.html
And the trend towards regionalism or mini-nationalism is not limited to Padania in the north, but registers in every provincial capital of the Italian peninsula.
And the absence of a 'state' in historically defined Italian regions is not equal to the absence of a regional identity, which then compares to a national identity for the individual nations of the UK.
In other words, the reader's comments about Padania not having a historic authenticity or well-known political trajectory of organizing events or recognized political centres, in the way Scotland might be conveyed to have 'since the 9th century' are not true or accurate statements.
The regions of Italy have had lengthy periods of individual political ascendancy and autonomy exceeding even the proud national history of Scotland.
For example, the southern Neapolitano 'Merdionale Italia' was organized under various kingdoms, but maintained its linguistic, economic and territorial borders and autonomous identity for over 700 years (since il regno delle due sicilie, for example).
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Brian, perhaps Alex Salmond is even now wondering "Whensa my Dolmio Day?"
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Marklesliewoods is right to talk of the historic authenticity of the regions of Italy, of which there are 20. The Lega Nord’s Padania is not one of them. There are as many differences between the various regions of the north, as between north and south. The artificial construct which is Padania is based on the perceived antipathy of northerners to southerners, and works to this end, for example coining the slogan ‘Roma ladrona’ (robber Rome) and referring to southerners with the insulting term ‘terroni’. This inherent racism towards Italian in-migrants from other regions is now deeply entrenched in the movement, and is now used against third-world and Eastern European immigrants, despite the fact that these new incomers are essential for the economy of the north.
Readers should judge for themselves. Try reading of the exploits of the Lega Nord Euro MP Mario Borghezio at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Borghezio to get a better idea of the reality of these people.
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To judge a political party by the - specifically excerpted by communists' press to achieve the maximum effect - words of one of its many politicians is like to judge a town by one of its citizens, maybe a drunken yob you drive past at 3 am.
I'm sure every reader will agree it's a very unfair thing to do.
I'm not surprised, Bogianen, of your stance.
You're probably one of the left wingers very proud of the "multi-ethnic paradise" that are I Murazzi in Turin. Not.
And the resounding defeat your "comrades" had at the recent elections tells the story of a nation rebuking the false and fallacious communist ideology. Deal with it, tovaric.
To refuse - ideologically or for pure political or economical convenience - the existence of a "nation within a state" goes against every past and present fact and evidence.
Scotland is a Nation within a State, as is Wales.
History - if you care to learn it - tells the tale of a precise Italian area (the "continental" area) completely different from the rest (the "peninsular" area).
The Pennines were - for many years - an impenetrable barrier, and still now there are very few passes through it, subject to closures in bad weather.
The Alps instead, due to their deeply rigged profile, always had many passes accessible on foot, horseback or even with wagons, commercial walkways joining the North with the rest of Europe.
Not to speak about waterways, the highway of the past.
Italy as it is now has been "united" for just about 150 years, it's one of the youngest states in Europe. And - let's be honest - has never been "united" per se.
Massimo D'Azeglio said - after the Garibaldi campaign - "Italy is done, now we must make Italians".
Well, we're still waiting for that to happen, and the majority of the supposed "Italians" don't really want to be amalgamated in an undefined stereotype that kills stone dead thousands of years of differences and peculiarities they are proud of.
It's a wealth that mustn't be sacrificed on the altar of the false god of egalitarianism.
Last but not least, I don't want to bore rigid all readers here, but the presence of a Celtic heritage in the whole length and breadth of Italy is not a claim, it's a fact.
Burying your head in the sand it's not the bets way to deal with something that rules against your ideology, shattering your certainties in thousand pieces.
Again, deal with it. Be a man.
And thanks to all of you for the patience to read through all of this.
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No patience needed, Bodincus. It's a pleasure to be informed about comparable areas of Europe.
Highly relevant.
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Ooops. It seems, Bodincus, you have been stung.
But let’s avoid a person-to-person diatribe and look closely at what you’re saying.
Your whole thesis seems to try to prove the connections between the North of Italy and the rest of Europe, cutting off peninsular Italy from the Apennines down (the Pennines by the way are in England). So you do seem to bear antipathy towards the South.
No-one denies your Celtic past, something the North has in common with great swathes of Europe, but it was over 2000 years ago, and has long since disappeared.
As to the differences and peculiarities of the Italian regions, this remains undiminished, and long may it do so, but who is trying to work against that? ALL Italians are proud of their traditions, despite living in a unified state.
Oh and by the way, I’m not communist, mildly-left wing, yes, but you shouldn’t have a problem with that as you claim that your Lega Nord includes people from right to left. And no, I’m not Italian either, just a foreigner, a Welshman who merely has the good fortune to live in Italy.
Or are you just confirming what I say, that the Lega Nord is home to many people who are racist: racially, politically and socially?
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Is it an inferiority complex or vandalism that makes people want to break things up and be kings o' their own kailyards? Maybe it's latent Communism? Karl Marx's ideas can be summed up as: If you cannot aspire to something, tear it down or make it illegal.
We have plenty of examples of tearing things down - the USSR and Yugoslavia spring to mind. These events unlashed terrible violent racism, sectarianism and other hatreds. Not to mention the grabbing of state assets by criminals, and a new Mafia spreading across Europe.
It's sometimes said there is latent hatred everywhere, even under a kilt!
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Err... France can't be broken up? Actually it breaks up very well, there's an East-West line that runs through the country about halfway down, separating the French speaking area from the Occitan (including Gascon, Bearnese and Langue d'Oc) speaking area, add to that Brittany, the northern Basque Country and Corsica and you end up with very manageable pieces.
Even Germany breaks up well and I don't think that there are any countries in Europe which - if you broke them up along ethnolinguistic lines would end up as large chunks. Most would be the size of England I'd say, the biggest ones probably being Portugal (who have only got small chunks of Mirandese and Galego speaking areas in the north), Ireland and Castilian Spain (minus the Catalan areas, Galicia, Asturias, Aragon, the Basque Country (including Navarre))...
Oh yes, let's, please... I'd like that!
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Mildly left-wing and Welsh, living in Italy, in Piedmont (bogianen is a Piedmont word, and should be written bögianèn, btw).
Turin is Piedmont's capital, where the almighty FIAT drags all of the economy since the 1950's (a bit less nowadays, tho).
The FIAT boom years led to a massive migration of million workers with their families from the South, then sorely needed to kick off the mass production of vehicles the blooming Italian economy was in need of.
Nowadays FIAT is not producing much in Piedmont, most of the vehicles are made in Poland, Romania, and other East Europe countries, where the low wages allow a larger profit for the company.
Many of the then needed migrants are now unoccupied, or were sent to early retirement with a lump sum on top of the usual leave wage, money the company got off the State.
Most of Turin's economy has been subsidized through huge sums poured in the bottomless coffer that FIAT has been in the 70's and 80's, and is now living in that heritage.
The result is that Piedmont is a deeply split region, with an high level of immigration - historic and recent - in Turin and the hinterland, and a compact rural society everywhere else, with deep rooted traditions. These two tiers of the society often come to a stark collision and are looking each other with suspicion.
You can tell about this deep crack in the region through every election results since 1955 to date - if you care to dig deep in tables and numbers and read "between the lines".
I've been living that environment since I was born and for the most of 40 years.
I'm not self-proclaiming myself THE expert, but I have a wider, deeper and longer experience than you, dear "mildly left-wing" friend.
If you're a reader of Repubblica or Corriere della Sera, you better know that some of the members of the editorial committee of these newspapers are ex-members of far left extraparlamentarian movements and terrorist organization like Prima Linea or Brigate Rosse.
Not that vivid example of democracy, I dare to say. You better find other sources for your formation and information on Italy's past, present and future.
I've not been stung, my skin is far more hard than you think.
Society is like a tree, without deep roots falls at the mildest breeze. Without roots you can't feed the new gems and flourish. Two thousands years of heritage can't be obliterated for political convenience nor negated for acrimony against the winners.
And it's not hatred against "the South", rather total disrespect for whoever fails to abide to their duty, be them from North, South, East or West.
And - oh - States, Nations, Countries form and break, every other day without a fight.
The ex Czechoslovakia is a neat example. It's now two separate States, The Czeck Republic and Slovakia.
Most of the nations that had a traumatic separation, splitting in different states were - here, here - ex-communist dictatorship-led states, where the ethnic and social differences were silenced with violence.
It's no use to suppress the call for a recognition from an ethnic group or a region. If the reason exists, it's there, has always been and always will be, when long gone will be the oppression.
Live your dream while you can, the reality call is coming, fast.
Good luck, you need it: it'll be a bumpy ride.
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They gave us ice cream and pizza, we give them a model for devolution. seems reasonable to me. Next.
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Whatever happened to the humanity of 'a man's a man' ? For me the saving grace for a country still locked in religious bickery - still carrying on its narrow shoulders a deep hatred of 'them english' - an inferiority illusion as those who left 'ma granny's hielan hame' venturing - and succeeding - south of the border. Deep in my soul I carry a loathing for all things nationalistic - but then that's to be expected - my mother was english - my father scots. We half-breeds are an easy target for the SNP and the BNP.
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this is wearing on a bit and it has nothing to do with Scottish politics. And as for Italy , it can do whatever it wants to do,
as number 17 said NEXT.
There are a few more important things going on.
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Of course France is a patchwork of peoples, completenonsense to suggest otherwise, all of which could "bugger off" to form associations with ancient neighbouring regions.
1) Starting in the North, they could join the southern French speaking people of what used to be called Belgium
2) Brittany, well on their own with cultural and economic ties to Cornwall, Galicia, Ireland and Scotland?
3) Deep SW France, at the Atlantic side would have a lot in common with Euskadi
4) Deep SE France have a great deal in common with Catalana
5) Nice and around only came into France from Italy during Napoleonic times. Did not Mussolini want it back.
6) Savoy voted to join France and not Switzerland but maybe could reverse that.
7) Alsace could always team of with their German speaking neighbours as some di during the 2 World wars.
8) Burgundy could rejoin the Austro Hungarian Empire
9) I forgot that Bordeaux, Acquitaine was for 400 years part of England; Joan of Arc and all that.
That leave a rump of the Ile de France; basically the old French kingdom?
Jacquesmac
in the Gers region of SW France, just to the right of Condom
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Sonasjanis (#18), the independence movement has nothing to do with hatred. On the contrary.
Scots would really hate England if they wished to keep weighing it down with endless subsidy-junkie requirements. The autonomists are offering to relieve you lovely people of that perceived burden.
You will appreciate us more when we are standing on our own feet. You for one evidently do not appreciate us now.
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Maybe we could send them a second hand parliament building to get them started in exchange for a decent ice cream factory. Come to think of it they might be better to keep the ice cream factory and we'll send them wee Wendy; in a striped overall she'd be great selling sliders at the seaside. I hope Berlusconi is a bit freer with funds for them than Zombie Brown is with Scotland.Am I wrong or did the estimate for the London olympics just exceed Scotlands budget?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
9.325 billion is am utterly ridiculous amount, will Scotland be spending as much on the Commonwealth games in Glasgow, and will we be able to raid the good causes fund at lottery HQ.
GB and his cronies are playing fast and loose with the economy , there making it up as they go along .
Vote of no confidence now.
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Whoever informs you Mr Taylor isn't very reliable because you don't seem to know much about the lega nord.
First, the Lega Nord has already had its peak in popularity in the nineties, when they look like they could feasibly break away.
Second, the the lega nord is trying to devolve an area which is not clearly defined, an ancient state called Padania. Since originally claiming a genuine territory they have expanded this area to cover much of the north. The parallel would be like Scotland claiming Cumbria and Northumberland.
Third, these are the most wealthy areas of Italy, so it would actually be like London and the south east being given autonomy. The implications of the extra tax revenue generated in these areas not being shared would be enormous.
As you point out, the Lega Nord has an anti-immigration stance. However, this is a rather simplistic view, as the north is full of immigrants and racial tensions run high in the towns in Lega Nord territory.
If you really wanted to talk about autonomous regions there are many in Italy which existed before scotland got devolution. Sicily, Sardinia are just two examples of regions that have a high level of autonomy.
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All European nations - all nations, in fact - are artificial, bound together by concatenations of historical accident. Until 1140, Glasgow was in Wales. Now it's in Scotland. Has Glasgow moved? No. Does that mean that an independent Scotland shouldn't include Glasgow? No.
If you want to decompose Scotland into historical nations, there's Galloway (and Rheged), Strathclyde (Cumbria), the Kingdom of the Isles, parts of Norway (Orkney, Shetland), Sutherland, Pictland, Fife, Gododdin, Northumbria...
I'm from Galloway. Does that mean I think Galloway (or Rheged) should be independent? No. A nation is not a piece of territory. A nation is not a specific race. A nation is an idea, and an identity. A nation is the body of people who choose to share a common national identity, and the place where they live.
For us, that's Scotland. If the people of northern Italy (or of the Languedoc) want to assert their common identity of nationhood, that's their business not ours. But there are no 'rights' about nationhood. History doesn't confer the right of a nation to exist, or define the territory that belongs to a nation; to think it does leads to disasters like Kosovo.
When (not if) we gain independence, Berwick upon Tweed (or Gretna) should be in Scotland (or not) depending on whether the people who live their choose to be Scots, and not on some ancient and transitory line on a map.
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There appears to be some lack of historical knowledge about matters Celtic.
So bogianen expresses doubts on the genuineness of the Po Valley's Celtic past. This is just as genuine as Scotland's Celtic past. The Celts of the Po Valley were the Cis-Alpine Gauls of Caesar's day.
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279 Simon_Brooke.
Much as I agree with you, can I politely suggest that Glasgow, or indeed any part any part of Scotland, has never been part of Wales!!
The likely source of this notion is the commonality of ancient Celtic tongues spoken thoughout these islands, which fall into two general groups, i.e. 'Goidelic' or Gaelic (including Manx, Irish and Scottish Gaelic), and Brythonic, which is at the root of the Welsh, Cornish and Breton languages, was spoken by peoples throughout ancient Britain, and only forced into decline by the later advent of the Saxons.
This 'common tongue' of Brythonic was evidently indigenous to many local peoples, and most parts, of ancient Britain, encompassing modern England, Wales and much of Scotland (the Pictish language being very possibly related). Hence many Scottish place-names, including Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, have their roots the Brythonic tongue.
Unfortunately, there is an unhelpful and mildly alarming tendency, even amongst 'serious' historians who should know better, to use the term 'Welsh' in general reference to things historically Brythonic.
The 'dangers' in the sloppy use of the term 'Welsh' to describe Brythonic heritage in various parts of ancient Britain are blatantly evident when they lead people to imagine that there was at some point a territorial 'greater Wales' which notionally encompassed places such as Cornwall and half of Scotland!
On the contrary, many of the surviving British legends attributed to Welsh scribes in ancient times - including that of 'King Arthur', whose location within Britain will remain a source of keen debate, and Y Goddodin, one of the earliest known Brythonic texts, which actually originates around Edinburgh - have migrated from other parts of Britain to be latterly associated with Wales (most probably during the unenlightened ignorance of the Victorian age).
The people of Wales should be enormously proud to be the lasting custodians of such an ancient and distinctive culture, as the only part of these islands where that culture has resisted and survived millennia of relentless and often systematic erosion.
But it encompasses a culture and language that was once universal to this land, and is a the very root of all our heritage.
Slàinte!
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Re the above: my parting word was meant to read 'Slainte!' (Good health!)
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Dougie-Dubh, if you read the eighth century Welsh triads, you'll find that the third great city of Wales is Pen Rhyn Rioneth. Where's Pen Rhyn Rioneth? On Loch Rian, near Stranraer. It was one of the caputs of Rheged, which, like Gododdin (with its caput at Edinburgh) and Cumbria (with its caput at Dumbarton) was one of the Kingdoms of the North, the heartland of Welsh Britain. When the Welsh poet Aneurin wrote his epic about the Battle of Cattraeth, he was writing in Welsh about a Welsh army who marched from the Welsh city of... Edinburgh.
The great wizard of Welsh legend, Merlin, was born and died in Peebleshire (then part of Gododdin). One of the places where legends agree the Welsh hero Arthur hung out was Trimontium - the Eildon Hills, also then in Gododdin.
Borders change. It's not a surprising thing that all of what is now southern Scotland was once part of Wales; what's surprising is that Strathclyde (and with it, of course, Glasgow) was only annexed to Scotland by King David.
The reason we were led in the early part of our wars of independence by William the Welshman was because his family came from Ayrshire - which was then still largely Welsh.
Our modern concept of what Scotland is was forged in those wars of independence by William the Welshman and Robert de Brus, a third-generation French immigrant. That's one of the things I like about Scotland - that it's a nation whose identity is forged not out of some mythical racial purity but by people of all races and many languages who chose to define themselves as one community.
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