Unlicensed Street Traders in Italy

The unlicensed street traders (mainly African) have come to the point where they have set up a 'casbah' at the entrance to one of the main hospitals in Rome and try to sell things to people going in and out; they have been selling on the beaches in Italy for some years and it has got to the point now where on summer sunny days on sandy stretches of beach they set up their stalls at the water's edge from six am, so that sunbathers are obliged to lay out their towels and umbrellas away from the sea and anyone going to the sea for a paddle has to pass them and be asked if they want to buy a hat.

Oddly, the Italian public doesn't seem to mind this too much, for they can buy a hat or frock from an unlicensed trader much cheaper than they can in the shops, as the beach traders pay no rent, rates or taxes. And Italians like shopping for a frock, more than they like swimming in the sea, for the most part.

The legitimate traders in the towns are complaining, loudly, bitterly, and quite reasonably, but the police seem either overwhelmed or powerless to do much about it. It requires organisation, and Italian organisation is an oxymoron.

And on the beaches south of Rimini last week the inevitable happened, there was a big punch-up between the Senegalese (from Senegal) and Sinhalese (from Sri Lanka) over who should have the pitch. Someone called the Carabinieri and when they arrived all the traders legged it, knocking tourists' beach towels and picnic baskets over in the pandemonium as they ran. It will happen, can only get worse.

Journalists on the Mail must be looking south with envy, made doubly galling by their not being able to report much or any of this in the UK as it would undermine the message that Britain has the severest immigration problems in Europe, which it most decidedly, definitely and determinedly, doesn't.

In the context of the daily reports from Italy the approach of the British police to the Romani gypsies camping out on the central reservation of the road at Hyde Park seems the height of professionalism and pragmatism. A dawn raid, get them all out with a free flight back to Romania or a deportation order. Just do that every so often whenever the problem builds up. That plus lots and lots of reporting and photographs. They'll come back, but you have to keep on chucking them out from places where they cause a social nuisance. That coupled with waiting for rain, wind and freezing temperatures. The hot summer has probably aggravated the problem greatly.

Now I know that the Daily Mail tells its readers that free flights to Romania for troublesome migrants is an affront to the dignity of the great law-abiding British public. To which I would say, if you want to see how not to do it, mate, just go to Italy. The cost of the air fare is peanuts compared to the costs of all the other options. Why can't the sodding journalists be a bit more responsible over this? Just moving them on, with no structured plan, does not work. And stopping them from coming in in the first place would work, but the process would so inconvenience the millions of legitimate travellers that it would be arse about face, it would be disadvantaging the law-abiding for the sake of a relatively small number of miscreants to a far greater extent than is the case now. Again I wish that certain journalists would have the moral responsibility to report this in a balanced way.

And the other thing is, that blaming the policies of the previous Labour government, when the problem exists far worse in other European countries where no British government has any influence whatever, is to rely upon the inexperience and ignorance of one's readers. Despicable, really. But I suppose it sells the paper, which is their main goal. Bring on the celebrities I say, they're relatively harmless.

And rather like David Cameron's muddled and impractical plans for reducing access to pornography on the internet, it is dangerous to underestimate the knowledge of the great British public, for what the eye doesn't see the heart has a definite tendency to find out about, later on. Though perhaps his main aim at the moment is to try and pull the carpet from under UKIP, and he'll think about how you actually go about limiting access to extreme porn later, in conjunction with some advisers who know what they're talking about, if that's what he really wants to do as a priority.