Arrivederci Silvio

It's times like this that I knew Latin. Silvio Berlusconi, who turned virtually all Italian media into his private messengers, who wound webs of scandal around himself so thick that they've even trapped Tessa Jowell, who undermined Italy's crusading anti-Mafia magistrates because they went after his friends, who allied himself with neo-fascists to keep himself in power, who basically built a fiefdom in the style of a Renaissance prince with patronage even thrown in (Paulo Maldini v Raphael , the Sistine Chapel roof v the 1994 European Cup winners - it's a close call)... Yes, that Silvio Berlusconi is out on his arse. By the slenderest of margins. And he's claiming dirty tricks have been perpetrated. It's like the 2000 US elections but with the good guys winning. It's also incredibly funny.

So I wish I knew Latin because there has to be some pithy phrase which sums up. All I can think of is et tu Brutus which means something else, though may be a sentence heard amongst the Italian right in the bitter coming weeks. I'll just have to content myself with saying 'he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.' And laughing a great deal.