The holiday bonus mirage: announcement effect, but useless or unattainable
We are happy to receive and publish this intervention by Stefania Martani
A swarm of fire flies has been covering my skin since June and there is no escape. I am in an attic – this is where I burn my days and my nights – no relief from the air conditioner and at each step the temperature rises as I trudge, almost as if I walked towards Golgotha, towards the cross of this Lungara, this prison house scorched by the relentless heat of a Roman summer. After the lockdown , after months of online teaching that you have to try to understand its weight, find yourself in a petrified land of hot tar that every night exhales merciless flashes, which does not grant a gust of relief even when the sky is tinged with pink. This is a sun that wakes up armed with a hatchet and as soon as you open your eyes it is already furnace. Where did the comforting and refreshing freshness of the dawn of a few years ago go? It seems that hell has opened its chasms or to dwell in the engine room of the Titanic (with a lot of nostalgia for the iceberg).
I decide that I can not take it anymore, I will be a last-minute tourist, I want a dip in the blue in this extreme remnant of summer, I could not afford it with my salary as a single-income teacher with a child and a dependent rent but, surprise surprise, I still have the 150 euro bonus that the shrewd Conte government has paid to relaunch a sector massacred by Covid , or rather its daring policies. I cling to the faithful old tablet and start looking at the list of places that accept the voucher . Of course, with 150 euros I will be able to afford a weekend at most, we are still in August, albeit running out. So I should stay in the area, the Lazio coast, at least the first few kilometers north or south of that bell or Tyrrhenian coast. In Tuscany up to Orbetello there is nothing, but here, I find a bed and breakfast in the pleasant village of Argentario. Not at all, nothing, all taken until 12 September. Ok, down with the aim south of Rome, I find a solution in Circeo, one in Sabaudia and three or four in Terracina. At Circeo they stop me immediately, they accept the bonus starting from September and for a minimum of seven nights. Cost of the week for two people (will my son want to come?) Over 900. Thanks I'll think about it and instead I've already thought about it and attack: out one. Okay, let's go further south: Terracina no, private reasons, then Gaeta. Same story, the place is there but the bonus is valid if I book for at least seven nights, at the not modest price of 570 euros for a weekend: and what can I ask for for a whole week?
But now I have been invaded by the demon of doubt and the taste for challenge, I want to have two days of sea, lake, hill, in short, something, anything before finding myself behind the chair of an asphyxiated classroom gasping "lupus wolves ” under the mask. Three, four, five more phone calls to always bump into one and only one answer: the bonus is activated from September or is valid for at least 7 nights, at least it can be used for a percentage of the rate: a good chunk, 80 for one hundred; pity only the hotel is full and, you can understand, it prefers to reserve its rooms for tourists with longer stays and heavier wallets. Yes, some place that accepts the bonus for what it is, without reservations and without traps, can be found, but, as it happens, always in places that to define sad and desolate is a pitiful euphemism. What's the point of getting angry? For this sector, as for many, for those who have not drowned in the whirlwinds of an alarmism on whose justification some doubts begin to arise, summer tourism is a breath of vital air after so many months of apnea. And then, to be honest, this bonus is not collected immediately, it will be valid as a tax deduction in the near but bleak future, given that not even the asymptomancy of the elderly in the RSA is able to buffer the collective hysteria fueled (artfully?) By the mainstream .
In short, it is forbidden to reason and also forbidden to escape for 48 hours from this red-hot air where incendiary flies buzz. I understand, I understand, but I am perplexed: at the end of this holiday bonus, this bonus malus, what do I do with it?
The post The mirage of the holiday bonus: announcement effect, but useless or unattainable appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-miraggio-del-bonus-vacanze-effetto-annuncio-ma-inservibile-o-irraggiungibile/ on Tue, 01 Sep 2020 04:02:00 +0000.