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Ferrante della Marra

Claudio Velardi was appointed as "tourism tsar" by the Regione Campania (the region's local government, with Naples capital) to promote the tourism in the province of Naples after the image of Naples was "damaged" by the Garbage Crisis affair (a crisis which is far to be over) and by the images of a "dirty Naples" that have been spreading through worldwide news networks.

As soon as he got in charge, this man had a brilliant idea. He went to the International Tourism Bourse of Berlin (one of the most important tourism fairs in Europe) along with an indisputable proof that Naples was now a clean city again. Like nothing happened. The indisputable proof consisted of a video of "a German tourist that arrives in Naples and finds a clean and welcoming city". But let's have a look to the video, which was proudly introduced by Velardi (in his blog) as an amateur video, filmed by the German tourist herself:

Perhaps authorities in Naples who commisioned this film (most likely with Italian public money) must think that Germans are morons.

Because only a very dumb person would not find this video fishy as a four weeks old dead fish. The entire video is filmed with at least two cameras, the presence of a second cameraman is obvious and the overall quality of the photography does not look like amateur. The audio is too good and suggests the presence of a good mic or professional post editing. The subtitles are obviously phoney and so are the ridicolous balloons. All the scenes are staged. And even the editing is pointless for an amateur video.

Last but not the least, the video was originally posted on youtube by "Videocomunicazioni", a news agency to which Velardi is tied. These facts were widely exposed by Italian media and Velardi himself had to admit the fake nature of the video. In case you were wondering if he resigned after all this, the answer is obviously no. Politicians never resign in Italy. Bassolino did not resign either, after over a decade of bad administration of the city. And so did not Rosa Russo Iervolino, the city's mayor.

In conclusion, this video stinks more than the piles of garbage that still flood the streets of Naples (as every neapolitan will confirm you)*.

Germans, if you still want to come to Naples, then you are really really dumb and you deserve to be cheated and treated like this.

* The only true thing about this video is that Ischia (and Capri or Procida as well) wasn't hit by the trash crisis and it's still a pretty clean place. Napoli is not of course. But this was the most foolish, offensive, shameless and disrespectful way (for both Germans and Neapolitans) to show that.