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FORMER ITALIAN PREMIER Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly told members of his political party that he will bring down the country’s new government if he disapproves of its policies.
BBC News says Berlusconi told his party he would ‘bring down the new government if he does not like the path it takes’.
The development comes on the day that the Chamber of Deputies – the lower house of the Italian parliament – hears from Monti on his programme for government, and votes on a motion of confidence in his leadership.
It is not likely that Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party will scupper today’s vote – having yesterday voted in favour of a similar motion of confidence in the Senate.
That vote passed by 281 votes to 25, with only one party – the Northern League, a junior partner in Berlusconi’s coalition which had forced Berlusconi out by calling for his resignation – opposing the new administration.
Monti’s address to the Senate yesterday marked his first appearance in the chamber – to which he was appointed as a lifetime member by the Italian president Giorgio Napolitano only last week.
He told senators he hoped to overhaul the country’s pension system and renew a long-standing ambition to clamp down on tax evasions. His cabinet is made up of technocrats – unelected people who are deemed to be experts in each of their fields.
The Labour minister, for example, is one of the country’s leading experts on welfare and pensions; the defence minister is a former chief of staff of the Navy, and the minister for infrastructure and development is the head of the country’s biggest retail bank.
Monti himself, an academic and economist who left academic life to take up the job at the head of the government, is himself a former European Commissioner. He has retained the finance portfolio for himself.
Monti is thought to be preparing to govern until the expiry of the current parliament – not due until 2013 – but Berlusconi’s threat to withdraw parliamentary support before then means this may not be feasible.
Any hypothetical collapse of Monti’s government would almost certainly lead to early elections – not least because the Italian voters would be opposed to having three different cabinets since the last elections in early 2008.
By comparison, the new government in Greece – a national coalition led by Lucas Papademos – won a motion of confidence in its own parliament by 255 votes to 38 on Wednesday.
His government is only expected to remain in office until early next year, when fresh elections for a newly-mandated government can be held.
What’s needed is reform of our lenient, mollycoddling justice system. We need more prisons. The rotating door system that is our justice system must completely wreck Gardai morale. Imagine arresting the same scrote for the 5th time in a month, just for him to be out the next week because Martin Nolan slapped him with a suspended sentence. Ffs, there’s lads walking around with hundreds of convictions. A gardas job arresting somebody, dealing with the mountains of paperwork, court appearences, etc, is absolutely ruined when the lenient sentences are handed down time and time again. For example, the justice minister recently increased the maximum sentence for assaulting a Garda. This is a useless measure, as very rarely is a maximum sentence applied. We need mandatory MINIMUM strict sentences
@Sean Stevenson: 100%
@Sean Stevenson: 100% correct.
You can and should, to some extend, pay them more, but if you (the guard) does see that the work is useless again and again, why bother?
Bad upbringing, “culture”, or supposed mental issues as an excuse for a suspended sentence for the 50th or +100th time.
Even for driving offence – was it not a young lady, doing almost 200km\h who got away only with a fine, because she “didn’t notice the speed in her mothers car”, she was driving? I think this one was Nolan as well.
@Sean Stevenson: im sick of this goverment with all there kite flying sound bites all talk more take its all just waffle waffle and more waffle,,
Arguably this is throwing money at a problem in the hope it will fix everything. It won’t do much for the numbers leaving the service and what was the cause of them leaving. What is the turnaround for those taking the training and then leaving after less than 2 years I wonder?
@Sean Stevenson: Glad you mentioned Judge Martin Nolan…. the sex offenders escape card. Needs to be investigated himself, total nonce sympathiser. Even a petition online to get rid of him….
@Sean Stevenson: they haven’t built a new prison since Wheatfield which opened in 1989. There’s nowhere to put offenders.
@John Fahy: they ate building on the new prison site… to accommodate immigrants. Country is in bits.
@Sean Stevenson: the scrote often leaves court sooner as the Garda as the Paperwork is done for him. The Garda needs to do his own
End suspended sentences and you’ll see the vast majority of people including the guards get happy.
Oh wait – judges are ex solicitors – so the legal gravy train continues for Judges and their pals
They badly need a new prison in this country, I was reading articles in local paper about lads getting prison for couple of months and then couple of days later seeing same lads in bookies telling me prison so overcrowded they just get released after a couple of days. How demoralising must that be to the garda and where is the rehabilitation? Whats to stop them doing the same stuff all over again?
@Iron Man: Or more than one.
@Eamon: Thornton hall was purchased specifically for a new prison and a new central mental hospital. The central mental hospital was built in portrayed and no new prison built and the millions spent buying the site and putting utilities in were wasted unless you count the happy chance that the site was vacant to use for refugee accommodation.
Meanwhile nurses pay for their own training, get a higher degree, then get paid less, so they leave our country for places where they can afford the rent. But who cares….
@Acumen: there’s plenty of articles on nurses pay and how disgraceful it is but this article is about the disgraceful pay garda trainees receive, why try pitt one against the other, both serve the country but in different ways and both should be paid accordingly. Oh and there’s plenty of professions that people pay for their education to get a degree in, not just nurses.
@Acumen: they get paid during practical training but their degrees allow them to work globally in both public and private sector. If nursing couldn’t fill spots, they would need to change the system as gardai are now doing.
Disgraceful decision by judge Alec Gabbett with the two Chinese illegals that broke the law and entered the country.
@You’re Not Serious: That useless o’donnell “judge” is, thankfully, gone from Limk but one of his best students, gabbett in Ennis will keep the pointless, expensive, waste going and further drive potential recruits from joining our police force. Additionally it probably follows that some current police members are contemplating leaving due to the empty stupidity of it all.
@You’re Not Serious: not to mind all those arriving at airports and dumping their passports before they arrive at immigration. They should be automatically returned to sender, dumped out of the country, without access to the courts
Can we not just go to the Philippines or India or Africa and hire big strapping lads from there, that’s what we do for nurses. It’s a pity we can’t get solicitors, politicians, accountants etc from these countries because then we could save a fortune.
@Eddie Garvey: already trained nurses. Medicine is global, law is not
I think a lot of the reason for ridiculously lenient sentencing is because of near conflict of interest among the District Court judges. All of them are former solicitors. Usually small town political appointees. It suits them to release the same scrotes time and time again. They keep their ex colleagues happy with the free legal aid fountain pouring our money into their pockets.
So that’s €7.62 per hour for a 40 hour week
@Dominick Lodola: plus accommodation and food. Meanwhile nurses pay for their training . 16k for a four year degree. Plus food and accommodation.
A FG think in. Not many brain cells there
Who’d be a guard nowadays. They’d zero respect from the many many toerags that walk our streets. Thousands of 13-17 year olds roaming the streets with zero respect for anyone or anything.
Garda numbers will continue to drop. Annual Retirements and alarmingly early resignations eating into the figures recruitment cannot stop. It’s a truly awful job today. People want easy safe degree office work Monday to Friday. Not hell on earth physical manual work involving nights weekends holidays, being attacked and assaulted, spat at.
Has anyone watched the RTÈ production ‘On the Beat’?? I’ve seriously never had such tummy laughs after switching over from Virgin Media’s ‘The Guards- Into the K’… I genuinely thought it was a parody… it was actually like watching an episode of Father Ted.
During that initial lockdown, so many graduated early from Templemore it’s farcical.
My Brother’s friend who is a young photography student was fined €600 for being outside his 5km (Sandyford to the Dublin Mountains ALONE)… 2 members of AGS confronted him. Why were they driving around there together in the middle of nowhere?? Hmmm… therefore I literally have no respect for our Force.
@Donna Fallon: there was no 600 euro fine. It was 500 and they were patrolling, kinda part of the job
Get the Bully’s out of the Garda and more young people will join and stay. The GRA are a joke and so is McEntee. The government don’t care tbh and only trying to save money. If the public knew the real numbers and issues in Garda stations there would be uproar. But, you can assure the criminals know it. The numbers are so bad at there there must be filtering emergency calls to stations as the numbers are not there. AGS is now unfixable and Harris, his management the GRA, McEntee & FG can take 100% of the blame.
It’s the cry of the weary, more resources!
Shameful increase.
Any word on how the recruitment of people between 35 & 50 went,- or is going??. We were told that it would make a significant difference,– I doubt if anyone applied at all. In any case She has never mentioned it recently,– so it must be a flop. Apparently, the resignation figures are still very high , it’s the pension rights that need to be amended.
@Andrew Clavin: Of course, it was madness when it was introduced, but McEntee bluffed her way and made it look like a lifesaver . They also bluffed about a load of yellow packs ( reserves) , that was a dead duck too. McEntee is a complete dunce , and is way out of her debt , Drew Harris is a big problem as well, and bringing down Chiefs from the RUC is totally wrong
Big shit clean up in tullamore
Just wait until the mass Garda exit in April (now already known about); then all the wheels will fall off.
ok
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