Claudette on deprivation
Claudette Abela Baldacchino, yet another Super One employee who, having observed the stellar career of Joseph Muscat, wants a seat in the European Parliament, has had an article published in The Malta Independent today which speaks about deprivation.
This sudden preponderance of articles by Mrs Abela Baldacchino in the English-language press is part of her MEP campaign, of course. But that’s by the by: if Labour is going to insist on sending Super One journalists to represent its interests in the European Parliament, then it might as well be a woman. It’s a little tedious that our five MEPs are men, sitting there discussing abortion and divorce and social issues as though the women back home are all in burqas. But I was struck by the lack of insight in this paragraph of hers.
It is hard to say and hard to swallow, but it is very true that a new tier of families is emerging; that of socially excluded and deprived families. When talking about inflation and the cost of living, there will be those who label you as the old guard, grumbling and moaning.
The truth is that at this point in Malta’s history, the number of “socially excluded and deprived families” is at the lowest level ever. It is precisely because there are so few of them that they stand out as the disturbing exception.
When I was growing up in the 1970s, deprivation was the norm. Yet because 95% of the population were deprived, 3% of the population were not, and a mere 2% were privileged, everyone took deprivation for granted, including the 95% who were deprived. The figure was so high because even families with a reasonable income had no access to ordinary comforts and consumer goods, and I’m not going to delve once more into the reasons why.
Before the widespread deprivation brought about by Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici’s creative approach to a protectionist economy, we had deprivation of a different sort: the deprivation that people endured purely as a result of post-war Europe being decades behind the USA in making consumer and household comforts cheap and accessible to the average family. Europe was way, way behind the US in terms of car and home ownership, bathrooms and showers, kitchens, televisions and air-conditioners (already widely installed in American homes in the 1950s) and much more.
Things only started to get comfortable for ordinary people in Europe in the 1970s, but of course, we were cut out of that loop for 16 years, which kind of left us lagging behind. We only caught up in the comfort stakes post-1987, just as the eastern bloc began to catch up post-1989.
If Mrs Abela Baldacchino thinks there is deprivation now, she should have been around while I was growing up and making the (to me) amazing discovery that some of the girls at my convent school didn’t have a television at home, had not a single pair of jeans, had never been to a restaurant, did not receive pocket money, were told that Jackie magazine was a willful extravagance, and brought their sandwiches to school wrapped in paper torn from a Golden Harvest loaf-wrapper, because using foil or a bought plastic-bag was a waste of money. As for those sandwiches, they contained a lick of margarine and nothing else. I remember returning home one day aged about 12 and telling my mother that some of the girls at school had something on their bread that looked like butter but smelt different. “It’s margarine,” she said. “Their mothers buy it because it’s one cent cheaper than butter, but it doesn’t taste as good and it’s not healthy.”
That’s deprivation, Mrs Abela Baldacchino. And these were girls at a private school. The situation in state schools was much, much worse.
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In any case, a seat in the European Parliament is hardly the most obvious expression of solidarity with the deprived …
It is true that the standard of living of the typical Maltese citizen has improved over the years.
However, recent NSO statistics state that 1 in every 5 Maltese children are living below the poverty line, whereas 14.9% of the Maltese population is poor.
These statistics should not be ignored.
[Daphne – Define poverty, then we’ll speak.]
DCG – I am 9 years older than you and cannot really recall material deprivation in the seventies. A Fiat 128 was about the equivalent of 3 years’ clerk’s salary. Of course today cars are cheaper but that has been a world wide trend. I also cannot recall women begging in the streets. As for your experience in school, I went to a state school (affectionately known as ‘iz-zoo’)and remember rushing to the canteen because of the long queues there. Of course today’s youth have more to contend with ( ipods and game boxes come to mind) and would possibly consider themselves deprived if they don’t have them. Some sections of the population will always be deprived, whatever our relative wealth compared to other countries, but this is a natural state of affairs. Some people simply cannot catch up with the rest and they fall behind.
[Daphne – Be serious, Mario. The fact that you didn’t FEEL deprived doesn’t mean you WERE NOT deprived. I imagine that all those kids running around the streets in Bombay don’t feel deprived, either. We feel deprived only by comparing ourselves to others who have more, and that is exactly my point: though there was wholesale deprivation in the 1970s and early 1980s, we barely understood it, because 95% of the population was in the same boat. I understood the meaning of deprivation on my first trip overseas when I was about 11. I felt like Alice, passing through the looking-glass. All those things, all that wonderful variety, all that colour and life…going back to Malta was like returning to a black-and-white post-war movie with its drab, communist shops. People begging in the streets are not an example of deprivation, but of destitution, which is different.]
@ Anna Abela I would doubt the NSO stats. regarding people living below the poverty line as our national hobby is evading taxes.
@ Daphne: In economic stats. poverty is obviously relative. It is usually defined in economic(monetary) terms as having an income below half the average income of that country. I would assume the NSO weren’t talking about absolute poverty (a la’ Africa).
So, 15% of the Maltese population is keeping body and soul together on stale crusts.
Goes to show how little I’ve seen of my country. Got to pass by those favelas and starving peasants some day.
And another thing….
What’s the point in having truck loads of money, and then having the education and mentality of a farmer? A big percentage of the people I see in Merc’s and Beemers is usually some bloody building contractor with a walnut brain, u xi choker minghand Louis (not Vuitton) Jewellers tal’Marsa. You know the type!
[Daphne – I had a choker from Louis once. I really liked it. Then I sold it to buy something else.]
So the parents could afford the school fees but not the butter and ham on the bread. Maybe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs needs updating.
And the Golden Harvest loaf-wrapper is still much better than plastic to keep your bread fresh, Daphne.
[Daphne – Yes, I’m sure that’s why they used it. Church school fees were a pittance. It was only Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici who created the myth that they were unaffordable to the masses. The masses weren’t even interested in sending their children to a church school, until KMB suggested they could get something for nothing. Believe me, St Dorothy’s in the late 1970s was hardly socio-economic group AB. There were girls who were with me for five years whom I haven’t seen even once since 1980. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ranks filling your stomach. It doesn’t go into what with. Maltese people have traditionally placed food quality and quantity right down on the list of needs. Even now, we pay far less attention to what we eat than to what we spend on our houses. We eat crap and spend what we save on food on balavostri instead.]
Dear Daphne,
the girls at your convent school who did not own a pair of jeans, never went to a restaurant and did not have a television at home should still consider themselves lucky because at least they went to a decent school. I had jeans to wear, I always remember a television set at home, went to restaurants and received a bit of pocket money, but I would have changed places with these girls as I went to a state school and the conditions there, both social and academic were frightening. Many of the teachers did not give a hoot about the students. I am a year older than you, my secondary education ended in 1979. I still feel uncomfortable when I have to walk near my old school.
[Daphne – I know what you mean because I have a friend who is five years younger who told me about her experiences in a state school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But please don’t run away with the idea that all church schools were ‘decent’. They weren’t. St Dorothy’s Convent in Mdina in those days gave new meaning to the description Dickensian. I studied chemistry, biology and physics for three years and took O-levels in those subjects without once setting foot in a laboratory because there wasn’t one. Our experiments were all done on paper: when you add this chemical to that one you get this effect, and the teacher describes it so that we can imagine it. There wasn’t a library, much of the teaching was beyond terrible, it was so icy in winter that we wore five jumpers and three pairs of socks, and even fingerless gloves and scarves in class. There were no sports or gym facilities, and we had to take recreation in turns because the tiny Mdina palace courtyard couldn’t take 400 girls at once – obviously. There wasn’t even room to walk, let alone run. Please don’t look at me and assume that I am the product of St Dorothy’s Convent, because I am definitely not. Everything I know I learned entirely on my own, or with the help of teachers from outside the school to whom I went for lessons after school. My salvation was the fact that I read voraciously and had the memory of an elephant. School actually hindered my educational development because it instilled in me a hatred of certain subjects that grew into a mental block, thanks to the inadequate teaching, and I also developed a lifelong intolerance of cold, of being cooped up, of being told what to do, and of anything that even remotely resembles a classroom. To this day I can’t even look at the colour royal blue and will not have it in the house. And like you, I shudder when I walk past my old school building. I look at the new St Dorothy’s school in Haz-Zebbug, which is like a palace compound, and think of how grotty our own building was by comparison, and how poor the education was. So don’t think you were worse off, really.]
You must be a building contractor then :) Do you drive a trakk tal-gebel to work then?
DCG – if you are considering deprivation in relation to what’s available in other countries, then we are all in a state of permanent deprivation. When I return to Malta I feel deprived of mountains, rivers and vast areas of untouched countryside. On the other hand, I started to appreciate my 20 minute drive to the office instead of hour long train journeys before and after work. Try doing that day after day – no wonder most commuters are asleep on the train after 8.00pm. Did I miss McDonalds/Pizza Hut/Burger King in the 70’s and 80’s? – yes and how, but I think that deprivation refers to deeper things such as freedom of association, to speak your mind without retribution. Having said that, there is no way that you can compare shops in Malta in the 70’s to those in communist states. I don’t think that we came to the stage where people were running about with plastic bags at the ready to buy whatever showed up in the shops.
[Daphne – “I don’t think that we came to the stage where people were running about with plastic bags at the ready to buy whatever showed up in the shops.” Shows how much you know, but then you are a man and so probably never had to do the shopping. Not only did women monitor the shops and keep their “plastic bags at the ready”, but they also panic-bought when they found the rare good item, like packets of rice that were not bulk-bought, or good jam when Mintoff did a deal with communist Bulgaria and allowed in a consignment of Bulgarian strawberry jam. Tell me about it: I was a housewife under Labour between 1985 and 1987, with a baby to boot. When I found something decent in the shops, I would call everyone I knew who might be interested, and they would rush down immediately – and these weren’t luxuries but basic items. I still remember my excitement at finding a tiny consignment of Keillor’s Dundee marmalade on the shelves at Tower Supermarket, and how I bought them to give as – get this – presents. Oh and I also clearly remember wondering, when I went to Budapest in 1985, what all the fuss was about deprivation under communism because things seemed pretty much what they were at home, except for all the people asking you whether you had foreign currency.]
@Darren Azzopardi – what’s wrong with being a farmer? These guys put in hours you wouldn’t even want to think about And if contractors have used their ‘walnut brain’ enough to purchase a merc or beemer, then good for them. Earning good money is not a direct function of academic prowess you know
@Daphne – you show that you never have been in a communist state. I was in Moscow in the 80’s – Chernenko era – and I can say tha shops in the main street – the one leading to the Kremlin – were grimy and empty of everything. The only shops that were well stocked were the book shops. THe GUM store near the kremlin – a sort of shopping mall – had lots of goodies but were priced sky high. Ah yes, almost forgot, I as a foreigner, could buy whatever I wanted as there were special shops where we could find western goods but you had to pay in foreign currency only.
[Daphne – Didn’t you just read what I wrote? I said that I was struck by how little ‘consumer’ differences there were between Budapest and Malta in 1985. Hungary was a communist state – learn your geo-politics. Moscow was the extreme, so don’t use that as the basis for comparison. Your memories of Maltese shopping experiences at that time may be a little rose-tinted. I remember them for what they were, an endlessly depressing foray in search of even something as simple as black tights would end in disappointment. All jeans were Spider. All sports shoes were Sanga. And all padded jackets were Red Devil. Sometimes, the owner of a boutique would take the Tirrennia to Syracuse, drive to Catania, fill up the boot at the market, bribe the customs officials on the way back, then put some cheap tat on the rails. And that’s about it. I became an expert seamstress.]
actually I didn’t read about the comparision with Budapest because it was not there in the first place- it was added just now. Anyway I get your point and hope you got mine
Mariop
I don’t know you but I assume you must be one hell of a joker.
I am 34 years old so I can’t really comment about the 70’s but I sure remember the 80’s!
You said we weren’t deprived? Did you ever go abroad during those terrible times? OK, let’s start, no chocolate, no decent clothes, no toothpaste, no tea (remember that horrible tower imitation?), no pasta, no decent shoes, no computers, nothing cordless, no jobs worth having …
I remember that my parents skimped and saved in order to take us abroad once a year! Then I would finally taste chocolate :) We also used to stock up with toothpaste and buy loads of chocolates to last as long as possible.
Do you remember Sicilians setting up stalls in anticipation where the tirrennia used to dock selling chocolates rubbing their hands shouting “arrivano i Maltesi” amused at how desperate we were for mars bars and toothpaste?
For heaven’s sake my Dad had to SMUGGLE in a small remote controlled car for me as even that was illegal!
That wasn’t the worst of it. During those terrible 80s my school (private not church) was closed down by that dumb imbecile so that I had to study underground and my parents used to warn me continuously not to say a word on politics outside the house because of the rampant political violence openly condoned by the baboons in government!
My God, even as a twelve year old I stayed up all night waiting for the results of the 87 elections, literally crying with relief to see the backs of those bastards who drove Malta into the ground!
Well well. Nice to see that some of you have woken up to the fact that Malta is a shithole. And to think that I believed all that crap about “nies inqas ixxurtjati minna” “wara l-Purtiera tal-Hadid.”
Just one little point. This is all manipulation of history. The definition of “deprivation” is not etched in stone. What is deprivation now was not necessarily depravation in the 60s or 70s. Take televisions. I grew up in a manual worker’s home. However, we had TV. I knew more well to do families who did not. As for them, having a TV in 1970 was not really important. Can one describe them as deprived? Today, of course, a Tv is as part of the household furniture as is the kitchen table. Can we consider the rich noble families of Malta, like the Sticklands, “deprived” because they did not have TV in the 30s? (And, yes, TV was already around back then)
Please stop comparing directly the situation now with what it was 30 to 40 years ago, when people’s aspirations were different. You are twisting history.
[Daphne – I’m not twisting history. I’m not interested in the 1960s, but in my own experience. Yes, we were deprived. And what’s more, people who had known better before 1971 KNEW IT, unlike the others. We knew what we didn’t have. And we knew that our cracked prime minister’s crazy economic policies were the reason we didn’t have it. You have to differentiate between people who could afford a television set and didn’t want one, and those who wanted one and couldn’t afford one. I’m not going into all those 1970s/1980s details again. Please don’t try to excuse the inexcusable and justify the unjustifiable.]
In the 80’s we were deprived of tap water and a decent electricity supply. Nowadays the deprived have no cell phones.
[Daphne – That’s right. I forgot to mention to Albert Farrugia and Mariop that, with a newborn baby and no water in the taps for THREE WHOLE MONTHS IN THE SUMMER, I used to cross the road with a bucket every day for sea water to flush the lavatory, and phone round friends and relations to check who had water that day so that I could take a shower. And I used to wash the baby at my parents’ house, because they had a water-tank accessible to a bowser (I lived in a flat) and used to get their tank filled when the bowser bothered to answer emergency calls for supplies. But there were five people in that house. And you say it wasn’t deprivation….oh, and my phone-line was an extension from my mother-in-law’s flat, with the wire trailing across the communal yard, and our television was an old colour set that our German diplomat neighbours had left behind for us four years before, because the Grundig version involved shelling out the equivalent of Lm1000 today, plus a bribe, plus months on a waiting-list. Fabulous.]
Oh my God, don’t remind me of those horrible days in that dreary convent. Those nuns contributed to my miserable childhood. If I had a daughter, I would never, ever dream of sending her there, no matter how state-of-the-art the Zebbug school is today. Do you remember that pokey ” Madonna” courtyard where we could only just snatch a breath of fresh air in which we had our P.E classes playing volley ball (which was considered a waste of time) and also had our lunch breaks? And what about the cold wet winters where we had to move the desks aside because all the ceilings were leaking, shivering cold with our blazers on and a bucket in the middle of the class?
[Daphne – Please. I’ve only just stopped having nightmares in which I have to wake up for school the next morning. Every last horrible detail is etched into my mind.]
Deprivation is all in a context – now people hanker for the old style of life as when there is an outcry in the papers over the demolition of yet another old building. Sliema in the 1970’s and 80’s was a pretty deprived place to be anyway with all the water cuts and perceived hopelessness at yet another year of Labour government.
“I used to cross the road with a bucket every day for sea water to flush the lavatory, and phone round friends and relations to check who had water that day so that I could take a shower”
On the bright side you could probably talk to three or four friends at the same time seeing that the phone system was so primitive crossed lines were the norm!
They bought our phone system from others who were throwing it away! How cheap is that!
Dear Albert Farrugia,
Please explain to me where history is being manipulated!
At least Daph, you had five years of it since you came from the Sliema school. I had to endure another seven years of misery in their junior school. They had this building on the left side of the cathedral (until Mintoff took it away from them which was probably the best thing that man has ever done because they were made to provide much, much better premises at Tal- Virtu). This block housed about seven classes with ceiling level windows which were never opened, and no courtyard. The hall served as an assembly, recreation and everything else which happened outside the classes. P.E? non-existent.
Re the nightmares? Well last night, after reading and posting on this blog I had one of them when I was a five year old child, and for some reason, my mother did not plait my hair in the usual manner. So along comes this monstrous nun with a huge pair of scissors to cut my hair off ( and I’m serious here) until a kindly older girl came to my rescue and sorted out my hair. This is one of the many horrendious incidents I and many other girls had to go through and our parents thought it was one of the best schools around.
Thank God it’s all behind us although the scars will remain forever.
[Daphne – Yes, but our parents were in a bit of a fix. It was a choice between a nuns’ school and a state school, and they chose the better option. It just makes you realise how primitive things were when it came to girls’ education. Boys’ church schools were streets ahead in terms of standard of education, premises and facilities for art, science and sport. Girls’ schools? Forget it. On the one hand you had the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which was dedicated to turning out cookie-cutter conformist wives, with a few notable exceptions. On the other hand, you had the more ‘girl-centred’ St Dorothy’s, with its Dickensian premises and facilities, and on the other hand (this must a three-handed monster) there was St Joseph’s Convent, which my mother would have died rather than send us to, even though it was round the corner, because she went there as a boarder and still gets nightmares about it. Why waste a good education on a girl? And while a private benefactor set up an independent school for boys – St Edward’s – no such private benefactor bothered to do the same for girls. Girls just were not worth the trouble.]
Well, it wasn’t exactly Labour’s fault that there were such Jane Eyre facilities for girls in the years gone by. makes you wonder who enforced the status quo in those years.
[Daphne – And your point is….?]
Come to think of it do you remember when Mintoff only allowed LM140 (including money spent on hotel) to be taken to Italy?
“while a private benefactor set up an independent school for boys – St Edward’s – no such private benefactor bothered to do the same for girls.”
Mind you, the only thing better we had at St Edwards was ample playgrounds! The classes used to be FREEZING and we were in shorts, even during the coldest days of winter. (We obviously couldn’t wear tights) Imagine a poor little 5 year old on a freezing cold windy rainy day in shorts (They couldn’t even reach the knees!)
Not to mention being force fed that horrible cold stuff they used to pass off as food! Most of my hang-ups about food were caused by that!
[Daphne – I have a profound horror of beetroot to this day. The smell of even an uncooked one almost makes me pass out. As for boiled cabbage….]
“while a private benefactor set up an independent school for boys – St Edward’s – no such private benefactor bothered to do the same for girls.”
AND that benefactor was a woman – Mabel Strickland.
[Daphne – No, not Mabel Strickland.]
[Daphne – No, not Mabel Strickland.]
arrrrrrgh!!! sorry sorry, got a bit confused – yikes
Unfortunately the lack of chocolate, toothpaste (even sanitary pads) was not the worst part of the Labour regime of the seventies and eighties. The worst thing was the lack of security – physical, personal, financial…. Those of us who grew up during those years and who knew nothing better until 1987 (and even then the violence did not stop – remember the mayhem there was on the day those accused of corrupt practices during the 1987 elections were brought to Court?) will always be marked by those years.