Anger grows as illegal construction partly blamed for landslide deaths on Italian island
Well clutch ma’ pearls.
I know someone – near a headland that looks out over Procida to Ischia – who illegally bulldozed up some land in order to expand a bit. And found a series of Roman tombs. Which he then continued to bulldoze because getting the Italian state involved would have taken well into the next century.
Some illegal construction in the area, eh? Shocker.
Yeah and now he’s being haunted by Poltergeists screaming at him in Vulgate.
When we visited Naples we saw some strange half built ruins of houses. Later I mentioned this to the rep.
She said it was a housing project that was never completed. The EU grant came through after the second stage of building. The ministry of affairs of finance of international associations therefore stopped building…
4th form code…
As a lover of history, I naturally regret that some perhaps interesting info might have been lost. But of course I don’t own a house in Italy.
Still, I do wonder whether there is more of a housing shortage in Italy than there is in the UK, or indeed in Oz. I suspect that since the Italians have sensibly ignored the regulations, their problems are much less than ours.
I remember a holiday in Cyprus 20 years ago where the number of ground floor constructions waiting for completion of the first floor abounded. Rebar reaching for the sky. Apparently you only paid taxes when the building was complete…
DJ
Indeed this was true in Greece proper as far back as the 1980s. No house was ever completed, they all had bits of steel sticking out of the concrete.
Ottokring: It’s possible that this could be a tourist attraction!
More seriously, the number of projects stalled because of rare species being discovered at the last minute is such that I’m surprised more biologists aren’t being chased off.
@M
The code of the West: Shoot, Shovel, Silence
“And found a series of Roman tombs. Which he then continued to bulldoze because getting the Italian state involved would have taken well into the next century.”
I really don’t care. We have more than enough archaeology that tells us broadly how our ancestors live. We’re never going to get that very accurate because of things being broken or decaying. You might find the odd weird thing, like a centurion in Colchester probably came from Syria, but whoop-di-fucking-doo. It’s just pure nerd shit, like trainspotting or visiting every football ground. And if that’s your bag, fine, but I don’t see why it should hold up development.
Mohave: animals or biologists?
Yes.
Doesn’t matter, there’ll be a condono along in a minute – there always is.
@M
Usually animals. Local law enforcement tends to get persnickety about taking biologists out of season. However a number have been run off at gunpoint. Generally local law enforcement tells them that is expected for trespassing.
BoM4,
I tagged along unofficially behind a tour group in Jaffa some years back. The city is a decent walk uphill from Tel Aviv, and famously perched some distance above what used to be an important harbour.
The colourful tour guide explanation was that the city had been fought over, sieged, invaded, and changed hands so often that after every war the victors just demolished it and built anew on top of the rubble.
I don’t know if this is true but would confirm that everyone who came before us had basically your attitude to archaeology.