While that lazy fraud Evarist Bartolo kills time impressing switchers with what they want to hear
The news on Times of Malta’s front page this morning is that nine independent schools – including the one which Michelle Muscat has dominated because her children happen to be pupils there – are owed 600,000 euros between them in salaries for their learning support assistants.
They are having to find the money themselves as otherwise these people would go unpaid.
Meanwhile, that lazy fraud Evarist Bartolo gases about wasting time, telling idiotic people of my sort of background what they want to hear, using their language (learned through his wife and her associates) so that they will toddle off thinking how very much on their wavelength he is. Yes, right – a lousy, bitter communist with a chip on his shoulder so big it has left him crippled and unable to drive. Thank God for government chauffeurs to give the rest of his circle a break from a man too mean to spend on a taxi.
That other fraud Michelle Muscat (though I won’t call her lazy, given how hard she works at grabbing whatever she can and pushing herself and her exploited children into the limelight) has waved her magic wand to find a million euros to spend on turning Bill Francia’s old Lija home into her version of the Petit Trianon – when it was already completely restored around five years ago (I know this for a fact because I had run a magazine feature on the craftsmen working on the project).
Meanwhile her husband’s government has not found the money to honour its agreement on paying the learning support assistants at San Anton School, where she throws her weight around like the arriviste she is. Instead, she invites the headmaster to a state reception for a visiting dignitary and hopes that will shut him up about the money.
Before the last general election, somebody I knew who has a disabled son took serious issue with me, in the most aggressive manner, because I wrote a post saying that Joseph Muscat doesn’t give the slightest damn about disabled children and all he wants is their parents’ votes.
You would think, by this man’s reaction, that I had boiled Mother Theresa in oil and served her for supper. It is astonishing how people only see what they want to see and how they will ignore the bald facts that are staring them in the face if those facts conflict with their hopes, beliefs and desires. We will do anything to avoid dealing with harsh reality and the realisation that our judgement is or was impaired.
In any case, here you have the evidence of just how concerned Joseph Muscat, Evarist Bartolo and their government are about the fate of disabled children: they agree to pay learning support assistants and then they renege on that agreement and use the money instead to pay people like Lara Boffa, William Mangion, Lindsey Gambin, Marisa Schembri (my God), Cyrus Engerer, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s estranged wife, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando himself, Nikita Zammit Alamango of Nisa Laburisti, Silvio Scerri, Franco Debono with his car and chauffeur, Ramona Frendo with her sinecure at the Lotteries and Gaming Authority, and a whole shedload of other bums, cronies and freeloaders.
For shame.
And while we are on the subject – exactly what happened to Muscat’s pledge to Philip Rizzo (as I recall) to build a residential care home in every town and village in Malta for disabled children and adults whose parents are not around or who can’t take care of them?
It is sad to the point of tragic that so many people believed passionately in a rubbish promise like that. The astonishing thing is that while they were all over the place praising him for it before the general election, they are now nowhere to be seen holding him to it.
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LSAs aren’t only for disabled children, they are for anyone with a statemented learning difficulty such as dyslexia or dispraxia.
[Daphne – By definition, that’s a disability. If they were not disabled in that respect, they would obviously not need a learning support assistant.]
I’m sure a dyslexic child would be delighted to be called disabled. The term is most usually used to refer to a physical disability, not a slight learning difficulty.
[Daphne – You are completely wrong, and your upset is indicative of what is perhaps a personal prejudice against the physically handicapped. Disabled people are by definition all those whose abilities are less than the functional standard, however that happens or whatever form it takes. When my right arm was in plaster for two months I was temporarily disabled, as a result of which I couldn’t perform certain standard tasks like driving or writing. I had absolutely no problem saying so. People who are not disabled do not require extraordinary dedicated assistance.]
Philip Rizzo did not need to wait for Muscat to build a residential home for his daughter as he has the money to keep her in a private home if he really cared/ cares for her.
He never did much for her over the years – she was raised by her mother while he lived elsewhere with somebody else – and he appeared on the scene before the elections just to hit out at the PN.
Wasn’t Tony Zammit Cutajar also campaigning for a residential home for the disabled in every village?
Yes I was P.Shaw (if that is your name or are you one of many who do not have the guts to use your real name) and I am very pleased to learn that 10 residences will be built over the next 3 years. So you and Ms Caruana Galizia will slowly but surely start to eat your words. As I do not read this blog, I am grateful to one of my friends ( I still have a few) for letting me know that I had featured. Hence my comment 10 days after the fact.
[Daphne – If you think the 10 residential homes which have yet, like the power station, to materialise are well worth the price the entire country is now having to pay, then so be it. You will, I assume, forgive those who have made an entirely different cost-benefit analysis, and this includes individuals who are concerned about disabled family members too, and do not think it a brilliant move to set fire to the economy, bring in the extremes of cronyism and corruption, and erode Malta’s credibility just so that their children have somewhere to live when they die.
They set about making that provision themselves, especially if they are blessed with the financial wherewithal to do so, like you and Philip Rizzo are. At least you, unlike Philip, have my utmost respect for having raised your child and cared for him with tenderness and dedication, instead of abandoning him to the sole care of his mother and going off to live elsewhere. I admire you greatly for the love you have given him.
But what you are saying here is that the future of everybody else’s children can go to hell in a handcart as long as the future of your child is sorted. Most of us would never say such a thing but apparently it is allowed if your child is disabled. Then selfishness, lack of regard for the big picture and tunnel vision are, apparently, acceptable.
I will most definitely not eat my words. On the contrary, every passing day of this government proves me right and you, a generation my senior and presumably more experienced in life, hopelessly wrong in political judgement and, more crucially, assessment of personalities. I do not want government ministers’ drivers shooting at people in the street just so Tony Zammit Cutajar’s son has somewhere to live. That’s your responsibility as a parent, not the rest of the country’s.]
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-11-11/blogs-opinions/Send-in-the-clowns-6736125407
A good article on the civil service.
A politicised civil service undermines the motivation, confidence and trust of hardworking civil servants thus resulting in poorer service to the public.
There is a lot of talk about reducing bureaucracy. The real issue is not bureaucracy but how to maximise the output of human resources in the civil service to provide a better and quicker service.
Management and administrative systems are only as good as the people who run them.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-09-20/news/21-million-investment-toward-ta-giorni-libyan-campus-2666201088/
This surely was linked to the passports. They knew very well they were coming here in their thousands well in advance.
No wonder our school fees are going up.
I can tell you how San Anton will solve the problem – they will just charge the parents higher fees for their children’s tuition. That is the standard way they deal with costs.
I wonder if the prime children’s fees are the same as the rest, and I would bet my hat that if they are charged, they are paid by the state.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141111/local/learning-support-assistants-wage-crisis-for-schools.543534
You forgot Lou Bondi
Not only have the O level, Intermediate and A level exams gone up, but the LSA courses have too. The 20-week course for supply LSAs has gone up from 200 euros last year to 350 euros this year.
In the long run this will cost the government way more.
If the parents were to pull their children out of private schools and send them to a state school, the LSAs will still need to be provided and the government will have the added cost of the individual pupil too.
But when one is short sighted the full implications are never seen.
I can’t believe how ignorant the people who post comments in favour of this ‘moviment gdid’ are. The comments on timesofmalta.com are enough to make you cringe.
How this country is going to take ten years of this is beyond my imagination.
Please God, deliver us from this evil.
People who have a disability are being side-lined for the likes of Mangion, Alamango, Gambin, Sai Laing, their band of merry men, women, transgender lot.
We have come to a point where being a gay man or transgender gets more attention and funding than being disabled.
Disabled people, due to their nature, cannot have a party on St George’s Square or carcade to appease the stupid media-seeking government, if they pass legislation to give them a stronger voice.
Incidentally, were are the NGOs and KNPD statements voicing their disgust on this? Kulhadd diletant f’ dal-pajjiz.
[Daphne – Oh, I don’t think it’s at all about the party or the carcade. It’s a matter of image and branding. Joseph Muscat does not want to brand himself by association with ‘unsexy’ disabled people. He wants to brand himself with what he believes are ‘sexy’ gay men. That’s about the sum of it.]
All independent schools do that unfortunately. I now understand why the school my daughter attended tried to delay the appointment of an LSA for such a long time.