The cow roundabout

Let’s build a roundabout with a cow on top. The proposal has been made by the city and provincial councillor of the Northern League, Livio Pinciroli, a vet from Busto Arsizio. Around the end of January, he sent a formal proposal to the town hall, “on the express request of a large group of cow breeders”, to place the cut-out of a cow, together with a milking bucket, above a roundabout at the entrance to the city. It is the same black-and-white Friesian cow cut-out that can be seen at any fresh milk dispenser, he explained. The justification was that there are already roundabouts throughout the province dedicated to local arts and crafts, decorated with looms, mechanical devices, aeroplanes and whatever else the imagination might suggest. And, as we know, the Northern League’s imagination is highly developed: word of the roundabout in Buguggiate decorated with cyclists from Lombardy has spread far and wide.

Compared to the production and service industries, farming is disappearing in these parts, and that is a pity. However, Pinciroli reminds us of one important fact: cattle breeding is a local industry (“it has always had solid roots, in spite of the offices and factories”); and this is not a joke, as people who know nothing but the concrete and asphalt that covers three quarters of the town, may think. Some of these people might even say that a roundabout is the only space left for farming. “In Busto we still have 700 milk cows, about ten breeders in an industry that is now in a spot of trouble, who we are trying to give a hand to” he said. “And among these farming entrepreneurs, more than half have recently renewed their stalls and made investments; then, of course  there are also the fresh milk dispensers.” All this has the “blessing” of Bruno Specchiarelli, the Northern League’s provincial councillor for farming.

But now the difficulty will be … to milk the city’s coffers to implement the proposal.