Beppe Grillo and the Florence Declaration

On the 8th March 2009 the Florence Declaration was launched, bearing the 12 essential points for a 5-Star Municipality. Notwithstanding many difficulties, Civic Lists are coming to life throughout Italy. Boycotts are part of the language used by the old parties, the corpses of our Country’s politics.
Padova’s Civic List needs some help, so whoever can, should please help them. Here is the letter they sent me, followed by the text of my address at the event in Florence. The text of the other addresses will follow over the coming days. One for each star. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.
Download and circulate the Florence Declaration.

"Dear Beppe,
Here in Padua we have not yet begun gathering supporters’ signatures because no one has yet indicated their availability to act as scrutinizer. The very same town councillors that helped to authenticate hundreds of signatures at the V-Day event, thereby lending their support, are suddenly not prepared to help us this time around. Obviously we are seen as the competition. All of the notaries, judges and chancellors are either fobbing us off or their fees are too high.
Our last hope is that any prospective supporters take the trouble to go to the local municipal registry offices and ask for the applicable so that they can sign it. We are trying this option but we are obviously not very hopeful. We are afraid that, once all has been said and done, this is precisely the problem that will delay the birth of our Civic List.
One thing that could well make a major difference is Beppe Grillo’s appearance at a gathering in Padua and to have a scrutinizer available at the same time. I am certain that in just a couple of hours we could gather a good few hundred signatures.
Hoping beyond hope, we await your response. "Tiziana Michelotto, Maurizio d'Este, Matteo Colognesi

Contact the organisers of the Grillo List for Padua.
Partecipate in the Civic List forum


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Text of the interview held in Florence with Beppe Grillo as regards the 5-Star Municipalities.
"We decided to draw up this Florence Declaration in an attempt to spark off another Renaissance in this wonderful city, this “maremma maiala” that they talk about... “maremma maiala”. The Florence Declaration: if you look carefully, you will see that each of the points looks truly fantastic, and they are in fact so, unsurprisingly because they are precisely the opposite of what is being implemented by the current Italian Government. Exactly the opposite in fact. It’s absolutely crazy but true!
These points are simply common sense, yet in this day and age, common sense is a revolutionary concept. You talk about saving and people ask you if you are crazy! They say: “What do mean by saving? What about the debt... you must consume!” They mistakenly equate consumption with development. These are people that are 70 or 80 years of age, with swollen prostate glands, that inject papaverine directly into their dicks just so that they can get laid! They are no better than whoremongers... the whoremongers’ strategies are now being applied in our Parliament: dwarves, dancers, there are all sorts... hooligans, infiltrators. I believe that you have all understood the fact that this Government is illegal, anti-constitutional, elected without any preferential vote. A fake opposition... PD, PDL, Pdwithoutanel...
Two years from now... I have always made predictions and it has not always been easy to get it right: two years from now we will look back, two years at most, and we will ask ourselves: “But how could this have happened???”.
Just look at the points: we are proposing that water be considered a public asset. Water is public property: look at what the left wing and the right wing governments have done. They privatised water provision services almost everywhere in the country. Water must remain a public asset. An asset that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of some or other Pty Ltd. Even little 8-year-old Ciro has understood this and every morning he says to me: “I am drinking some water, it isn’t from a multinational, is it?” and he is concerned. Public water as opposed to privatised water supplied by these zombies. Compulsory purification systems for every home, that cannot be connected up to any plant: I wrote down some feasible points, these are not dreams, we can start immediately, tomorrow morning in fact! Water purification systems, yes, let’s talk about the matter of De Magistris and about money that was destined for the installation of water purification systems. What about the Poseidon case: there were billions of Euro of European Union money meant for Calabria and Sicily, but this money simply disappeared and so these systems were never built! We want everyone whose home is not connected to the municipal sewerage system to have his or her own water purification system, with municipal subsidies.
Expansion of urban parkland: this law was passed two or three days ago. Yesterday, the dwarf with the tar-smeared hair... in this case we must... they are busy drowning us with optimism, optimism... its true! We’re doing this or we’re practicing reverse satire: we mustn’t aggravate things, the situation is serious but we must be optimistic, not harbingers of doom! Things in Italy are not so bad! Berlusconi is a good person! Gasparri is intelligent! Napolitano is wide-awake! Reverse satire...
Just imagine, the expansion is the latest news... after the Americans. We are the world’s biggest cement manufacturer, three times as much as the Germans, while some of our greatest architects, like Renzo Piano whom I know very well, are saying that our cities should be imploded rather than exploded out towards the outskirts, thus creating slums... In this case implosion means drawing a circle in the middle of the city and begin with the re-construction, knocking down anything that is not needed in the centre of town and replacing it with something that is in the interest of the residents.
The only problem is that our demented mayors have used the public money to gamble with, they have acted like croupiers, they have played the stock markets, bought into hedge funds, derivatives and all sorts of other things about which they knew absolutely nothing instead of looking after the people’s money.
Now they obviously don’t have a dime left and they need to lay their hands on some money. How do they do this? By selling off public property, by proposing unfeasible bridges... all sorts of impossible things that cannot stand up to scrutiny, just to get hold of some money. With the kind of Civic Lists we have, should we manage to come to power, all it will take is one of you guys sitting on each of the town councils an their game will be up before it even gets off the ground! Expansion of the parkland. Nursery schools or nuclear power stations? Expansion of the parkland, the exact opposite of this Government that instead wants to see yet more cement.
Building permits granted only for demolition and re-construction projects, that is what I was saying. Precisely what the great architects are saying too, just look at the town centres: there are many memorable things that need doing, such as barracks and old buildings to renovate, marvellous things to be done within our towns.
Plans for environmentally friendly public transport and cycling paths: it seems to me that we need to start understanding that the motorcar is dead! I’m sorry, because we all loved it so much, but the love affair is already over! It ended ten years ago, not just yesterday. It is over, yet here we are, subsidising something that is finished. FIAT needs to mobilise its employees in a different direction: our future mobility will no longer depend on the motorcar. Instead, our future mobility will depend on us travelling as little as possible, in other words, we must travel only when we are going on holiday, or for recreation. I won’t have to travel fifty kilometres by car just to get to work. In the city that we envisage, I won’t have to travel fifty kilometres to get to the office because the office will be in my home. In other words, work-from-home, with all the necessary connections in place. Copying what is happening in Germany and what is happening in Seoul!
The traffic in the major cities will be controlled via GPS, from a central control room manned by ten youngsters that control the movements of 12 million inhabitants. How can this be? Every public transport vehicle will be fitted with a GPS unit that is linked to the control room, from where they will send out more trains to where they are needed, more underground cars where they are needed and more buses where they are needed. If there is some or other game on at the stadium, they will despatch more taxis. They will all be linked.
The Internet is the future of bottom-up democracy, transport systems and everything else too. It is the kind of groundswell democracy that rises up from below: I would like to see people like yourselves getting involved in these things. In Westphalia, they reduced traffic levels by three-quarters, and that without adding any more cement whatsoever. They didn’t build more roads: they put together a simple programme that cost fifteen Euro, which put four people per car to get to work, but even this won’t be enough. What we are talking about are increasingly integrated transport systems: an integrated system of trams and buses and perhaps even motorcars and bicycles. The motorcar can no longer be allowed to take pride of place in terms of ensuring our mobility: the motorcar must remain on the outskirts and we will get around by other means, such as walking, going by bicycle, walking on our hands... flying! Teletransportation! Plan for mobility for the disabled. Maybe this is a problem that doesn’t affect you in the least, but it has always had a major effect on me. Sometimes there are architectural barriers...and this really pisses me off: sometimes the architectural barrier is only two centimetres high. Sometimes you have to think twice about this issue because any city that makes it impossible for a disabled person to get around cannot really be classified as a civilised city.
Free connectivity: now if that isn’t bucking the trend, then what is. The Pisanu Law: with some idiotic anti-terrorism law he has also managed to prohibit WiFi. You cannot log on to the Net, why should you. If you do log on you would have to show your identity card because of some anti-terrorism law. As if there was something like “TERRORIST” printed on your ID card. There you go, we’ve got him!
These are seventy-year-olds with an enlarged prostate gland and a catheter, who don’t even know what WiFi is in the first place. In all major cities around the world, you can go to the city centre and connect to the Internet, as simple as that. Should you get voted onto the town council, I would like you to push this issue: simple, free connectivity for residents, then you will pay for additional services. We should have some sort of digital card: my identity card means nothing to me, I want a digital card: when a child is born, he/she must be issued with their very own e-mail address! Indeed, we must create public work areas. We must move forward: we are on the outskirts, together with the Poles, and we are regressing as regards Internet access numbers. Just think, a small businessman operating in Italy will have to pay three times as much for his bandwidth as does his counterpart in France. For the same amount of bandwidth. If needs to send off a parcel using the Italian postal service, it will cost him twice as much as it would if he used the French postal service. If you send off a parcel in France, you can simply go on the Internet a track where your parcel is and where it’s going. The population over there can track their own business affairs without having to go through any intermediaries.
Try sending off a parcel through the Italian postal service and then give them a call: “Is my parcel perhaps there with you?” “Just a moment please... what colour was it? Luigi!!! – that is the equivalent of Italian WiFi – Luigi!!! Have you seen any parcels???”. We are barbarians! Barbarians I tell you!
Zero refuse: we should be discussing this issue right now. Zero refuse is a winning strategy, the one that Obama talks about and that Schwarzenegger talks about. Schwarzenegger is saying that he refuses to spend one more cent on infrastructure. This is the fourth greatest power on Earth, namely California.
Now they have a different problem, the problem of helping families to survive. Families over there need to survive, just as they do over here. The only difference is that over here they have not yet begun to think through what is about to happen, so they are spending money on unbelievable things. Zero refuse is a winning strategy because, as we all know, where there is refuse there are errors being made. We have been talking about this problem for five years now: there is some sort of construction error or design error. We shouldn’t be able to create something that eventually turns into refuse, because it should become the raw material for another process, in fact they are known as secondary raw materials. Vedelago: a businesswoman from Vedelago, near Treviso, has devised a system that allows her to recycle 100% of all the refuse from one hundred municipalities: she sorts and sells what she can, and what she cant sell as it is she then compacts to create building materials.
Ladies and gentlemen, a young 27-year-old Town Councillor who used to work in a pizza parlour and is a qualified computer technician, has managed to get himself elected onto the Town Council of Treviso. Treviso is a large municipality. Perhaps he is here with us and can tell you himself but, since he began serving on the Council, he has everyone on his side: initially they fought against him but now it is he that puts forward the ideas and he creates social networks via Skype. They never even knew what this meant: the town residents can log on to a Skype chat room from the comfort of his own home and is able to deal directly with the technician that can sort the problem out, instead of having to climb in his car and drive down to City Hall. This young man has managed to link together 98 different schools to recycle their refuse, watched over by the children, and this at zero cost to either the municipality or the schools. This what people are doing, that 27-year-old guys like yourselves are doing. Zero refuse means building a new world: we have a great, indeed a huge opportunity at our disposal, namely the current financial an economic debacle.
This system of ours, which attaches great value to growth and to producing more and more things that nobody needs, has produced people that are no longer needed. The world is full of people that we don’t need, so we need to sit down and review the situation: right back to the basics of how we manufacture a glass, a bottle or a television set. Or how we provide services. The provision of services! I don’t really need a fridge or a boiler. What I really need is cooling and heat, so there will be businessmen that won’t try to sell me a fridge or a boiler, but rather provide me with fridge and boiler services. There will then be little or no refuse to deal with. The companies that approach you will help you to save money and your savings will also be their profits!
Renovate our houses and redesign houses in general! We say that the motorcar is dead, yet the motorcar contains some extraordinary technologies, such as GPS, all the electronics and a five-year guarantee. The technology used to build our houses is much the same as that of eighty years ago! We need to rethink our house design so that the home becomes an energy factory: an real energy network.
Development of renewable energy sources. At the very least, the municipalities should set up their own installations. There are things such wind farms: we don’t need things such as nuclear power stations that generate one million watts of power, indeed, what we do need is one million residents producing one watt of power each! Turn the concepts upside down... but I am stealing these things from you, so you are worse than I am!!! Energy efficiency: efficiency, that is point 10. We can immediately start making things that are twice as efficient and consume half the amount of energy and materials. Half, I tell you, immediately! There are recyclable materials, such as Belland, which is a type of polymer that dissolves in lukewarm water, so we can make the same thing again.
We can make some wonderful things, as long as we have the knowledge and we currently only get that knowledge via the Net, because these people have got to the end of the road, and they know it! They are watching us in amazement because they know that they are shutting down the newspapers and the television. The advertising revenues are disappearing and terrestrial digital television is dead! It was born dead!
They are now realising that there is an Internet generation, but they are only finding this out now! There are millions of us and now an article appears in the newspapers stating that: “we must take note of these people that talk about this environment...”. This is set to be a major turnaround, this crisis will provide a major impetus, and they will all follow us. They will steal our ideas, claiming them as their ideas. Our destiny may be to disappear, but that’s okay, as long as our ideas live on!
Another point: favour local production. A shorter distribution chain rather than making trucks loaded with goods from a thousand kilometres away. It’s over, I tell you! It’s over, let’s have shorter distribution channels and favour local production! In Manhattan, there are 17,000 vegetable gardens on top of skyscrapers, where there used to be fitness centres. They are making vegetable gardens, these Wall Street guru’s with their briefcases which previously held shares and now carry artichokes and endive lettuce! The battle for food and the battle for land: this is happening already. Thailand, formerly one of the major rice exporters of the world is now keeping its rice for itself. China, which consumes 510 million tons of grain, only produces 500 million tons and needs to import 10 million tons. Where do they go to find it? In Africa, where they buy up the land and grow grain for the Chinese! Egypt is busy buying up land in the Ukraine, where they will cultivate food crops for the Egyptians, not for the Ukrainians! In Madagascar they are in the middle of a civil war sparked off by a Korean company that bought up half of Madagascar in order to grow food for the Korean people, not those of Madagascar. That’s what is happening in our world, so we need to cover our own arses somewhat in order to survive. We are certainly not used to the kind of poverty that is heading our way. We need to prepare ourselves mentally for a time of misery that will ultimately perhaps be good for us!" Beppe Grillo