Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: The Independent - Turisti attenzione allo stato bambinaia

TOURISTS BEWARE: IF IT'S FUN, ITALY HAS A LAW AGAINST IT
Head for the beach or a park bench without knowing the rules, writes
Peter Popham, and you could come home with a hefty fine
Sunday, 17 August 2008
In addition to the usual perils of sunburn, jellyfish attacks and
bottom-pinching, holidaymakers in Italy face a new range of menaces
this summer, the result of the Berlusconi government's frontal assault
on what it calls the "security emergency".
The nation's mayors have been given carte blanche to write laws to
address their own particular security hang-ups. The result is a
blizzard of new rules and regulations that threatens to turn the bel
paese into the biggest nanny state of them all.
Unwary foreigners risk getting hefty fines for doing things that are
perfectly legal everywhere in the world except the particular town or
city where they find themselves.
In Genoa, for example, it is now against the law to walk around with a
bottle of wine or can of beer in your hand. In Rome that is okay, but
if you stretch out under a pine tree or on the Spanish Steps to drink
it, or merely to eat a sandwich, your "indecorous" behaviour may be
penalised. Likewise if your al fresco snack is followed by a nap.
Stiff regulations are aimed at beach-goers: on one beach in Olbia,
Sardinia, smokers risk a €360 (£280) fine, while nationwide, the
minister of welfare has imposed a ban on massages offered by
immigrants, warning of the possible dangerous effects of "aesthetic or
therapeutic services" offered by those "not in possession of adequate
training or competence".
At Eraclea, near Venice, parents need to keep a beady eye on their
children: sandcastles are banned, as they "obstruct the passage" along
the beach. Racketball and other ball games are forbidden on many
beaches, and swimmers who dive heedlessly into the sea may face
whopping fines if they are not in "permitted areas".
And woe betide holidaymakers in many seaside towns who wander away
from the beach clad only in boxers or bikinis: it's against the law.
The nationwide witch-hunt against the vendors of counterfeit designer
bags has been fortified in Ostia, Rome's most popular beach, by the
use of patrolling helicopters, making the Italian beach experience
even more hellish than usual.
Away from the water, things don't get any easier. Two people may sit
down on a park bench in the city of Novara, but if a third person
joins them and it's after 11pm, all three are breaking the law. In
Viareggio the benches may contain as many people as care to squeeze on
to them, but if one of them puts his feet up on it he risks a fine.
Scatter breadcrumbs for pigeons in the city of Lucca and you could end
up hundreds of euros poorer.
The drive against begging has been taken up by many towns – including
Assisi, home of St Francis, who began his religious life as a
mendicant. In the romantic city of Verona they have taken this trend
to its logical conclusion, requiring the beggars' takings to be
confiscated. And in Florence it is now illegal to clean the
windscreens of cars waiting at traffic lights.
Silvio Berlusconi's government may be the first in the world to have
introduced a "minister of simplification", with the job of identifying
and abolishing redundant laws, but in the interests of greater local
democracy and security his interior minister, Roberto Maroni, has
allowed a thousand legal flowers to bloom.
Most of them will probably never be enforced, but that will be scant
consolation to the pigeon-feeder whose holiday souvenirs include a
large fine.

 large fine.
Altro che protestare! Siamo lo zimbello d'Europa 

 Siamo lo zimbello d'Europa
lo siamo solo  se ci sentiamo tali.. ma non è il mio caso.