This Is Rome

Today's Post Is About Rubbish & Shit In Rome!

So, what I want to ask is why is Italian bureaucracy so cavalier in terms of respecting everyone's rights to live in a clean and healthy environment? My boyfriend is fortunate, (or unfortunate), to live in the centre of Rome on one of the most well known street's in the centro storico. One of his less salubrious neighbours is a homeless person who sleeps outside the church on the corner, yes there are thousands of churches on corners in Rome but this one is not particularly attractive so I will not give it a name-check...and for the past week the accumulated rubbish of this street person,  yes, he has tons of it!, has been left undisturbed beside the church by the authority in charge of cleaning the streets, AMA, so I decided to call them and ask, "why has no one cleaned up the rubbish this person is discarding?" The response was "What do you mean! Take his rubbish away? Oh No, we can't do that he has every right to leave his rubbish and possessions where he wants?" Obviously, I was flabbergasted as the local authority have imposed recycling on households in the centro storico, finally!, and will fine us if we don't (good idea but highly unlikely to work given the lack of governability here), yet they are perfectly happy to create a dump on a main tourist through-fare in the middle of Rome? Needless to say I insisted the rubbish should be moved and was finally given a reference number for my complaint '1481264' which I shall keep an eye on to see what this number actually means in terms of my complaint and let you know and of course if AMA is not going to collect the rubbish then perhaps my boyfriend should not be paying his AMA taxes:-)

My second complaint today was to the Vigile Urbano, the equivalent of the local police who generally deal with parking infractions but also look after other local law enforcement issues, are you recognising a pattern here?, to complain about said homeless person shitting beneath my window to the point that you can no longer open the windows in the sitting room lest you want the aromatic smells or shit wafting through the house. Their response to my complaint was, unless they see him committing the act of shitting beneath my window they can do nothing about it but if they do see him then they can give him a fine. Finally, I thought someone who is prepared to do his job but hang on a sec, if the person shitting under my window doesn't work, how will he pay a fine? 

So everyone, if you want to dump your rubbish where you fancy you don't have to head to Naples just head to the most well known tourists streets in Rome and leave it and if you feel like a shit while you're at it go for it as no one's going to get their knickers in a twist about it!