Hmm:
Details of a cache of 24 presents totalling nearly £200,000 and allegedly given by Silvio Berlusconi to the teenage dancer at the centre of the under age prostitution charge against him emerged from prosecutors details of the case against him.
Berlusconi\’s a billionaire, isn\’t he. Assume it\’s just one billion.
£200,000 in presents out of a net worth of 1 billion, means that he\’s spent 0.02% of his assets on her.
Average household assets in the UK are what, £200,000? (Top 10% £850,000, bottom 10% £8,000, median will be below mean here).
So, for the average Englishman the same expenditure would be £40,
Hmm, no, that doesn\’t gets us repeated legovers with a pneumatic teenage dancer, does it?
If newspaper reports on pricing are to be believed, this gets a single quickie in the back of the car from a heroin addict street walker.
Seems Silvio got something of a deal here then……
(Sadly, for most of us) the value of something is not a factor of the proportion of income you have spent on it.
I don’t understand this whole “under-aged prostitute” thing.
Apparently it is illegal to engage the services of a tart in Italy if she is under the age of 18. Fine; we wouldn’t want children being drawn into the industry. But presumably the same holds true for dancers of the artistic disrobing variety.
Thus if old Silvio was presented with a nubile stripper at one of his bunga bunga parties, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume he believed she was over the age limit?
All the ladies I’ve bought presents for asked for my accounts to verify what percentage of my assets was being spent.
This young lady obviously missed a trick.
There is probably a real point here: if Silvio’s got a billion quid, then the concept of him giving a pretty teenage girl GBP200,000 and *not* actually fucking her isn’t insane, any more than the concept of $sleazy_salesman buying a teenage girl a couple of champagne cocktails and not fucking her would be. If I were his lawyer, that’d be my plan for keeping him out of jail, at least…
RemittanceMan: under English law, if you engage a prostitute, you have to show a “reasonable belief” that she was over 18, and that isn’t necessarily demonstrated by the fact that the bouncer in the club you met her in also fucked up on age limits. I know sod-all about Italian law, but I imagine it’s similar.
I’m still mystified as to what he’s supposed to have done wrong. It was his own money he spent on the “bunga bunga”, not taxpayers’ money, wasn’t it?
Is any woman I have sex with legally a prostitute if I give her gifts? Does this mean that, sadly, my entire love life has actually been a sordid engagement with prostitutes?
I have this image of me standing there in the dock, and the prosecution saying, “Exhibit A, a £50 receipt for roses from Marks and Sparks”…
“for the average Englishman the same expenditure would be £40”
Can I just say that, from the photos I’ve seen, I’d happily hand over 40 sovs to Ruby for a leg over.
john b – “There is probably a real point here: if Silvio’s got a billion quid, then the concept of him giving a pretty teenage girl GBP200,000 and *not* actually fucking her isn’t insane”
I doubt it. Come on. It may be small beer to SB but that does not mean he does not know the value of a quid. There is no way he is forking out that sort of money without getting some return – and no jury would believe otherwise.
But I might agree about the fucking. After all for that sort of money, I would hope he was getting more than straight vanilla sex. That is well out of that sort of territory – even for an old man like Berlo. Perhaps he has specialist tastes. God knows what they are because for that sort of cash surely you are not even talking about anal intercourse.
Ian B – “I’m still mystified as to what he’s supposed to have done wrong.”
He is a conservative politician that the leftist establishment has not been able to bring down so far (for I might add, actual real alleged crimes). The ex-Communists are using this in the same way that Uncle Sam got Al Capone for tax evasion.
“Uncle Sam got Al Capone for tax evasion.” The reason tax evasion was used was because that was the only provable Federal offense Al committed. Murder, extortion, etc. were all state offenses, and Al had bribed and/or intimidated all of the state judges and juries.
John,
But is that the case? Surely, if I go into a club that purports to not admit under 21’s and pick up a nubile poppie, I can claim a reasonable belief that she was over the age of 21.
I would argue the same defence is possible here.
Not that it would help old Silvio. As So Much explains, he’s been tried in the lefties’ much beloved “court of public opinion” and found wanting. The finer points of jurisprudence have no place here anymore.
Perhaps you should consider the value of 200K quid from *her* viewpoint, not his.
Seems Silvio got something of a deal here then……
Which is presumably how he got to be a billionaire.