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Despite the significant differences in political systems, both in terms of structure and tradition, among these countries, trends have marked European politics quite significantly in the last couple of decades . The late 1990s saw a wave of left parties taking over in Britain, Germany, Italy and other European countries. On the other hand, David Cameron’s election back in 2010 marked the first moment in a long time in which four major European countries were ruled by right-wing parties. The May elections might as well mean that the wind has changed, nevertheless it is clear that the challenges that the European “moderate left” has to face go beyond the electoral confrontation. What appears to have changed in European politics is the balance of the forces of the right, with extreme right movements gaining significant momentum at the expense of conservative/moderate parties. While this might indicate a success for the left in the short term, the increase of anti-system votes and of the extreme right suggests that bigger challenges lay ahead.

The challenges ahead (A reasoned approach)

1. The European Crisis. The financial crisis poses challenges and imposes constraints to the left and right alike. But it does represent a bigger problem for left parties once they get into power: austerity measures and commitment to social equality clash. That might be the reason why PASOK paid a higher price than Nea Demokratia in Greek elections. While the working class core of the moderate left parties might have faded –less so in countries like Italy, where the trade unions still play a key role– it is harder for a party that defines itself “Socialist” or simply “Centre-left” to impose measures perceived as unfair by most of the population, affecting more some traditional parts of their electorate. Francoise Hollande pledged to re-evaluate the unfair austerity measures that many saw as imposed by Angela Merkel with the consensus of his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, but what will this mean in terms of development of the European crisis and of the future of the EU?
2. The future of the EU. The crisis is not over, that much we all agree on. If the EU survives the crisis –and it likely, and hopefully, will– it will be radically different. How it will change, however, is a disputed matter. More Europe, less Europe, closing up the democracy deficit, giving the EU a stronger leadership. What is potentially more critical for the moderate left is bringing the theme of social equality at the centre of the European project. That poses a duple problem: finding a way to effectively modify “the European system”, but also completing at a European level a puzzle that still troubles the left parties at national level: what does third way mean exactly? What does it mean in terms of “models of development”?
3. Models of development. The end of the Cold War represented the sunset of the Soviet model: most left European parties had already changed their horizon a long time before, the notable exception being the “vintage” Communist Party of Italy, that was forced to undertake significant changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Communism not being an alternative, the different left parties of Europe developed a plethora of “Third way” progressive models, from Germany’s Social-Democracy to Britain’s New Labour. The latter represents better than any other example the contradiction of the European left: from the first successful years –with achievements such as the Minimum National Wage– to the last years –with the Iraq quagmire– and the accuse of “Neo-Thatcherism”, the journey of Blair and Brown’s party shows the power and the contradiction of the European left at the dawn of the new millennium. Engaging with what should be the “purpose”, or rather the goals of a moderate left party in today’s Europe, is beyond the scope of this article. Yet there are two or three themes that any Left party could not allow itself to ignore, such as the rise of the Extreme right.
4. The rise of the extreme right parties. Extreme right parties have been said to be “on the rise” in Europe for the past two decades, yet any new electoral success of these forces in Hungary, Finland, France or Greece seems to surprise European observers. While the growth of these parties would immediately appear to be a threat to conservative/moderate parties –particularly in countries such as the UK, where extreme right parties are able to challenge mainstream ones on themes such as Euro-scepticism– these parties represent a long term threat to moderate left parties as well as to the system altogether. Extreme right parties represent a threat to the left forces in at least three ways. Firstly, their growth is a sign of major shifts in the European political scenario, in the Continent’s political culture and political discourse, which is likely to be a self-reinforcing process. Secondly, these parties have proven capable to “fish” among left parties traditional electorate. Thirdly, extreme right parties are able to challenge left parties on some of the themes where they appear to be “softer”, the first and foremost being immigration and models of integration.
5. Immigration and models of integration. It is no secret that right-wing movements around Europe have been able to capitalise on the fear (justified or exaggerated) of the foreign invasion , particularly its Islamic component. Immigration is the major theme on which the left is losing the cultural battle. Squeezed between the simple (if scary) recipes of the Extreme right¹ –“Let’s send them back where they came from”– and the lack of clear models of integration to look up to, mainstream left’s parties stance on immigration and models of integration is at best unclear and at worst extremely uncomfortable. Not that one could demand to any serious party that aims to govern a big country to be “pro” or “against” an historical process such as immigration (that luxury that only extreme parties enjoy). But if politics is also about finding solutions to problems, shying away from the issue or offering a “light right” solution might not to be enough. Quoting a Greek voter: “This people tell me I don’t have to fear immigration, but my house is the one that gets de-priced when they move in”. To this and similar concerns the extreme right offers a straightforward answer: “Let’s send them home”.

Some Conclusions

The recent round of elections in five European countries brought significant gains for four mainstream left parties out of five, with the exception of PASOK being hardly hit by the protest vote in Greece and overtaken by the extreme left Syriza. Yet the elections seem to show that a few challenges are looming for these parties. The rise of abstentions and of what has been defined as “protest vote”, favouring extreme right parties, might represent a great challenge in next couple of years. Furthermore, there are a few themes that so far have been to a certain extent avoided by the left parties, themes on which these parties appear to be an easy target for criticism, such as immigration or social equality in the European Union. These issues are not only electoral matters. The stake is higher than victory or loss in the next round of elections. These are the issues that will shape the future of the Old Continent and help answering the crucial matter of the role and aims of Left parties in today’s Europe. Problems that need a strong answer “from the Left”.

1^ progressively adopted by the moderate right in the hope to limit the appeal of the extreme right (such as in the case of Sarkozy in France)

If my friend and host Ariot hadn’t told me, viagra I would have never known that we are just a couple of miles away from Mathare, a Nairobi slum that holds the dubious record of being Africa’s most violent.

Sitting in the leafy suburb of Muthaiga, inhabited mainly by diplomats and UN staff, it’s hard to come to grips with the fact that the population has more than doubled in twenty years, going from just over a million in 1989, to almost three million in 2005.

Since I was here just over a year ago, hundreds of new constructions seem to be popping up all over the place. There may be a recession going on in the rest of the world but it does not seem to have significantly impacted on this city’s real estate development.

This year, freed of the bondage of private transportation, I have gotten the chance to taste what it is like travelling around like the rest of the population: on a Matatu. Nairobi’s main form of public transportation, these privately owned minibuses serve every corner of the capital and beyond.

Trips on matatus can be exhilarating, nauseating or rather uneventful. The rickety vehicles are renowned for careening around corners, their conductors leaning out the door, aggressively cajoling people into joining the already overcrowded vehicle and banging on the side to signal to the driver when a passenger wants to get off.

Recently though, laws have been passed to clamp down on the pure anarchy that had become a way of life for matatus. Police will occasionally stage massive clampdowns on  the overburdened death traps and the conductors don’t try to overstuff the sardine cans quite like they used to.

Nevertheless, matatus are still the most vicious vehicles in the town. No pavement is too high for them to climb up or space too little into which to squeeze, as they aggressively negotiate their way through the city’s notorious rush hour deadlocks.

Each matatu has a clearly defined identity of its own. You can generally tell what kind of matatu is coming your way, by the icons plastered on its sides and, as it gets closer, by the music blaring out of its speakers.

Recently though, on the exterior at least, matatus seem to have conformed to a more standardised look, all white or grey with a yellow stripe running down the side. It is now mainly the bigger buses that colourfully proclaim their alliances.

Matatu music selection is really wide and if one drives by playing something you really hate (Black eyed Peas anyone?), you can always decide to skip it and wait for the next one.

Some matatus will go for a gangsta image, pimping up every available space with pictures of the defunct Tupac (still a huge hit), Fifty Cent, Busta Rhymes and current number one bad boy Hell Rell.

If you fancy a more spiritual ride however, there are of course gospel matatus. I still haven’t managed to figure out though, whether the incidences of pickpocketing are lower here.

It is my understanding that the music videos that play out on the large screen that separates the passengers from the driver, are in a language called Sheng. I’d explain what Sheng is myself, but the author Michela Wrong has done it so well that I thought I’d rely on her words:

“A witty, cheeky, freewheeling Clockwork Orange-style brew of Kiswahili, English and indigenous Kenyan languages, with added dollops of reggae jargon, American slang, French and Spanish, Sheng originated in Nairobi’s Eastland slums in the 1980s. Adopted by matatu touts and rap artists, it radiated along the taxi and bus routes, spilling over into Tanzania and Uganda …so popular has it become, that sending an email or text in Kiswahili or English rather than Sheng is considered disastrously uncool by anyone below the age of twenty”[1]

Michela Wrong is my hero, by the way.  But more of that some other day.

New Years resolutions hang over our heads as we increasingly retreat into a state of denial exacerbated by the looming January 31^st tax returns deadline… “£800 all in one go? But that’s so much money!!! This year I promise I’ll put aside 20% of my profits every time I get paid…” (Yet isn’t that what we said this time last year?).

Just last week, patient I was walking up an icy Sandringham road – the last intersection before the Dalston/Stoke Newington boundary marker which is Shacklewell lane – when I spied, buy cialis about forty feet ahead of me, a man stumbling across the road in an obvious state of drunken disarray. Before I had a chance to fully take in this lonesome figure, I spied another man walk up behind him and nonchalantly kick him in ankles. The drunk stumbled but did not fall. This appeared to give displeasure to his assailant, who hung back, kicked him once more and then sped up and overtook the utterly baffled victim (who had still, impressively, managed to keep his balance). The drunk tried to regain his dignity and began to shout after the perpetrator of this meaningless attack, challenging him to come back and fight him like a man. The assailant walked on, ignoring him and causing the people on the street to think that the drunk was a loony who had no doubt inexplicably lost the plot.

A quick postscript to this story: I believe I was the only person who witnessed the incident and further down the street I happened to be walking directly behind the sauntering assailant. As the shouts of the victim finally began to fade into the distance, the brutish man decided to glance back. I caught his eye and gave him a dirty look but beyond that did not express to him my utter contempt at his desire to pick on weaker and more pathetic members of society. I doubt he even registered my look. I suppose in some way that makes me an accomplice, even though I took no pleasure from the scene. Sigh, so much for being a paladin of justice.

Construction work on my beloved place of abode is proceeding slower than expected. In a way the presence of two sofas has made living here more bearable, to the point that I sometimes think this is how the flat is supposed to look and forget about the grand plans I have for this high-ceilinged, big-windowed space.

Work was actually supposed to start today but the freeholders have been slow in approving my plans and the bamboo flooring isn’t arriving until the 20^th, so it looks like I’m just going to have to sit tight a little while longer.

Luke, a good architect friend of mine, has warned me that I must be more concerned with getting out some kind of a liability insurance in case my builders were to accidentally damage some part of the building, leaving me to foot the bill. It’s good to have pessimistic friends who predict that negative things might happen, it helps keep my “oh whatever I’m sure it will all work out fine in the end” attitude in check.

At least having sofas and crockery means I can indulge in one of my favourite pastimes: cooking dinners for friends. The problem with this, is balancing this fun occupation with my otherwise constant concern of not piling on the pounds just because the temperature outside has been sub-freezing for weeks and I’m spending too much time sitting on my sofa (working that is, I don’t yet own a desk). In theory this means not, I repeat not, making super heavy pasta bakes, which contain more butter, cheese and milk than I’m sure is good for anyone and then snacking on the leftovers of this super-heavy meal for days afterwards. This of course is NOT what I did this weekend. Promise!

Oh the guilt of overindulgent eating. To prove my repentance I am heading to the gym. Now. No really.

Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, his debut is that of a writer, when in 1946 he published Elisabeth, a novel – characterised by subtle prose – that let us forsee the style of the scripts of his future movies. The book came out with the pseudonym Gilbert Cordier. A pseudonym is often associated with shame and resentment (see Stendhal), and in this regard Monsieur Rohmer, with his double nom de plume, probably had something to reveal.

Following the first feature films, the artist begins to see his path. His adventure in the world of art-house cinema has begun. Director on the one hand and, on the other, theorist. In fact, Rohmer was Editor of the Cahiers du cinéma for some years. Those were the years of Godard, Chabrol, Rivette, Eustache, Truffaut. Years of unforgettable movies (the legend of À bout de souffle, the poetic story of Jules et Jim) when Rohmer chose his position (on the sidelines) to play an independent game. He conceives an ambitious project: cycles of movies (stories at different stages, on multiple levels) in which he intends to recount the endless facets of the human soul, the worthlessness and the complexity, the splendour and the fragility, with all the comic aspects (or tragicomic).

The first cycle is that of the Moral Tales. Six astonishing movies, of great depth, each profoundly different from the other and yet all linked in a closed circle. La boulangère de Monceau (1962), La carriére de Suzanne (1963), La collectionneuse (1967), Ma nuit chez Maud (1969), Le genou de Claire (1970)  and L’amour l’aprés-midi (1972). Each of these stories involves a moral choice, a dilemma that puzzles the protagonist, a fork in the road. It’s the serried dialogues between Jean-Louis Trintignat and Françoise Fabian (unforgettable Maud), it’s the obsession focused on the knee of the young attractive (and arrogant) Claire, it’s the thoughts of the three characters of La collectionneuse (a sort of Jules et Jim with colours borrowed from Matisse and Bonnard).

This meditation in six acts is followed by an historical pause, during which Rohmer directs La marquise von (1976, inspired by a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, a beautiful period movie characterised by masterful lighting) and Perceval le Gallois (1978, a heavy adaptation from Chretiens de Troys). These are historical and literary digressions, recaptured by Rohmer toward the end of his career in L’anglaise et le duc (2001).

Once again absorbed in everyday life, Rohmer initiates a second cycle, that of Comedies and Proverbs. If the objective is always the same (a man, a woman, their psychology), the tactic has changed: a folkloristic adage is quoted and presented in the context of a beach in Brittany or in 1980s Paris. The films in this cycle are: La femme de l’aviateur (1981), Le beau mariage (1982), Pauline à la plage (1982), Les nuits de plein de lune (1984), Le rayon vert (1986),  Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) and L’ami de mon amie (1987). All these movies enjoyed the success of critic and public, all were characterised by the Rohmer-trademark: the dialogues chasing each other and interweaving, the simple settings (often beaches, equally often the countryside, an unexpected Paris), the accomplished actors (cleverly directed but also free to improvise in order to convey more spontaneity to the memorable fast-paced dialogues).

Another cycle follows, that of the Four Seasons: Conte de printemps (1989), Conte d’hiver (1991), Conte d’été (1996) and Conte d’automne (1998). The seasons are identified with their colours – the light-blue of the skies of Normandy for Summer, the red green and brown of the vineyards for Autumn. The sensitivity is, by now, familiar: the meditations of a young man caught in his dreams and in his incertitude, two friends in their middle age enjoying themselves in a comedy of misunderstandings (serious, but with a smile). Juggling and balancing.

There are also films outside the cycles. Those Rendez-vous à Paris, in which the structure is still typical of Rohmer. The recent L’anglaise et le duc (2001) from the memoires of Lady Grace Dalrymple Elliot, lover of the Duke of Orléans interpreted by the excellent Lucy Russell. And here Monsieur Rohmer finds one of his strengths: the unequalled taste in choosing the actors. Actors who give an astonishing performance and then disappear (from the screen, not in the memory of the public), such as Haydée Politoff, protagonist of La collectionneuse. But also legends of French cinema: Françoise Fabian (the seductive Maud) and Jean-Louis Trintignat. André Dussolier and Barbet Schroeder, Arielle Dombasle and Pascal Greggory. Some of the actors and actresses are a fetish, especially Béatrice Romand (young in Le genou de Claire, then in Le beau mariage, for which she was awarded the Coppa Volpi in Venice) and Marie Riviére (seen in La femme de l’aviateur and Le rayon vert) both united in the Autumn Tale in a memorable double interpretation. Or young promising actors, such as Melvil Poupaud in the Summer Tale.

Overall the strength of Rohmer’s cinema lays in its delicacy. The ability of recounting the fragility of a relationship, the intensity of an impulse, the complexity of a doubt. Often intertwined with the movements of the body (very observant the director, very refined the actors), the feelings are the real protagonists of the moral debates, of the comedies and the proverbs, of the seasons of life (a passionate summer, a melancholic autumn ending with a smile). A film by Rohmer can be ironic, humoristic, subtly sad, patently intimate – always, however, profoundly human.

The repetition of the themes (lastly disguised in the classical setting of the Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé) was a demonstration of clarity. Awarded in numerous editions of the most prestigious festivals (the lifetime achievement Leone d’Oro dating to 2001), Rohmer never lost his freshness, sometimes joyfully baroque sometimes astoundingly simple.

One day, in an unexpected place, we will find ourselves engaged in a discussion or sharing doubts with archetypal symbolic characters (Frivolous, Gullible, Strong, Ambiguous, Constant) and we will recognise ourselves as characters in one of his movies.

Instead, I moseyed on down to the highly recommended Mess Café on Amhurst road. They say the hamburgers and milkshakes there are to die for, although so far I’ve only had the American breakfast, which was decent and nothing like anything I’d ever had in the States before. Unfortunately the rain seemed not have deterred the eager café enthusiasts and after about three minutes standing in line (patience has never really been my virtue), I gave up, bought a Saturday Guardian and some free-range bacon and eggs at Marks and Sparks. I know, shopping at such a controversial supermarket was highly politically incorrect of me. Yet where else am I to get free-range in this neck of the woods if not at Tescos, which is arguably much worse than M&S? It’s hard to balance the need to be virtuous and buy free-range and organic, with the need to not shop at evil corporations that are ruining our society, potentially backing the oppression of Palestinians and squeezing out small-businesses across the world.

Oh, so while I’m reviewing my culinary week, Friday lunchtime saw me head down to Brick Lane to indulge in one of the only decent curries in a hurry that I have found there. Shalimar does not outwardly seem any different from the other multitude of Bangladeshi eateries in the area but don’t be fooled: for well under a tenner, you can indulge in some pretty high quality spice-tastic concoctions. I had the lamb and spinach curry and apart from spending the rest of the day worrying I had green stuff stuck in my teeth, it was well worth the cycle.

Later, while lazily pedalling home, my eye did catch a sight of a little junk shop that stood out from the rest of the high-priced, crappy old furniture establishments, simply because it did not appear to be trying at all. I ended up bargaining for a rudimentary mini-coffee table and mirror that had been haphazardly banged together by the owner of the shop from random bits of wood he had picked up. After considering for a couple of minutes if it might not be worth just doing the same thing myself, I decided that at £20 for both items, I couldn’t really go far wrong. The mini-coffee table (which looks more like a miniature bench) and the mirror have now been painted white and I’m still umming and ahhing over whether I should take some sand paper to them to create that “distressed” look that I so hankered after a month ago but which I am beginning to tire of already.

I’ve made a monumental decision about the flooring in the flat. Enough with all this reclaimed floorboards business. From what I can make out “reclaimed” has simply become a catchphrase for “old and yukky but with a 1000% mark-up for you silly twats who want your flat to look ’shabby chic’!” Instead I’ve decided to go down the sustainable road and invest in a serious bamboo floor. My online research has so far thrown up the company Simply Bamboo as one of my prime candidates. After having received some samples from them, I am now pretty convinced to go for their strand woven coffee boards which, at around £22 per square metre, is well less than half the price of anything I have seen until now.

Beyond that, I now attend a response from the freeholders of the building to whom I have submitted a plan of what I intend to do to the flat. I sent them a printed out letter by mail on Thursday, so hopefully they’ll get back to me some time this week.

I do hope everything will be ready for our January “begin to build” deadline…

Born into a well-to-do family in the Lot region, Françoise Quoirez took by storm the cultural establishment of France in 1954 with the acclaimed and controversial novel Bonjour Tristesse, published under the pseudonym Sagan (inspired by one of the characters in Marcel Proust’s Recherche, the Princesse de Sagan). International bestseller and shortly after made into a movie interpreted by David Niven, Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr, the story is set in the nonchalant atmosphere of the French Riviera where hedonism and frivolity meet with darker thoughts in the mind of spoilt teenage Cécile. Those were the initial years of the Nouvelle Vague.

The movie Sagan, directed by Diane Kuris, covers the time span of half a century, from the stardom year 1954 until 2004, when an old, fragile and impoverished Françoise Sagan died of a lung embolism. Her life has all the elements of tragedy and romance: immediate success, the first triumph turning almost into a curse, marriages, lovers, an estranged son, drugs, alcohol, luxury, beauty, solitude. The movie opens in Honefleur, in 2004, with a reporter trying to sneak a photograph trough the wooden gate of Sagan’s mansion, le manoir du Breuil near Équemauville. An enthusiastic young girl, she was known by the nickname of charmant petit monstre (charming little monster). Androgynous in her looks, with short hair and slender figure, she lived the success of Bonjour Tristesse with a cheerful attitude, at the same time conscious and blasé. Her places (Deauville, Paris, Saint-Tropez, Honfleur), her sportcars. Following a car accident at the wheel of her Aston Martin, she was in a coma for some days. Once she recovered, she quickly married publisher Guy Schoeller. The marriage lasted only three years and two years after her divorce she married the American sculptor Robert Westhoff, with whom she had her only child, Denis. Like Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson or Paul and Jane Bowles, Françoise and Robert also had same sex relationships outside their marriage and following their separation. In fact, Sagan’s most faithful companion was Peggy Roche, ex model for Givenchy and later herself a stylist.

We follow Sagan into her descent in drug and alcohol abuse, her difficult (almost inexistent) relationship with her son, her financial problems, her respiratory accident while on a state visit to Colombia with President François Mitterand. Later Peggy Roche dies. In the last years of her life, Sagan was practically ruined and was involved in the financial scandal known as Affair Elf . It was only the support from her wealthy companion Ingrid Mechoulam (Astrid, in the movie) that allowed her to keep her mansion, where she died in 2004. A few years earlier she was asked to write her own epitaph: “Sagan, Françoise. Fit son apparition en 1954, avec un mince roman, “Bonjour tristesse”, qui fut un scandale mondial. Sa disparition, après une vie et une œuvre également agréables et bâclées, ne fut un scandale que pour elle-même” (Sagan, Francoise. Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, “Bonjour Tristesse”, which was a worldwide scandal. Her death, after a life and a literary production both pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for herself).

Sagan is brilliantly interpreted by Sylvie Testud (also a theatre actress and a writer). A long preparation in the study of the character is evident: the voice, the gestures, the gait, the whole attitude. Instead of playing Sagan, Sylvie Testud had opted for becoming Sagan, conscious that the author and her myth are still alive in the public, especially in France, leaving little space for improvisation. Alongside Testud, the eclectic Jeanne Balibar (Ne touchez pas la hache, 17 fois Cécile Cassard, Va savoir) plays Peggy Roche, with her striking outfits and mellifluous voice.

Another character in the movie is the action of writing. The physical act of writing, the reason behind it, the urgency, its commercial aspect, the years of Existentialism. “Écrire est la seule vérification que j’ai de moi-même” (Writing is the only verification I have of myself). We see Sagan writing: in bed, surrounded by half-smoked cigarettes and half-drunk bottles of whisky; in the garden of her mansion; sitting with the typewriter on her lap. She writes. In fifty years of excesses she has also managed to publish almost fifty literary works, including novels, theatre plays, scripts, autobiographical writings.

The movie also provides an overview of fifty years of French history: the Nouvelle Vague; May 1968; the Manifesto of the 343 in which 343 women admitted of having had an abortion in 1971 including Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and Françoise Sagan; Mitterand’s presidency. Interestingly during the movie, while Sagan, her second husband and her entourage are watching on TV the revolution in the streets of the Latin Quarter, one of the spectators comments: “This is the revolution” looking at their new way of living, just there, in that room. Less boundaries, socially and sexually.

The movie is not judgmental: neither compassionate for the suffering and the weaknesses of the writer, nor exalting her excesses. It portrays the lights and shadows of a complex character, of a woman that already at the age of 18, in the opening lines of the novel that made her Sagan, wrote: “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else”.

A clear example of this conundrum can be found with a comparison between the overused English word “nice” and its Italian pseudo-counterpart, drugstore “bello/bella”. A comparative observation of the two words puts forward a key of analysis that allows us to draw some cross-cultural lines between Anglophones and Italians.

My first encounter with the word ‘nice’ happened during a daily conversation with the regulars while working as a barman in a North London pub. When speaking about Italy, sovaldi one of the crowd, kept on emphasising how “nice” the country was. It soon became clear to me that there was much more to the word than a mere aesthetic connotation, as my Italian brain was naturally inclined to think. One could of course argue that pub regulars in general do not excel in linguistic variation but I believe that the incidence of the word ‘nice’ is high and that it generally expresses many meanings.

‘Nice’ is all-embracing. It has a wide semantic adaptability which is not paralleled by its Italian counterpart: the use of the former stretches from aesthetic to ethical terms, since it can be referred quite unambiguously to places, people, animals, or situations. The latter, on the other hand, has a rather more fixed meaning, which is usually due to its aesthetic connotations. Nevertheless, ‘bello/bella’ acquires further meanings that are directly linked to the word’s aesthetic sense, which is always maintained regardless of the context in which the word is applied.

The English ‘nice’ is strongly contextual. ‘Nice’ goes equally well with ‘guy’, ‘exhibition’ or ‘pie and mash’. It does not necessarily imply an aesthetic or moral value: its acceptation depends on the context. Pub regulars emphasized the natural beauty of my region by overusing the word ‘nice’, which was better understood standing for both natural and social ‘niceness’. Pub regulars were directly correlating natural to social features, thus manifesting their view on Italy’s knowingly stereotyped lifestyle.

In other words, the English use of ‘nice’ implies an overreaching ‘niceness’. Its use is highly contextual and in this specific case, implies that natural and social ‘beauty’ are strictly interwoven.

Basically, what is pleasant to the eye is also pleasant to your social life.

The term ‘bello’ has, however, a preponderant aesthetic value in the Italian language, since it somehow transcends moral judgement. What is ‘bello’ in Italian is not necessarily good. More importantly, if something in Italian is ‘bello’, it automatically becomes morally pleasant too. What is nice is nice, full stop. Apparently it is a contorted concept, but it clearly comes from the classicist tradition, which appointed beauty the role of moral healer.

I was once talking with a friend on Lake Como banks about  his views on the problems of private and public social consciousness in the region. Despite his total dismay and his thoughts on moving somewhere else, he stated in no uncertain terms that he would never leave just because of the natural beauty by which he was surrounded. As if natural ‘niceness’ could compete with more practical interferences in private and public life.

So, if you are still with me, the Italian ‘bello’ becomes in its turn paradoxically all-embracing, the moral value being originated by the aesthetic starting point.

It seems that the old story repeats itself in various forms: the continental deductive method on the one side, the Anglophone inductive quest on the other.

But it is not negligible that these two simple words, ‘nice’ and ‘bello’, offer us delightful insights to understand two different cultural traditions. Through this linguistic lens, it comes easier to comprehend for instance what is the English collective imaginary on exotic, remote lands and how that is reflected in social dynamics (see colonialism); or, why should Italians consider voting for a Prime Minister which undoubtedly possesses populist ‘niceness’, although lacking in political and legal transparency.