29/11/2004 4:57:20 pm
From Senate to Silvio. In Forum Romanum in Rome, the original Senate building is still standing. Anyone who has seen the great film Gladiator, or indeed several previous films describing the Roman empire, can be impressed by the open and lively debates that took place in the Senate during the periods of relative political freedom. The Senators present took their places according to their opinion in the matter up to debate - to the left if you were for the proposal and vice versa. Just imagine tough debates about basic principles in phiolosophy and politics at the same time as people in my cold home country lived in sheds and ate whatever they could find. The current leader in Rome, Silvio Berlusconi, is indeed governing another kind of country but has found his crusade for the moment: tax cuts. That is very welcome in Europe, though unfortunately he doesn′t intend to cut the public expenses. Thus, if he succeeds, the budget deficit would rise and Italy would break the fiscal rules of the eurozone. But if you don′t cut down government when you cut taxes, you lose the main point of doing them at all.