I'd agree there's no set age to do a PhD. One of my fellow students was retired. However, as you are likely to have to self-fund given how little research funding there is for humanities research (and even less for international students), it's a personal calculation about whether it is a good idea or not. There are not many humanities academic jobs available and a very large number of PhDs chasing them, so you should be very realistic about what aded value in employment terms it offers (i.e. not much).
On jobs without a PhD, have a look at jobs.ac.uk to get a sense of what is out there and what the requirements are - I think you'd struggle in either field to be honest. Although not that many universities teach Italian, you could try to get a lettore post teaching Italian language as that only requires a Masters - I think this often gets organised through whatever the Italian equivalent of the British Council or Goethe Institut is but am not sure. Maybe the British Embassy / Council in Rome would be able to tell you if there's any sort of centralised recruitment procedure.

If you're studying in the UK, then each module will have a moderator and an external examiner to check the standard of the marking is correct before work is given back to students. You also can't change marks after they have been returned. If you can prove that procedures have not been followed, then complain to the head of department. But if your mark has been confirmed as correct by two other people, then whether or not you have had an argument with the lecturer, you can't really accuse her of bias. I would suggest asking for a different dissertation supervisor though as whatever has happened it doesn't sound like that is going to be a productive relationship.

Increasingly it's compulsory to have more than one supervisor - it's considered good practice for quite a few reasons. If your main supervisor leaves the university, falls ill or you fall out with him/her then at least there's someone else familiar with your work. It's part of the deal and meant to protect the student so no need to feel irritated about it.

Emily, I think it depends on the subject (sciences seem more forgiving than the arts and social sciences) how high-ranking a university you are thinking of and where the two other degrees are from. If you have relevant work experience, that might also count in your favour. I would suggest just emailing the admissions team to ask, whether you would be considered (particularly if it's one of those high-ranked universities which charge an application fee).

I wonder if this is in part due to you having expected the PhD to be a continuation of a student experience and feeling disappointed that it's not? I don't know anyone really who still felt like a student - perhaps a better analogy would be an apprenticeship where you're a traineee member of staff? Most people I knew who had a collaborative sponsor (which it sounds like your second supervisor is from your OP) were expected to keep standard office hours and conform to the usual professional expectations of that firm / centre in terms of dress etc. They were simply expected to fit in - now if everyone else who works for this centre is allowed to work when and where they please , then you have a point to argue, but if not, I suspect that's something you just have to accept. On your first supervisor - yes academics are obsessed with publications, because that's what their employers expect as a basis for continuing employment. S/he will be trying to get publications out of your work for both of your sakes - not least so you have a chance of post-PhD employment. I wonder whether you had ideas of academia that didn't fit reality and so what's making you so unhappy is a kind of culture shock? If so, maybe the best thing to do is work out whether getting a PhD is worth working in an environment that makes you unhappy? But remember that some of the things that you are unhappy about are also standard features of a professional workplace - targets, rules, inflexible management etc are marks of a lot of graduate jobs.

Honestly, given the scarcity of funding for Politics PhDs I think this is unlikely to work. It would I think be seen as a bit dodgy - you know denying someone funding who hasn't got a Politics PhD already to give it to you, would I think be quite hard for a selection panel to justify. If you really wanted to do another PhD, I'd suggest a change of subject - try a Business School. They're about the only ones with any money, there are far fewer applicants for research degrees or jobs than in Politics and actually if you look at them carefully, there are some people there doing stuff that many would see as applied Politics.
It's not clear from your OP whether you've actually been applying for academic jobs or just made the decision that you are not competitive for a Politics lectureship, which given how things are is understandable. If it's the latter, and you just like ersearch, have you thought about looking beyond the subject for RA work across the social sciences, broadly defined - if you did the ESRC-mandated methods training, there's quite a lot of transferable skills into another discipline. I have a friend happily ensconced on a five year grant in a Business School for example, know someone who went into rural development research and a third person who moved into public health. There's a growing number of scientists interested in working with trained social scientists on things like risk too. It just might be worth thinking beyond the subject categories on jobs.ac.uk...

Hi Andrew,
I know the University of the Highlands and islands does one. I have no idea of the quality but a friend is doing something on heritage with them through distance learning and has been quite impressed.

A lot of people take annual leave over Christmas and the New Year. I'd give it a few more days before jumping to conclusions that he's left the university. If he's got undergraduate teaching it's also a peak time of year for piles of marking.

Larrydavid - I just wanted to pass on a resource that a friend in history rated as a good sounding board on non-academic job ideas http://versatilephd.com/ And look abroad - everything I'm hearing at the moment suggests that there will be a big round of UK university redundancies in the next 12 months if u/g recruitment continues to collapse. And that will put even more highly qualified people on the market. It's a real mess.

http://www.postgraduateforum.com/thread-23251/ is this the same incident you were worried about in this thread? I can't imagine a scenario in the UK where an examiner would be appointed only to check the writing aspect of the thesis - what country is this in?

Alice - could I ask is your primary discipline development studies or are you in another discipline?
I have friends in development studies and know that in that field without having done extensive fieldwork, it is difficult to be taken seriously as an expert unless you've got particular in-demand skills e.g. in agriculture. This would have a negative impact on your ability to find academic or non-academic work at the end of the PhD. On the other hand I know political scientists who use African countries as case studies for elections analysis, frankly know very little about the countries they've used, but who are employed because of their expertise in quantitative methods & analysis - their primary expertise though is elections not Africa. How you position yourself here might make a difference, but you do need to think about the long-term implications of any decision.
I did longterm fieldwork spread across three countries - mixture of interviewing and archival work. It was much more all-consuming than I had expected (although that's probably as much about my personality as the fieldwork). I think it would have been impossible to have had a 'trailing' partner with me for all that time. What would s/he do while you were data-collecting for one thing? Could you plan it in terms of two separate stints and get him/her to come on holiday in the middle each time? How open is your partner to you pursuing a career in this - it is going to be a reoccuring issue...
Other things to ask yourself - is your PhD topic really viable without doing ethnographic research? Can you propose an alternative methodology that would produce data of the requisite standard? You'd need to be able to convince your supervisor that an alternative is viable.
Sorry - I don't know if this is at all helpful but I think you need to talk this through seriously with both your partner and your supervisor.

I'm guessing from your post that you're somewhere like Germany where PhD students are paid employees of the professor with the pluses and minuses that brings. In those settings I think you are always going to have some issues around hierarchy and especially so where the culture is that the professor is god-like and the employees the minions. If you are somewhere like that then you might need to look for a different system entirely that suits your needs better. But as Ian says I wouldn't jump yet even if you've decided this isn't where you'll get a PhD - just regard it as any other job with a tough boss, until you have better options.
On the positive side, you probably have more rights as an employee than a student - on the other hand exercising those rights is very tough. Is there any sort of advice centre at the university? If you're not from the country you are in, finding out what the cultural norms and laws are can be helpful to help you decide what is and what isn't acceptable.

This might be subject specific but in my subject, it would be unusual for a first year student to present at anything other than a postgrad specific conference, simply because at that stage you are lacking meaningful results and often are still struggling to come to grips with the state of the literature. I have seen enough embarassingly bad presentations by early stage PhD students now to understand why this is the case. Better to mess up in front of your peers than in front of people you need to impress...
The end of year proposal (or 9 months in our case) is also not a formality in my experience, but something that gets you kicked out if it's not good enough. It is really not something to mess around with. Is it possible that your supervisor has a point about your priorities and that this is something you just have to learn from? It sounds like your choice is simple though - if you want to continue a funded PhD then you have to put the necessary work in on the proposal, if you're not prepared to do that then you can just walk away but I doubt you'll find any advisor willing to let you skimp on the formal PhD proposal process.

Hi Grant,
I think the problem with PGCEs is that Mr Gove has made it clear that he doesn't want people with weaker degrees becoming teachers and so the providers often have an auto-filter. You might get some good advice on the Times Educational Supplement forum on which universities and colleges might be more open to someone like you, then you could make very targeted applications. Given he also doesn't seem to think universities should train teachers and resources are shifting to school-based training, though is it worth asking the schools you're working in whether they envisage getting involved (or know people at the schools who are)? It strikes me that a strong reference for one of your current employers to a school-based trainer where they are known, might make sure that someone takes a closer look at your application. You could also ask on TES whether a Masters degree would help (only do this if you get pretty strong assurances it will, and you're sure that whatever problem caused you to underperform at u/g has disappeared).

I think it would depend if you are doing a mainly quantitative study or not. If you are are mainly number crunching then I think you could get away with it. If it's qualitative, it will be a problem as translation costs are prohibitively high for most students. I know people who have got away with it by insisting their interviewees spoke English but then it's dubious how much you really get about what matters, and your available literature reduces substantially. I also think a four country case study approach is too many countries, so if you speak the languages of the others, why not just drop Hungary? Also although this is obvious, think through what research methods you could make a viable claim to use - obviously you couldn't do discourse analysis or ethnography if you don't have the language skills for example, but there are others.