Hard times but in Italy the number of State cars soars

A survey recently made by the italian taxpayers association Contribuenti.it has evidenced that the number of the State cars reached in 2009 quota 626760 units. It means that this number increased of 3.1% compared to 2008 despite of the many verbal declarations from italian politicians about the need to stop the abuses in State and other public bodies. We continue to see only blabla and good intentions on paper but no cuts to stop this costly and abused privilege.

Of course, with regards to this problem, Italy has the highest ranking in Europe: in this kind of things italians do it better...

While in Italy there are 626760 State cars in other countries things are going quite different:

Usa 72000
France 61000
UK 55000
Germany 54000
Turkey 51000
Spain 42000
Japan 30000
Greece 29000
Portugal 22000

Too many italian politicians are screaming about the need to add more ethics in the italian public sectors with new laws and regulations, but I think that the respect of the existing laws could be enough. After all with a little bit of a co-shared sense of shame, formal laws could be secondary tools to inject more ethical values in public offices and bodies. In these times of crisis, with so many families with the back on the wall, just wisdom and a good example could be extremely useful.

What? Wisdom? Shame? Good examples? This stuff today is pure fantasy in Italy by now...