NO ai Grandi Navi!

Yesterday's news of a gigantic cruise ship crashing into a smaller tourist boat and the dockside in Venice  – read all about it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48489158 – renews the hope that something will finally be done about the blight of the grandi navi. These floating hotels should never have been allowed into Venice in the first place, and Venetians regularly protest against their presence and the damage they are doing to their city. I gather that, if it was down to the city authorities, they would have got rid of them, but they have been overruled by the regional government. Perhaps now minds will be concentrated and something decisive will at last be done. The Mayor has called for 'urgent action' to divert cruise ships away from the Giudecca canal, and the Infrastructure Minister has declared that 'we are finally close to a definitive solution' – the kind of words you hear all too often from the dilatory Italian authorities. Let's hope, though, that this time they mean something.
  Meanwhile, on a more cheery note, here's a Venetian scene painted by Raoul Dufy, who was born on this day in 1877. Not a cruise ship in sight...