Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

Italy’s only options are to impose savage tax hikes or ask Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to stop paying hookers.

All 16 were doing better than Italy economically.

Next country to receive an EU bail-out (Hills): 11-8 Italy, 7-4 Spain, 5-2 Cyprus, 9-1 Belgium.


In recent days, newspapers around the world have published photographs of Silvio Berlusconi and Dominique Strauss-Kahn on the same page — slotted as, ahem, foreign affairs coverage.

Berlusconi, besieged Italian prime minister, took his alleged jollies on domestic soil but, according to an investigative dossier now made public, is accused of flying in bunga-bunga mamba partners from as far away as England, and on a government plane no less.

Here’s the thing: Both scoundrels have cultivated reputations as ladies’ men, red-hot lovers, irresistible Lotharios who cut a wide swath through the flesh-pot pickings. Berlusconi is 75 this month. Strauss-Kahn is 62. Berlusconi is not charged in that case; he’s purportedly a victim, whilst stating he gave the man, Giampaolo Tarantini, money only out of tender generosity.

Prostitution in Italy is legal; sex with a minor isn’t.

He didn’t like tall girls, Berlusconi tells Tarantini in one excerpt from the tapes, which date from July 2008 to May 2009. On another, he’s heard describing Italy as a “s----- country.’’ Berlusconi is a defendant in four on-going trials, three involving corruption. That trial resumed after Berlusconi’s automatic immunity from prosecution was lifted earlier this year by Italy’s top court. Amidst all this, Italy’s credit rating was downgraded Monday over its poor economic growth prospects, the country challenging Greece for fiscal Armageddon.

(No mention of the other woman that police say Strauss-Kahn had sex with, in the hotel, on the previous evening. The charges were dropped because the alleged victim’s evidence was unreliable, non? Berlusconi blames conspiracies for his legal troubles, too.

In response to his country’s soaring national debt and downgrading of its credit rating by Standard & Poor’s, Silvio Berlusconi has announced that if he is to have sex as a privilege of office he will now be asking to be paid for it, up front, with all proceeds going towards repayment of Italy’s national debt.

Aides to Snr Berlusconi have prepared calling cards inviting readers to contact Sexy Silvio on a premium rate number in Rome accompanied by pictures of the Italian Prime Minister clearly winking at them in romantic holiday poses, and have left them in the European Parliament and other strategically important financial institutions across the Eurozone.

Of course, a woman isn’t a woman if she isn’t aroused by interesting proposals about taxation.’

But through everything Berlusconi remains nostalgic for the good old days.