Apparently the mob’s “men of honour” have decided that greeting each other in public with a kiss of respect on each cheek has become too risky. Kisses, along with handshakes, passwords, initiation rites and ostentatious symbolic acts, have been banned.
If the story is true, it would mark the end of an era for the Mafia which has thrived on ritual every bit as much as those other pervasive powers in Italian society, Freemasons and the Catholic Church.The trouble is the story could just be a fable invented to make the Mafia look antiquated and ridiculous and it has set sociologists, journalists and magistrates arguing furiously over the chances of its being true.”This is the kind of folklore Italians always fall for,” said Odoardo Ascari, a lawyer who has a direct interest in rubbishing the story. His most prominent client is Giulio Andreotti, the former prime minister facing charges of association with the Mafia. Among the allegations is the suggestion that he kissed Toto Riina, head of all Mafia heads, at a secret Palermo meeting in 1987.Within the tightly defined rules of the traditional Mafia, the kiss of respect was one of the ways fully initiated members of the mob could recognise one another. Another was the code phrase: E la stessa cosa – literally, “It’s the same thing”, a play on Cosa Nostra. But the mob has changed enormously in the last 30 years, as drugs-trafficking and money-laundering have taken over from small-time racketeering and property speculation as its chief source of income. Warfare between rivals and betrayal has become more common in the atmosphere of high-stakes competition.Reports from anti-Mafia investigators suggest the bosses are now running scared from informers.

Those on the run from police can no longer walk the streets with impunity and clan members are taking extra precautions when they meet It would make sense, therefore, to ban kisses.. Football officials investigating the riot at last week’s Dublin international between the Republic of Ireland and Englandbelieve they know the identity of 40 of the hooligans involved, thanks to the telephone hotline through which people were able to give information. Irish police are expected to arrive in London within the next few days to meet officials of the Football Association and the National Football Intelligence Unit, and begin extradition proceedings.
The FA is delighted with the response to its “hooligan hotline”, which had taken about 900 calls. “Certain names were recurring and two in particular were the subject of scores of calls,” Mike Parry, FA spokesman, said. “Some of the others are well-known soccer hooligans from the past whose recent whereabouts were unknown. We know who they are and the Irish police know who they are.”The gardai have studied newspaper pictures, television footage and video film.

They will talk to officials of the FA and the National Football Intelligence Unit to try to match names with faces.”We believe we have the identities of all of those hard-core thugs involved and when we have matched them up with the pictures the Irish police will initiate extradition proceedings so they can get these people back to Dublin,” Mr Parry said.Grounds for optimism, page 32. About three-quarters of those trained by the Government to become lay inspectors of schools are so disillusioned that they are preparing to leave, according to a new survey. The report by the National Association of Lay Inspectors reveals that half of the 1,235 approved lay inspectors have never worked since they trained nearly two years ago. They say education is “a closed shop” with a few lay inspectors monopolising all the work.
Under the new system run by the Office for Standards in Education (OSE), independent contractors tender for school inspection contracts.

The Government insisted that each team should have a lay inspector to provide a non-professional view.The survey found that nearly 80 per cent of inspections were done by local authority teams who picked their own lay inspectors.Colin Burgess, the association’s secretary, said last night: “The independent system of inspections is eroded and unless there is a quick change about 75 per cent of all authorised lay inspectors will leave the system by the end of the year.”Questionnaires were circulated to all lay inspectors and nearly 500 replied. One respondent said: “Inspector cliques have been formed from old pals’ networks which outsiders cannot penetrate. Originally, I thought the inclusion of a lay inspector in a team was a good idea. In practice, it has been exposed as tokenism.”Some of the lay inspectors had done 30 inspections, meaning they were employed virtually full-time.Val Rush, the association’s chairman, who has not done any inspections since being trained, said: “This is almost full-time employment. The question is when do you stop being a lay inspector and become a professional?”Others have received no work despite writing dozens of letters of application. “I feel there is no point in continuing unless there is a system I do not know about for gaining inspection work,” said one.The inspectors complained about the amount of paperwork. They calculated that payment was just 50p an hour, taking into account meetings, inspections and report-writing.A spokesman for the OSE said: “It would worry us if 75 per cent of lay inspectors decided to remove themselves from the lists.