They should try thinking sometimes
Beneath an on-line news report of the concert to be given by Joseph Calleja and Michael Bolton there is a stream of sneering, negative comments. Most of them are of the ‘iss hej’ variety: iss hej the most expensive tickets are €200; iss hej for the €35 tickets you only get to stand (and do you get a free pair of binoculars to see the stage?); iss hej in other countries you can go to this kind of concert for free; iss hej might as well go to Glastonbury at those prices; iss hej the organisers are going to make a profit (and heaven forbid that should be allowed); iss hej…you get the drift.
It made me want to yell: for heaven’s sake, nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to go. Stay home. And then somebody else did just that: pointing out in capital letters that those who don’t like it can lump it. AND DON’T INTERFERE IN WHAT OTHERS CHOOSE TO DO.
I found the exchange interesting, in that it reveals the scant understanding many people in Malta have of how business works, of the finance required for initiatives of this nature, and of how nothing can possibly be free except the elements. The naivety is astonishing. One man actually demanded that this concert be free because “similar” open-air concerts in Rome are free. Clearly, he doesn’t understand the mechanisms at work here. Free mega-concerts are rare events and they are always driven by a purpose, either publicity for someone or something, or a major celebration. The state does not embroil itself in the organisation and vast expense of staging free concerts for the alienation (not a translation of the Maltese alienazzjoni) and amusement of the populace, a sort of panem et circenses for the 21st century.
Free concerts may be free to the people who attend, but they are not free in any other respect. Everyone has to be paid. There are mammoth costs in terms of equipment, lighting, sound, the stage, hundreds of people involved in the organisation and, of course, the fees and expenses of the performers themselves. In the case of ‘free’ concerts, this money comes from international conglomerates which sponsor the event in return for some serious publicity and branding. But finding the money is not enough. There must also be motivation. If there is no particular purpose for a free concert, like a major celebration by the state, a prominent anniversary, or some such, then why on earth would anyone bother to organise it, even if the sponsorship money were forthcoming? Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, hey, I think I’ll organise a free concert, bust a gut and give myself a stroke, take on a huge amount of risk, eat up all my time, kill myself trying to sell the idea to sponsors, and not make a cent out of it. I’ll do it just for fun, just so that the sort of people who whine beneath the news reports on-line don’t have to pay €35 for a ticket and can spend the money on cigarettes and scratch cards or a pizza for the family instead.
Without the profit motive, this sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Why would the organisers bother? The people spewing out their negative comments don’t seem to understand this basic principle. They imagine that somewhere in the troglodytic terrain beneath Rabat there’s a grotto stuffed full of Fr Christmas’s little helpers, ready and willing to provide things for free to Mr Whine and Miss Whinge.
Something else the moaners don’t understand is that businesses exist to maximise profits. So if the organisers can sell tickets at €200, not only are they entitled to do so, but they should do so in the interest of the company they are running and its shareholders. They must not sell tickets in the privileged circle for €100 if they can sell them for €200. They are under no obligation whatsoever to offer cheap tickets at €35 – and yes, that’s damned cheap by any standards for a concert by Joseph Calleja and Michael Bolton – but if they have worked out the numbers and believe that by doing so they will increase their profit without causing problems, then it’s what they should do, and they’ve done it.
Fascinatingly, some of those who are demanding that this concert be free are the very same ones who are sarcastically dismissing the idea of buying a €35 ticket (free binoculars, anyone?) because it means they’ll be standing at the back of a crowd of “one thousand”. You can spot the gap in their reasoning: with a free concert, they’re going to be standing in a crowd of 30,000. It doesn’t take much grey matter to work out that it’s a whole lot better to be in a crowd of a thousand for €35 than in a crowd the size of the last mass meeting before polling-day for free. But the people who appear most eager to bless us with their wisdom beneath on-line news reports are short of that stuff.
It’s their fault
Thinking isn’t taught at school, though it should be, and it shows. I am beginning to realise that the swarm of people who comment on the internet about illegal immigrants – the black variety, not Marlinda from Ukraine – genuinely do not understand the issues, principles and laws involved. All of that is beyond them. They jump to conclusions. They extrapolate from permissible behaviour at the level of the household to permissible behaviour at the level of the state. Their declarations, invariably misspelled, ill-constructed and liberally peppered with multiple interrogation and exclamation marks, are complete non sequiturs. One of the most popular is the statement that if a pregnant woman is “so irresponsible” as to get into a rickety boat somewhere on the southern shore of the Mediterranean littoral and try to make it to Italy in January, then the consequences are her problem and not ours and we are not obliged to rescue her from certain death even if she is in Maltese waters.
The same non-argument would apply to men who go snorkelling in stormy weather round our coast, to people who hang-glide or abseil, and even to those who, as in a notorious recent case, go out fishing miles away from Malta with a child on board and no safety or emergency equipment, resulting in four deaths, including that of the child.
But of course, that non-argument doesn’t hold water to begin with. The state’s obligation to rescue people in distress at sea, or on land for that matter, does not derive from whether the individuals in question have behaved responsibly. Nobody in his right mind would insist on leaving an inept climber stranded halfway up a cliff-face to die, on the grounds that it was his decision to try scaling the cliff in the first place. Yet the people insisting on just this kind of reaction to those in peril on the sea appear to be in their right mind. I can conclude only that it is because they do not understand the magnitude of what they are saying that they go ahead and say it: “Abandon them to their fate because they brought it on themselves.” Besides, dangerous sports are hobbies, done just for fun, while nobody crosses the Sahara and gets into an open boat to cross the Mediterranean in January just for the adrenalin rush, like in those old Pepsi Max ads, but because the alternative is so much worse.
I was particularly appalled by the comments posted beneath an on-line report of how a pregnant woman was airlifted from a tanker by helicopter in darkness, when her health deteriorated and the rescue couldn’t wait until the weather was calmer. The wind and the sea were wild that night. The woman had to be winched up and the report described the operation as risky and dangerous. Immediately, the comments flew in. Does she have medical insurance? Iss hej, she’s going to be treated at Mater Dei off our backs? This is why we have to wait so long in queues at the hospital (that’s right, because of all the pregnant Africans who have been winched off tankers in storms in the middle of the night). She should have been left to her fate. Who told her to get into that boat? She should have stayed where she was. Send her back. The authorities should have put food in that boat and turned it back towards Libya.
An Englishman put in with a comment, and for once he wasn’t a supporter of the National Front or somebody telling us why we should not allow ‘your island’ to be over-run by the politically correct equivalent of Pakis, wogs, wops and dagoes (oh, sorry – that’s us). “What alternative do you propose for this woman?” he wrote. “A manger in a stable? I see that nothing much has changed in 2009 years.” It sailed right over their heads. They just didn’t get it.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
37 Comments Comment
Reply to Corinne Vella Click here to cancel reply
With so many clamouring for a ‘free’ concert by Joseph Calleja and Michael Bolton, it sure makes a lot of sense to rebuild the old Opera House site with a brand new Opera House. It will certainly be a profitable venture well patronized by freeloaders!
[Daphne – Those were my thoughts exactly. They want an opera house for the sheer hell of it, but have no idea what opera tickets cost. If they’re making a fuss about EUR200 tickets now, imagine when they’re asked to pay double that.]
I do not know if John Betts is an Englishman or not, but he is a lecturer at the University of Malta. http://www.um.edu.mt/contact/johnbetts
Come on. The prices are exorbitant by any standards. Not to mention that Michael Bolton is not worth the price of the paper the ticket is printed on.
[Daphne – Exorbitant? EUR35? Please.]
@DCG
Ticket prices for opera and similar events should also take in consideration what the middle class in that country can afford,and Malta is certainly not Covent Garden!I was able to see Macbeth at a Pisa Operatic House for a total of 125 euros for four persons in a ‘palkett’ twice the size of what you get at the Manoel theatre 6 weeks ago!
[Daphne – Ticket prices are calculated on the basis of covering costs and making a profit, and only after that is the profit level raised as high as people will buy. I see that years of socialism, freebies and jew b’xejn jew xejn, price control etc etc have skewed people’s understanding of price mechanisms and what a business is for. I think you will find that the performance you watched was heavily subsidised or sponsored.]
re: illegal imigration
http://www.tgfin.mediaset.it/tgfin/articoli/articolo438637.shtml
Michael Bolton in Malta. And so the darkness spreads…
Daphne,
I wonder (but, I guess shouldn’t) have any of these wannabe freeloaders read ‘Atlas Shrugged’? Probably should.
Forget securities and exchange legislation. The stock exchanges of New York, London, Frankfurt and Tokyo should each install a Maltese person in a glass cabinet above the market floor. Upon detecting a price bubble, the patented MaltAlarm would scream, ‘Mela le! Ghall-madoff! XYZ cents il-wiehed? Mela int mignun jew? Mur saqqi l-hass!’ Perfect.
I just love how, as you said, these are (by and large) the same people who on the one hand expect “il-gvern” to provide free entertainment for the masses while at the same time they moan that our precious resources are being wasted on immigrant women in labour.
Well this time an Uzbeki seems to have received the same comments normally reserved for the ‘dark-skinned ones’ – pissed myself reading the comments. Igalea’s are here too strangely enough…
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090114/local/uzbeki-admits-string-of-thefts
Bull’s eye.
Re Concert
Unfortunately if there was one achievement that Mintoff succeeded in is that of producing generations of socialists with the idea that everything should be given “free” of charge!
Igalea is worse then a dog that lifts its hind leg at every corner; he lifts his everywhere, has an opinion on anything and everything. Shame on the government for not employing his services – maybe a desk at Castille? What amazes most is The Times’s moderator, s/he seems more of a collaborator.
Do you really think it’s all about thinking? What about feeling compassion? Do we really have to think about it when we see someone suffer?
Dear Daphne,
“Thinking isn’t taught at school, though it should be, and it shows.”
It’s not a matter of teaching these people how to think. It’s a matter of teaching The Times’ editors that these comments should not be allowed into the public domain. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against people expressing their point of view, but since when is stupidity a point of view?
I fully agree with the first part (€35? mela mejtin bil-guh dawn?) , but I disagree with some bits of the second part.
I think lack of thinking comes when a person puts passion before logic and knowledge. Thinking is when you can critically assess the facts in front of you, read between the lines & make your own interpretation before swallowing somebody else’s.
This is simply why I enjoy reading so many of your articles, because my interpretations are so close to yours. There are times when my interpretation of the facts is simply too different, but that does not matter.
I don’t agree with the “National Front” nor with the “idealistic”, but I can tell you I’ve had to think like both to reach this conclusion and both have their share of stupidities – like those who think they can save the world and destroy evil capitalism and the others who think the blacks are going to gay them up while they chant Nazi songs.
“Alex Thursday, 15 January 1419hrs
Come on. The prices are exorbitant by any standards. Not to mention that Michael Bolton is not worth the price of the paper the ticket is printed on.”
That is your opinion, with all due respect.
35 Euros is expensive? You have got to be kidding! The company delivering some new very costly furniture to my house next week, offered to take away an unwanted small light-weight almost brand-new chest of drawers at an extra charge of 35 Euros! I told them to get lost and for free, the local baker came and took it away to use as firewood. Bolton /Calleja concert, here I come.
“Isma hi b’€35 immur nara tal-Ewrovixin DARBTEJN!……. Xejn irhas?”
I would like to know how many of us here paid €15 to watch Simon Schembri’s performance at the Manoel yesterday.
The theatre was not that full.
There is a tendency of lack of appreciation of local talent. Locals expect ‘their’ artists to work for free .”dak mhux it-tifel ta’ Ganna ?”
Just look at how local talented artists’ performances were skipped at L-istrina charity lottery. The organisers did not appreciate the sacrifices these popular persons made to rehearse their piece , and left them waiting for hours on end without letting them perform live on TV. Most of them are full time performers at local night spots.
[Daphne – It doesn’t help that people refer to them as local rather than Maltese. That’s a hangover from colonial days: ‘the locals’. I really can’t stand it when I see everything from Maltese wine to Maltese singers referred to as ‘local’. Local to what?]
“That is your opinion, with all due respect.”
Yes, shared by 3.5 billion men.
Even Jesus was a ‘local’ : “isn’t this the son of Joseph the carpenter?”.
I understand what you are saying Daphne.It’s like when the British referred to Africans (and us) as ‘natives’.
[Daphne – No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Local refers to the locality, not to the country or nation. Local wine would be what they make up at Bidnija. The other sort is Maltese wine. You are not local, except in respect of your locality. And the newspapers are not local but national. The local newspaper would be the parish gazette.]
Sybil, re your chest of drawers. It is not legal to burn varnished or painted wood for baking.
So, are all those calling for the rebuilding of an opera house expecting all the tickets to be under eur 35.
Even Simon Schembri`s concert wasn`t packed and the tickets weren’t eur 200.
I was at the Manoel on Tuesday and nearly all the boxes were empty. Simon Schembri was wonderful. I felt embarrassed that a superb guitarist comes home to play to an almost empty house. How on earth do people think the opera house, if rebuilt, will fill up and make money.
[Daphne – Haven’t you read between the lines of all that’s been written? It’s not what will occur inside the opera house that people want, but the status symbol of an opera house building – “because everyone else has one”; another way of keeping up with the Joneses.]
Heard about the online comment written asking the government to fill that Ethiopian airlines jet which carried out an emergency landing at Luqa? Someone actually demanded that the government fill the plane with “illegals” and send it back once the opportunity arose. The government was also criticised for not taking this opportunity.
As regards the concert prices, I had a look at the billboard. I was interested at first, but then decided that the price was a bit too much for me, so I will not be going. So what? I decided to spend all my spare cash on a holiday with all the trimmings. Whose business is it how I spend my cash? If they are asking for 200 euros, good for them. If people can afford it they will go; if not they will stay at home. Very simple. Supply and demand and all that. This country is in Europe but some people would fit in better in Saddam’s Iraq.
Sybil: If you’ve unwanted furniture that is still usable, contact Appogg. Someone’s firewood could be another person’s furniture.
[Daphne – Or the YMCA in Valletta.]
I don`t know if it is fair to say that the people complaining about the ticket prices at this concert are the same people who want the opera house to be rebuilt. One of the most prominent voices in favour of building an opera house has been Joseph Calleja himself, who I assume is comfortable with the ticket prices.
I doubt that people who are willing to shell out 200 euros to see this concert are exactly great music lovers anyway. Amongst true music devotees (or music snobs, depending on your viewpoint), Michael Bolton is roundly scorned, mocked and detested, possibly more than any other singer on the planet.
@ me
Right on!
If I had to express my feelings regarding IGalea et al, the Moderator will certainly censor my comments. IGalea in particular is a persistent pain where the sun don’t shine and exhibits large doses of bad taste every time he takes to the keyboard.
He thinks he knows so much! As a matter of fact I have already recommended (in The Times) that he appoints himself a personal adviser to Joseph or possibly to Dr. Gonzi and all our problems will be solved.
jomar: It’s “Dr Muscat”, please.
@jomar
I do not consider the commentors of this drivel in The Times as a pain in any region but as a great pain to the great legacy that I expect the present administration of The Times to uphold. I have been buying and reading The Times for decades and expected that in the technological era the administration would up its standards and not allow this rubbish to be accepted and promoted as a standard of the Maltese average comment. As for the commentators themselves, their comments show that if they have anything that can be recognised as grey matter for a brain it must be something that was accidentally blown into their skull on an windy day.
@ Jomar
And it isn’t Dr. Gonzi. Never is. He is always referred to as Gonzipn. lgalea and most timesofmalta.com contributors come across as the type who when challenged on a particular subject, will shrug shoulders, spread arms, and intone the idiotic mantra “Heqq, opinjoni hux”. I think that timesofmalta.com actually enjoys people like lgalea. Controversy does sell, as does bigotry after all. We may be exasperated, but we still give the site a visit, in my case just to read the pearls of wisdom uttered by Malta’s foremost opinion-maker (No, DCG, you’ve been dethroned, sorry).Anyway, seeing the fella is not present here, just for correctness sake, I should stop.
Re the concert. Am I alone in having the feeling that some people are slagging off the performer because of the ticket prices?
PS, Belated wishes for 2009.
@DCG
The price I quoted was actually for the pricey parts of the Teatro di Pisa Verdi and certainly not subsidised:have a look yourself on their website: http://www.teatrodipisa.pi.it/opera/opera.htm
they have subsidised prices for students of 8 euro!
Pisa has only 85000 inhabitants but can boast of a fine ‘teatro del opera’ which is available to all at very competitive prices:in Malta it is the usual story of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs!
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but there is no way on earth that is possible without subsidy or sponsorship, unless the theatre is content to run at a constant huge deficit. Simon Schembri, a renowned classical guitarist who is based in France and who returns here to play occasionally, played to near-empty houses recently in Valletta. That’s a good gauge of the kind of interest there is. I’ve long since realised that people don’t buy tickets for the music, or for the play, or for the opera, but for the ‘event’ and ‘to be there’, for a ‘harga’: a concert in Mdina Square or in the Grandmaster’s Palace courtyard, a much-hyped play, a one-night-only opera in Gozo at which they get to wear a nice frock and have dinner with friends afterwards. I understand this perfectly: Malta is very short of good nights out. But the music and play have nothing to do with it. It’s got to be infrequent and it’s got to be something that the customer feels he has to snatch up the tickets for because it’s a one-off. The key word is ‘infrequent’ and with an opera house ticking over with performances every week, of some kind of other, people won’t buy becausae it’s always there and there’s always next week. And it’s always the same people anyway. And here’s something else you haven’t considered: what will become of the Manoel Theatre when plays move to the opera house to keep it busy? Or is this amazing theatre-loving nation going to keep two playhouses busy? Time to pack them in with Gensna again….]]
@DCG
The theatre in Pisa is always full and has to be booked months in advance:maybe the italian govt or Pisa city do give their theatres an annual subsidy and as far as I know it is also the case in Malta:if it is not,it should be!What the italians do very well is that there is an arts culture nurtured over many generations with music/arts academies churning out and encouraging the new young generation,something that was probably present in Malta before the last war and which we lost for ever with the destruction of the royal opera house.
[Daphne – You make the common error of thinking that ‘culture’ is something that a government can impose on the people, rather than the other way round. The situation in Italy has nothing to do with subsidies or state support, but with a millennia-long history of creativity.]
People were willing to pay Lm60 to watch Bryan Adams and Roger Waters in VIP areas. Let’s face it, opera is not for everyone just as rock concerts aren’t for everyone. It is just a matter of taste. People are willing to donate loads of money for the festa and fireworks (money turned into smoke, that is). The problem isn’t money. There is plenty of it. The problem is taste.
@vanni
Tridx izzommom int mela?
Oh here we go again. I thought that we are over the ‘Joseph’ bit. I refer to Dr. Muscat as ‘Joseph’ out of respect for his own wishes – nay – request. It is Dr. Gonzi because in the absence of referring to him as the Hon. Prime Minister, his alternate title is Doctor.
I object to IGalea, whoever s/he is, is because for every single government initiative, even if the Opposition agrees, he finds an objection. If he doesn’t he creates allegations or questions the issue in a malicious way. I suffer no pain when reading his rubbish but at the time I could not think of a better term to describe him. My apologies if I offended ‘me’.
With regards to The Times, I agree that if Ms. Strickland were alive today, the staff would be different and the nonsense would disappear.
@ DCG – “but for the ‘event’ and ‘to be there’, for a ‘harga'” – very true. Reminds me of a text I had to plough through years back by Cruciani who claimed that people go to the theatre ‘per guardare e essere guardati’… in Malta I feel it’s more of the latter – good excuse to flash diamonds and display furs.
I wonder how many of the people who complained about ticket prices would think twice about spending a thousand-odd Euro for ” set elloj wijlss” for their tuned turbo-diesel Jap imports?
So Joseph Calleja will be singing with Michael Bolton? If that’s culture, then I’m a banana.