We will wait and see who will score right about this subject. More taxes means living leaner, which means less benefits for everyone around. Excuse me, whatever you say about the Labour party, but it WAS a Labour government who started social services, free education, free healthcare and created new industires for the working class.

[Daphne – And which then screwed it all up by denying people their freedom, oppressing them, and trampling on human rights. I’d rather be hungry and free than well-fed and oppressed.]

At times it might not have met the aspirations of certain classes of people but one cannot ignore how it got rid of a lot of poverty that existed at the time.

[Daphne – The way to eradicate poverty is through the creation of work and the raising of the level of education. Poverty was eradicated starting 1987, and that’s also when social mobility began.]

While a section of the population is very quick to condemn people who are ready to come out in public on topics that are still considered taboo, they forget all the unfaithful men/women, paedophiles, murderers, drug dealers etc in their families … So why doesn’t everyone get on with his/her life?

Geeeez this is stressful.

If you think that deficit is not a subject to discuss, think again. The excessive deficit of 4.7% is there and the government has to correct it by not later than end of 2010, orders from EU. Since il-hofra by now has become a barriera and since il-kaxxa ta Malta has long since been thrown to the dogs, there is no other option than for the government to impose on us more and more taxes. Ohhhh
that’s when the people stop yawning and the word deficit will become a household name.

[Daphne – I think you’ll find that most people would rather have jobs, healthcare, education and a deficit than no jobs, barely any healthcare and hardly any education and no deficit. And that’s one of the main reasons your Labour Party was voted out in 1987. As somebody who experienced what should have been the best years of her life in a country without a deficit, I can tell you firmly ‘thanks but no thanks.’ It isn’t possible to have all that and no deficit. There is no country in the civilised west that runs without a deficit. A smaller deficit is a desirable objective – but not when we are in the throes of a recession – but the objective of no deficit is for no-nothings who don’t understand economics.]

[Daphne – No. I’m not in the business of boring people. There are enough men with calculators doing that already. You find the subject fascinating only because you are (1) an accountant, and (2) anti-government. But I have to tell you: even the anti-government people yawn and turn the page when they see the less-than-magic word ‘deficit’. And that’s why the only way Sant could sell it to The People was by calling it a hofra, in much the same way that Mintoff talked about il-kaxxa ta’ Malta and his drop-jawed followers actually thought there was one, possibly stuffed beneath his rancid mattress. Even Joseph Muscat isn’t having much success entertaining his collation of change with talk of the deficit.]

“If the Church thought of issuing an official ban, it would have certainly made its consultations … But, since it did not issue any ban on this play, it did not undertake any consultations,” the (Church) spokesman said.

Classic Catch-22.

Quote: “The board, being of the Church, is expected to be a voice reflecting the Church’s Christian values for the good of the Maltese; Fr Abela was not reflecting the values upheld by the Church,” the Curia said.

My question: Does the Church/Curia always uphold its (own) values sine qua non?

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090623/local/curia-distances-itself-from-priests-testimony

[Daphne – http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090624/local/church-neither-in-favour-nor-against-stitching%5D