Oh, baby – I just love page 5 of The Sunday Times
I'm going to punish the world for having been born with a face like a pig's bottom.
If there’s one God almighty hypocrite in this country it’s Saviour Balzan, crusading like Savonarola against people who milk the system while milking it more than anyone I know of.
Lou Bondi once described him as a Richard Cachia Caruana wannabe with a third-rate brain. This was when he was backing John Dalli for the party leadership, in the hope that he would reach his apex of glory as the prime minister’s personal assistant.
What can I say? Thank heavens that didn’t happen.
But for the past five years Saviour Balzan has been unable to come to terms with the loss of something that was never his, the prize that was snatched from his grasp. And let’s face it: if the man didn’t really have a third-rate brain, he would have known that his chances were zilch.
Now readers of Malta Today open their newspaper to find Saviour grinding that same old axe of personal vendetta, Sunday after Sunday, emptying his bowels over Lawrence Gonzi and Richard Cachia Caruana. Nothing and nobody else exists.
The man has a serious problem, one which is verging on pathological obsession. It is undermining the credibility of his newspaper – well, whatever credibility it had to start off with, that is, given that it is stuffed full of bitter people with chips on their shoulders and grudges in those nests they call their hair.
The only time that Saviour Balzan was halfway tolerable and normal was when he found himself a girlfriend a couple of weeks after his wife died. Now that she’s dumped him, we’re back to square one.
But meanwhile, read all about how Saviour Balzan is milking the system, and how public funds are keeping the limping Malta Today afloat. You have to hand it to this ghastly ‘man’: he’s found a way to get the government to bankroll a newspaper which is used exclusively to criticise the prime minister.
Find this man a girlfriend, somebody – though I admit it will probably have to be a blind one with no sense of humour.
The Sunday Times, 28th June 2009
Mediatoday’s 10-minute TV programme receives €88k in one year from public funds
Mediatoday’s 10-minute weekday TV programme Reporter received €88,000 from the government’s Public Service Obligation (PSO) fund in just one financial year, The Sunday Times has learnt.
The programme, aired on PBS five days a week, is presented by Mediatoday co-owner and Malta Today editor Saviour Balzan.
According to a report covering October 2007 to September 2008, Reporter was handed 68 per cent of PBS’s €130,000 PSO allocation for current affairs and discussion programmes.
The Culture Ministry decides which programmes should qualify for the contribution, following a list submitted by PBS.
According to sources, the Reporter programmes for a given week are filmed together in one session and weekly production costs, described as “low level and studio-based”, do not exceed €800.
Reporter has continued to be aired and, although the accounts for the 2008 to 2009 financial year are not yet available, it is understood that the programme still receives substantial funding derived from the PSO.
Mediatoday has also applied to air Reporter on next season’s PBS television schedule as well as applying for an additional weekly programme.
The PSO fund, which totals €1.1 million, is provided by the government to ensure that programmes with a cultural, educational or social orientation are broadcast even though they do not necessarily justify their cost through advertising revenue. For the 2007-2008 season, the education programme Tikka fuq Kollox followed Reporter with nearly €80,000 from the PSO, while children’s programme Tini5, which receives some €78,000, was the third highest recipient of funds.
Tgħanniqa received over €59,000 and Eileen Montesin’s Dejjem Tiegħek Becky received over €26,000. Where’s Everybody’s Bondiplus received €22,000.
Nearly €300,000 is allocated to children’s programmes and over €318,000 to educational and cultural programmes. There are also a number of programmes which receive direct funding from PBS.
Last February, the European Commission and Birdlife Malta had confirmed to The Sunday Times that Mr Balzan is also an associate beneficiary of more than €157,000 in funds granted by the EU for the EU Life and Information Project on Bird Migration and Trapping.
The hunters’ federation had accused Mr Balzan of being the man who dealt with the EU on its behalf before membership and was now campaigning against it, while pocketing EU funds.
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“Now readers of Malta Today open their newspaper to find Saviour grinding that same old axe of personal vendetta.”
Some people seem to believe that freedom of expression is about slandering people without having the facts to back up their allegations.
“Reporter received €88,000 from the government’s Public Service Obligation (PSO) fund”.
There would be nothing wrong in this, were it not that the programme is bland, not at all probing, and nothing more than a dozen superficial questions posed by an interviewer with a verbal communication problem – not that his writing skills are that better.
So, Reporter receives 68% from allocated funds to current affairs programmes, for his ten minute daily programme. And the people at PBS newsroom are always complaining that they cannot finance a proper current affairs weekly programme due to lack of funds. Culture Ministry please note
Please note that some years ago he had a list of Maltese Freemasons.He never divulged anything about what was agreed with these gentlemen, but his paper was inundated with adverts after his silence about the list.
“I’M GOING TO PUNISH THE WORLD FOR HAVING BEEN BORN WITH A FACE LIKE A PIG’S BOTTOM.”
I take it you don’t like the guy.
[Daphne – No, but it’s not because he has a face like a pig’s bottom. Ugly I can handle, but ugly, mean, hypocritical and envious I can’t.]
He reminds me oh-so-very-much of a teacher I had at St Dorothy’s junior school over three decades ago, who saw fit to call me “Mari’ tal-Bajd” in a derogatory way – not because of my typical Maltese appearance, but because of grudges she most certainly bore, it being the mid-1970s.
She obliged us to call her ‘Madam Balzan’, while all the other teachers made do with Miss or Mrs.
That’s one positive aspect of Salvu Balzam – the reminder that Malta’s High Representative in Brussels exists. For let’s face it, RCC acts like those shady top civil servants at the Commission – never a word to the public. Yet he is our democratic link to the EU Council. We are represented directly at the European Parliament with 5 votes (soon to be 6), but indirectly in the EU Council, which shares co-decision powers with the EP over the same drafts introduced by the Commission. RCC represents the government, of course, but being in the thick of things when it comes to COREPER, the Council’s EU law-making mechanism, the 3 Maltese votes are in his hands. Yet never a word. Not even one in 10 thousand knows what RCC really does in Brussels.
[Daphne – Public servants and diplomats don’t speak to the public, Kevin. They speak to their political bosses, and they must have permission from those political bosses to speak to the public or the press. I would have thought you knew that.]
Public servants DO get interviewed by the media and they don’t necessarily need permission. It’s not like they’re on a leash. As any other top public servant he should be more media friendly, even more in his case since he’s representing our government at EU level in the adoption of EU legislation.
[Daphne – You’re wrong there, Kevin. There’s something called the Estacode. The conditions of employment of public servants prevent them from speaking to the press or giving out information without the express permission of their superior, who would in turn have to obtain permission from his/her superior, and so on. This is not such an unusual concept: employees of private companies also need the boss’s permission to speak to the press. Whenever you see a public servant interviewed – including the one you mention by name – it’s because permission has been sought and obtained. It might even be that instruction has been given, rather than permission sought.]
What does RCC do?
[Daphne – http://europa.eu/whoiswho/public/index.cfm?fuseaction=idea.hierarchy&nodeID=172686&personID=91980&lang=en ]
This mini programme is hardly the equivalent of the BBC’s Hardtalk. It is often just a platform for some people to air their position or views. True, sometimes the guests are cornered or have moderately embarrassing questions thrown at them in a benign way.There is hardly a studio set, probably just an unlit cyclorama, no outside filming, no editing, hardly a script. Outside filming and editing are very, very costly and time consuming.
No…just a ten minute studio exercise. Very often in such programmes the guests do not even get paid for being interviewed. According to my calculations – if Reporter was on for three schedules during 2007 – 2008, then Balzan must have aired approximately 195 ten-minuters with each costing approximately 451 euros.
I sometimes do TV production myself but I just cannot work out how that amount could be a reasonable sum. Oh, and is he going to grace our TV screens again for the upcoming three schedules? Probably the cost has gone up.
Saviour Balzan had no problem working with Richard Cachia Caruana during the EU negotiations and afterwards. Perhaps it was because he was being paid handsomely as a ‘consultant’ on hunting and environmental matters. He started getting sour with government when his consultancy was stopped.
“Lou Bondi once described him as a Richard Cachia Caruana wannabe with a third-rate brain.”
Didn’t Balzan file a libel suit against Bondi for this, or was it just a threat? Would have loved to be in the courtroom if it did go that far.
[Daphne – No libel suit as far as I know: but like you, I would have loved to be there as discussions took place on whether Saviour Balzan’s brain is first, second or third rate.]
The beauty of Google – one of three libel cases filed by Saviour Balzan against Lou Bondi – di-ve news item from August 2004. Your old friend Toni Abela signed all three libels. Not sure about the outcome. Apparently, the best way to rate a brain is to donate the brain to medical science; so Saviour might have pulled out of that one.
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:r9JPc_679ugJ:www.di-ve.com/Default.aspx%3FID%3D47%26M%3D%26Action%3D1%26NewsId%3D38717%26currentPage%3D54+lou+bondi+libel+third+rate+brain&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
[Daphne – Thanks for the laugh. Imagine suing somebody for saying that you have a third-rate brain. “No, ta, my brain is not third rate!” This is the bit I liked best, though: Saviour Balzan sued Lou Bondi for calling him a lair http://www.elook.org/dictionary/lair.html in a published letter called….LAIR.]
Ha ha. Saviour Balzan would be on a winner there.
It would be interesting to know if Saviour Balzan is only acting as a presenter and hence getting paid for that specific job. If he is not the producer, if would be of even greater interest to know who the producer is?
I think that ILLUM and MALTA TODAY are only sensationalist papers. The 28th June editions’ posters were void of any mention of the Valletta projects.