But best of all are Naples taxi drivers. The fact that the price you pay bears no relation to what's on the meter is the icing on the cake of a journey where the driver sees it as his job to get you to your destination as fast as possible. This can mean - as happened to me - driving the wrong way up an alley reserved for trams then crossing the reserve at the last minute (tram 50m away) back onto the road. You pay him what he asks as thanks that you're still alive.

Google never used illegal business practices and other restrictive methods to artificially increase their market share. If Microsoft had built up its empire fairly and squarely, no-one would be complaining anbout them. But they didn't. They're crooks and have been found to be crooks. The problem is that no-one has yet forced them to give up the monopoly their crooked dealing have created; it's always been "pay the fine and keep the winnings".

I really can't understand why governments are going to all this expense to produce biometric ID cards etc. There's a much simpler alternative: just have a unique serial number tatooed onto every child's arm at birth - and onto the arms of those already born now - and there you have it. No more need for cards, passports etc. A unique person-number wherever you go. Simple, don't you think? I can't understand why the nazis^h^h^h^h^hnice bureaucrats in our various interior ministries haven't already jumped on the idea. After all, what's the difference between that and being forced to carry a biometric ID card and having to show it any time some cop, border guard, pharmacist, bank cleck etc. asks for it. ID cards and freedom do not mix.