Venice’s lagoon of 2,000 lost boats
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
That seems unbelievable, given the nature of the place, especially when "To a Venetian, owning a boat is almost like owning a car".
By "lacks the infrastructure" they mean that the local business and regulatory environment is too hostile to the kind of business that would dispose of such things for said business to exist within the distance this waste can economically be transported, so the locals just dump stuff because what's the other option?
You can't "just run a boat dismantling business" on the outskirts of somewhere like Venice even if the economic need is obvious because a large part of that kind of business involves regional competition (selling parts over the internet and whatnot, fixing and reselling stuff) and the concessions your local government will demand in order to make your business in line with whatever quaint image their tourism empire is built on and the realities of the local economy (inflated cost of literally everything you need to buy, including labor) will make you noncompetitive.
I guess fibreglass will inevitably last longer, but to put some scale on this the Mary Rose sank in the Solent about 500 years ago, and her wreck was recovered in the early 1980s and put in a museum in Portsmouth dockyard.
Italian beurocracy is truly something to behold.
One, however, should also appreciate the intricate history of most of Italy, including Venice, which is partially the cause for such bureaucracy. Republic of Venice, the surrender to Napoleon, Austria, the reunification of Italy, etc., in less than 100 years.
Of course not.
It is more like 2-3 forms and no definitive answer (more probably a single, non definitive one) in 6 months time, then another couple forms and hopefully a definitive one in another 6-12 months.
Seriously, there is not any "standard", some things are (or have become) incredibly (compared to previous Italian bureaucracy) easy and straightforward, some have become much worse than before.
Passports are an interesting one - the loops we've needed to jump through for my daughter getting hers have been ludicrous and although we're 6 months in to the process, the end is not in sight. When my [unmarried] partner had to get her passport renewed last year, I had to go in to the consulate to vouch for her existence. Wut?
Don't even get me started on setting up a business over there, which is a dream I've put off indefinitely precisely because it's so much easier to accomplish here in the UK.
Oh, and taxes... .
- ed Don't get me wrong, as much as she prefers living here, I'd prefer living over there!
Dealing with utilities is a total pain in the arse e.g A new electricity connection takes 3 months to connect the wires from the street then another 3 months for a different organisation to come and install the meter. The meter installer fills out thier forms incorrectly and you are left with a huge bill for electricity that’s not been used (happening to me also happened to a friend last year). The only way to correct this is to physically get a new meter installed to replace the old one; another 3 month wait while batting away threats of court action for a huge power bill. Phone and Water are just as painful. No-one at any utility company has any idea what the proper procedure is for doing the paperwork. I’ve had problems dealing with electricity companies in the last houses I’ve lived in and problems with the water supplier in my last two office locations.
Last time I checked there was a 3 month wait to renew a passport; no changes apart from another 10 years of validity.
If you want to speak to anyone at the tax office you have to go on hold for 3-4 hours. The only other way to communicate with them is by writing a physical letter which they will never reply to. The tax credits department doesn’t speak to the income tax department even though they share the same addresses, website and bank account. You have to go on hold for hours to get information sent out from one department to be able to send the information straight back to the other one at the same address.
Planning permission is an absolute shitshow, it’s meant to take max 2 months but regularly takes over a year.
Edit: If you employ someone there are a whole bunch of complicated returns you have to file every month. You also have to find your employees a pension, even though one of the things you have to pay is employers national insurance which is already a pension. You can offload this to a payroll consultant for a monthly fee but it’s about 10% on top of the salary cost of someone on the average wage and they still phone you up and offload the weird corner case stuff back onto you.
The only thing that’s easy here is setting up a company; super quick on companies house website.
Everything else is super vague and badly organised.