(7:47)

May Day has now become motorist’s day. Once upon a time it was known as workers day, but there are now too few of them. The number of drivers sitting in motorway queues, instead, has increased. Yesterday, some 5.5 million motorcars took to the road. It may seem like a joke, but it isn’t. The prospect of crude oil running out, the global crisis and rising unemployment, which now exceeds 14%, are making us itch. So the Benetton group company Atlantia did well to increase “Autostrade per l’Italia” tariffs by 2.4%. Better still is the decision by “Autostrada Tirrenica” to increase theirs by +5.14%, “Tangenziale di Napoli” by +6.63% and “Autostrade meridionali” by +4.89%. Also excellent is the almost sensational increase of +9.30% announced by Asti-Cuneo. The motorway concession holders have been to good to us of late, perhaps even bordering on honest. They are raking in billions of Euro of toll fees on motorways already paid for by the Italian taxpayer’s money over the past fifty years. And rightly so too. Opportunity turns a man into a thief, so why should the concession holder be any different? Especially they who are so closely linked to the political parties that they can afford the luxury of funding them quite openly?
Even those left homeless by the earthquake must pay their share because everyone is equal before the toll. In fact, on the A24 and the A25 motorways, thousands of residents of Abruzzo going through to L'Aquila once again began paying toll fees yesterday, which had been suspended as a result of the quake. I wonder if the ministerial motor coaches arriving for the G8 will also be required to pay the toll fees?
There are hundreds of kilometres of tar between Turin and Venice. Yesterday they turned into a parking areas for slow moving used cars (at a complete standstill between Milan and Brescia). All queuing to pay their toll fees, listening to their music, using the air conditioning (the first warm spell of the year) and discussing the latest news reports on the swine flu. Meanwhile, a 700 square kilometre ice cap broke away in Antarctica, which is set to lose another 3,300 square kilometres within the next month. A piece of ice the size of Luxemburg. Our fuel is green and our roads are wild (have you ever seen an advert showing a car stuck in the traffic?), in the front passenger seat there is always a girl so beautiful that she takes your breath away (instead of a wife). The skies are blue and the landscape is uncontaminated. Let's face the catastrophe with optimism.