Berlusconi – He Makes Gordon Brown Seem Positively Human

A tenuous connection with France this posting, but read on…….

Silvio Berlusconi is the Italian multi-billionaire who also happens to be Italy’s Prime Minister. Perma-tanned and usually dressed in white linen on summer weekends when the cameras have been tipped off, Berlusconi looks like a typical Italian crook.

He owns a third of the country’s TV channels, most of the big magazines as well as AC Milan, one of Italy’s most successful football clubs, which all contribute to making him Italy’s third richest person with wealth of some £7 billion.

He’s been in the news recently for ‘whispering’ in Nicolas Sarkozy’s ear at a function, "Moi, je t'ai donne la tua donna". Basically, ‘me – I gave you your wife’, a reference to the fact that Carla Bruni, France's First Lady was born in Italy and her family lived in Turin before moving to Paris in the 1970s.

Not too undiplomatic ? What about when Berlusconi embarrassed many Italians by twice referring to President-Elect Barack Obama as "sun-tanned".

The previous week he caused a diplomatic row with Argentina after making a joke about political prisoners who were drugged and thrown into the sea from planes during the country's military dictatorship. Berlusconi referred to "that Argentinian dictator who did away with his opponents by taking them up in an aeroplane with a football then opening the door and saying 'it's a nice day outside, go and play'.

Last month he again caused outrage when he said that although he was considering deploying a total of 30,000 troops to Italy's cities, there would never be enough soldiers to protect Italy's many "beautiful girls" from rape.

The guy is a complete dipstick. But of course, in Italy money speaks and he’s got plenty of it. Ask Tony Blair, who was always holidaying with the Mrs at Berlusconi’s various Tuscan retreats. Blair loved the rich and the famous. Indeed, he could have done without the famous. As long as they had oodles of money, he was there getting his freebie holidays and soaking up their lavish hospitality. Talk about prostituting yourself for a few euros.

But of all the odious things this little creep (Berlusconi that is) has done, surely none was worse than what he did when caught up in the David Mills affair. Mills is the lawyer husband (erstwhile that is) of Tessa Jowell, the British MP and member of the government. Mills represented Berlusconi in some dodgy deals and when Berlusconi was being prosecuted for one of them, Mills apparently had the ammunition to ‘send him down’ but gave ‘friendly evidence’ and the case collapsed. Mills was then prosecuted for accepting £400,000 from Berlusconi and was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. And what did Berlusconi do? As Prime Minister he passed a law stating that Prime Ministers cannot be prosecuted! Some friend!  Some leader!