Pictures of democracy.

Wow, members of parliament have been having a punch-up in Turkey: a proper arm-waving, fist-connecting-with-other-people's-faces brawl. In their parliament chamber! This should serve to remind us that our Houses of Parliament has its two sides with a wide space in the middle to prevent just that kind of thing. The space between the two sides is supposed to be more than a sword length so that back in the days when people regularly carried swords around they couldn't actually reach their political opponents. 

Of course, we are meant to be too British to resort to such fisticuffs. You can cast aspersions about your political opponents views, print stuff about them being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic or almost anything else that will distract attention from the things that really matter such as policies. But we don't actually hit each other. 

Sometimes, friends can fall out. I read that our Prime Minister, David Cameron, is no longer such a close friend as he used to be of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Friends through Eton, Cambridge and Westminster, they have seemingly let Europe come between them. Still friends - they are both Conservatives, after all, and they tend to stick together - but no longer truly close, no longer bosom buddies. David Cameron told all this in an interview with Glamour Magazine, according to a report in an online newspaper.  

Now, what is our Prime Minister doing talking to a magazine that used to called Glamour of Hollywood and which describes itself as "your source for what matters to women now, from outfit ideas and make-up tutorials to celebrity news and politics"? Doesn't he have a country to run? But of course he has to have his mass-media presence! 

We were talking about politicians and their public image in the Italian class yesterday. We had read about the death of Aldo Moro, kidnapped and eventually killed by the Red Brigades in 1978. First we had the official story and then the unofficial stories and legends and conspiracy theories. The presence of secret service forces on the street where Moro was kidnapped - the motorcyclists who were never officially there - the flat the Red Brigades used as one of their headquarters but which was not searched by the police apparently because nobody answered the door when they searched that block of flats - all these unexplained things! You couldn't make it up. Possible international corruption and cover-up. 

And then our teacher said that she was about to say something that amounted to blasphemy: she actually believed that the Italian republic of that time, for all its faults and all the manipulation, was actually better than the current republic. The leaders actually met people and spoke to them and listened to their concerns. Above all, they did not make fools of themselves in public, they did not organise sex parties with underage girls. Like very strict fathers they did what they thought was best for the state. More recent Italian leaders have been rather too much in the public eye for the wrong reasons in her view. 

And she asked if we thought that stuff like the possible Aldo Moro cover-up went on here. So we thought of Hillsborough and the police actions or lack of action that was hidden for so long. 

But still Spanish friends tell me that we don't have corruption here. And a Spanish friend from the Italian class, a Basque who has lived in Manchester for a good part if her adult life, says that her Spanish family say the same to her. 

Everything is relative.