How much did Joseph Muscat pay for this letter?
Next up from the woman Labour pays for fairytales: How Marisa Kissed a Frog and Turned Him Into..... a Frog Wearing a Tiara
However much it was, I think he should ask for his money back. Overwrought and tangled parables in simplistic language for people aged over three who can read and use the internet? I don’t think so.
What next – Harry Potter Votes Labour?
Or how about –
What Marisa Did Next: The Thrilling Tale of a Woman On the Hunt for Political Appointments and her Close Encounter with a Court Jester and a Cheque for EUR40,000
The Times, Tuesday, 29th September 2009
The ‘blurred’ kingdom
Marisa Micallef, London, UK
There was once a very pretty little kingdom tucked away in a beautiful sea. It was made up of two peoples who were very similar to each other but who each had been brainwashed to think they were very different. One were known as blues and one were known as reds and they led very separate lives. Outsiders called this the kingdom of the “blurreds” because everything in this kingdom had become so confused, difficult to unravel and fake.
The democratically-elected king was from the blue tribe and had been loved as a prince. His father had made him in charge of society’s poorest and he did that job well. When he became king, though, he became too close to certain vested interests. He controlled most of the communication in the country. He started to believe his own propaganda. His judgment became clouded but he didn’t want to give up these contacts, who were powerful and kept him in power.
As a consequence, strange things started to happen. People who were caught receiving large bribes were let off with nothing. Young people who were caught with drugs were sent to prison. The king came down hard on mothers whose fathers didn’t support them but was happy to finance students with four times as much money as he gave these mothers. The king was very clever and knew he would gain popularity if he kicked the same single mothers he used to so lavishly support when he was a prince.
The king wanted one National Day allegedly to bring his subjects together because even he was getting tired of the terrible division. He felt his kingdom was happy and fair, so why didn’t everyone else? To be honest, he was worried. Even his blues were getting tired of double standards. So the king suggested a day that was dear to the blues and less to the reds, so the reds sighed because they too wanted to feel part of the kingdom but they wanted their part in history to be recognised too.
The king said his three priorities were jobs, education and the environment.
Jobs were usually there but the best jobs and positions were reserved for the blues. The reds had to be punished because 20 years earlier they had led a rebellion and their leader had done some bad things. The children of this kingdom were the most heavily tested in the whole world. There was huge stress among them and their families, which didn’t become less when the king made a former teacher their minister, as the system remained unchanged. And the environment in this kingdom was awful. Cancers were on the rise and the dirty dust-filled air was making blues and reds very unwell.
Some blues and reds continued to talk to each other despite the risks. Eventually, the reds had a new leader who, in fact, was the result of a union between a red family and a blue family. The king was incensed. The order went out to rubbish him, to question the value of the cars he and his wife rode and other pathetic attacks. The ruling blues hated to see wealthy reds. They even alleged he was anti business and, because most of the media was controlled by the king, many believed it.
The trouble was the king and the few blues who really ran the kingdom and took all the profits had got so used to this state of affairs and thought it was theirs by divine right.
It wasn’t just the reds who suffered. Anyone blue who didn’t toe the line 100 per cent feared for their business, their children being refused certain jobs and more. The king had discovered there was no need to use prisons or violence. You could control people by controlling their earnings. The trouble was that, although people had accepted this state of affairs for many years, they now wanted to give the half red, half blue leader a chance but they were scared.
Whatever would happen next?
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I read it.
Joseph Muscat said Marisa Micallef’s mission is to convince people who never considered voting Labour. In other words, people like me who will sooner vote for a retarded rhino with a backside full of lead shot then that lot as:
1. I consider rhinos equally capable;
2. no rhino could ever do me as much harm as Labour did to me in the 1980s;
3. No rhino ever tried to keep my children out of the EU despite an overwhelming vote in favour of membership in the referendum.
Marisa Micallef has to do better than that.
Just for the sake of accuracy, in the EU referendum the votes in favour were 53.65% of valid votes and only 48% of registered votes.
[Daphne – Oh my, then Barack Obama isn’t really president, Tony Blair never was prime minister, and…what reasoning, honestly.]
Hardly “overwhelming”. In the Integration referendum, for example, the “yes” vote was stronger, but it was still considered “inconclusive”.
[Daphne – It was overwhelming, believe me. Check the referendum turn-outs in other states.]
I just posted the figures and did not comment – the “reasoning” was all on your side. Your rush to rebut something I did not say is indicative.
May I pont out that you cannot compare a “normal” election of a five-year government or president with a referendum that was going to change the very nature of the state for the forseeable future. Different rules apply.
[Daphne – There is only one rule that applies: that the majority among VALID VOTES CAST wins the day. Those who don’t vote, or who invalidate their vote, have removed themselves voluntarily from the equation. If they don’t consider their opinion to be of any consequence, then obviously, neither does the system.]
I don’t agree. Let’s try an analogy which I saw posted on another site.
Suppose you are living peacefully in your own home. One fine day, your next-door neighbour sends you a letter in which he proposes that, at the end of the month, you knock down the dividing wall and live together in the two (now common) properties.
Now suppose you ignore that letter, or forget to reply, or do not give an answer for some other reason, would that authorise him to go ahead with his plan? Of course not – only a clear and unequivocal “yes” from you would do that. Anything else has to count as a “no”.
[Daphne – Your analogy is wrong. There are many legal situations in which your failure to reply authorises the other party to proceed/is an admission of guilt. This is not one of them. A referendum is. Once more I have to say that it is a great tragedy that thinking skills are not taught at school. It should be obvious, to anyone with the merest smattering of knowledge of human (property) rights that one’s failure to reply to a request to share one’s property does not authorise the other party to go ahead and share it. I lack the patience to explain the centuries of thinking and legal developments which reached this conclusion, just as I lack the patience to explain why the progress of a country cannot be halted by those citizens who cannot be bothered to participate in democracy.]
That is how the referendum vote should have been viewed. Only the clear “yeses” should have counted as a “yes”. All the rest – abstentions, spoiled votes, yes, even the dead, should have counted as a “no”.
[Daphne – Where did you go to school? Or are you Alfred Sant?]
Well, Dr.Sant believed that his own supporters’ opinions didn’t matter. Why do you think he told you not to participate in the referendum? Because he thought your opinion counted for something?
No real reply, I see.
Twanny, when discussing the EU referendum result (still going on about it?) you should ask Joseph Muscat to lend you some of his hindsight,
Antoine, I don’t have to “ask anybody” for hindsight. I can make up my own mind and I don’t have to go into any blog to be told what I should be thinking on any given subject.
She definitely has to do better than that! I honestly couldn’t finish that god-awful tripe!
She’s very lucky. She was “selected” by a PN administration as chairman of the Housing Authority and now she has been “selected” by a PL administration as an advisor to the Leader. Following no calls for applications in both cases. And yet she wrote about “the few for the few”. And she received a “decent” salary in both cases. Good luck to her.
As expected the attacks on Marisa have started. Very normal for a conservative mentality that is afraid of change, or rather except change only if it is favourable to their party. If I were you I would do a deep soul search and ask myself why Marisa switched side in the first place. I objectively don’t think it is just for the money. Be objective for once!
[Daphne – It is for two reasons: 1. the money, and 2. she was turned down by all the government/public sector entities she approached with demands for a job. Commonsense should tell you that if she planned to join the Labour Party she wouldn’t have approached the government for a job at Malta’s Brussels office, or the Malta Tourism Authority for a job at their office in London. She left her job at the Housing Authority because she thought she wasn’t paid enough and there were better opportunities to be had in London. Shortly after she moved to England, the recession hit, she couldn’t find any decent openings because no one was hiring but only firing, and Mrs Micallef found herself having to come crawling back, banging on the Maltese government’s door for a job. She was still knocking on various public sector doors until a few months ago – this when she claims that she became disillusioned with the government two years ago. The angry, bitter letters to The Times began when she got her final ‘No’. Why she thought she deserved special treatment by having a job created for her – when she claims to be against political favouritism and jobs for boys, is quite beyond me. I imagine she wasn’t thinking of working for the government in Brussels while campaigning for Labour, so this sudden switch to Labour is the result of not having got the government job she wanted. I think you should at least credit me with having based my view on the facts, which I know.]
How do government departments so easily dish out to you what is supposed to be confidential information on prospective candidates applying for a job? The mind boggles.
[Daphne – I’m journalist, Jean (though not a reporter). It’s my job to get hold of the information I want. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Also, you make the mistake of confusing a job application, which as you said is confidential, with pestering telephone calls and emails to people who run things, demanding that they create a job for her where none exists. There’s nothing confidential about that. Indeed, it is such telephone calls and emails which are abusive in the first place.]
And the first prize for the best joke of the 21st century (even if there are 90 more decades before it’s over) goes to……….Alan
“Very normal for a conservative mentality that is afraid of change”
You mean 9, surely?
My reply: it’s normal for a socialist to believe that the world is flat.
Thank you Twanny! yes it should read 9, thank God I gave up accountancy quite some time ago…..but thinking about it I think the joke will survive 90 decades.
Just read Paul Borg Olivier comment and you realise how pathetic and out of contest the personal attack on Ms Micallef are bound to reach! It is obvious that the PN is in complete denial and is worsening its position with such comments.
[Daphne – You’re the same person who rushes out in similar defence of Mrs Vella, aren’t you? Bit of a knight in shining armour, I think. Ladies can defend themselves these days, you know – and those two certainly can.]
Take care of Borg Olivier; he doesn’t have a clue.
A magnificent piece of literature. But I would have written about the Red Baron’s destrier, not his car, in keeping with the faux-medieval atmosphere. In the same vein, why not substitute “cancer” with “the plague”. And drugs? In a children’s book? Is that the ‘in’ thing nowadays?
Ms Leyson keeps on insisting that she resigned mid way through a 4 year contract, as though to imply that she quit because of some political disagreement with her employer. Ms Leyson, please come clean. Did you not leave for personal reasons for pastures new in the UK ….third attempt, this time with a little help from the internet?
James Tyrell – of September 11 conspiracy theories fame – and member of the “I love Astrid” society has now come out in support of Marisa. I think he would also fit well in Joseph Muscat’s redesigned Labour Party.
“The king came down hard on mothers whose fathers didn’t support them but was happy to finance students with four times as much money as he gave these mothers.”
Ah, but of course the king is wise and knows that students will one day pay back the money through taxes, and the king wants more intelligent people who can make an informed decision, rather a nation of trailer trash. But anyway, gold digger, I never asked the government for a state job or for money. I have a stipend and maintenance grant on which I try live. I also worked for what I got; most single mothers never worked a day in their life, yet have a flat and government cash.
The king also doesn’t want to reward bad behaviour: are we going to start giving flats and money to heroin addicts now?
Single mother support should be given to those who had no choice, and the court should be more efficient at forcing men to pay child support.
In the United States, single mothers work three jobs a day just to put a plate on the table and keep their two-roomed apartments. Here it’s another story, where everybody just wants to leech and make mistake after mistake without ever facing the consequences, with generations following suit.
I don’t know what Marisa expects – maybe that pensioners should give up their pension so that girls can go around getting pregnant in order to get a flat, children’s allowance and child support, while others who work hard get faced with the bill.
It’s all about the money. So congratulations for getting something you didn’t work for – you and your single-mother friends.
Oh give me a break and come down from your moralistic high horse. What is this new ‘hate single-mothers’ campaign all about anyway? What a weird society we live in.
I was for benefits for single mothers until I began to hear to women keeping their children illegitimate and registering them with ‘father unknown’ just to get the money.
When people abuse the system, it’s us who have to pay for them. You’re paying for someone else’s shortcomings.
After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen to you if you fall pregnant when you’re single? You get a child, a flat, children’s allowance and child support.
It’s a system that does it all it can to coax single mothers into writing “unknown father” on their child’s registration… after all, people bend over backwards to get a free hat or a free juice, and there’s nothing better than a free flat.
I have nothing against single mothers who are self-sufficient or reliant on family (we have single mothers at university, but the ones I know aren’t on welfare).
So we have to make a distinction between real single mothers and women who pose as single mothers, not start a single mother witch hunt as seems to be happening. You mentioned university. Are you there as a student? Do you think we should have self-sufficient students as well and do away with stipends?
She was at it again today, this time correcting some misconceptions by “bloggers”. One Louis Sinagra perfectly captured the absurdity of it all with his remark “Yesterday London, today Naxxar”.
Yesterday, I heard Joseph Muscat on Super 1, and he stated that he will surely win the next general election as he had always won. I got a bit confused as we all know that his Partnership did not win.
Secondly, he believes himself to be a 100% winner, while trying to convince people at large to convert to Labour on the basis that he can deliver better – but what will be better, we ask, and how will this come about.
As for all these converts, can they say what their expectations are, how they will gauge his progress and against what, and will they demand pjacieri or else switch back to PN?
What I know for sure is that at the end of the day everyone will be let down, and we will start once more blaming everyone and everything but our own immaturity.
My little mind tells me that:
a. either Alfred Sant was right and Marisa was a mercenery, or else
b. Marisa is an opportunist escaping from the sinking ship.
I leave your readers to decide.
Thanks.
You asked how much the letter cost him. May I ask what he pays those who work on Maltastar? And do they drink wine while working? Some recent examples of their work: ‘Waterserve’, ‘41% who site regular partners’. If they played Russian roulette with words, they would get them right.
Marisa knows that the next goverment will be Labour. So she joins the inner circle and ensures a secure job for herself after the election.
One would expect Labour to be odds-on favourite to win the next general elections. But three and a half years is a rather long time in politics. The only time I recall when the party in government was very popular mid-way through its term was in 1982 when the UK won the Falklands War. A lot of it is down to getting your timing right; we’re familiar with the story of the tortoise and the hare (not the one where tortoise wins because the hare is beaten up by the Ninja Turtles).
I really can’t see what all this fuss is about. How some sell-out with an obvious chip on her shoulder became the talk of the town and front page news is beyond me. It’s the same old story. But at least, with that piece of bad (and lame) literature to boot, we know she’s in the right company now.
In my opinion, some people must be in utter desperation, seriously deluded or have really low self-esteem in order to join the ginger kid and his motley crew, or even consider them as a viable alternative to the current incumbent. How else could someone, with at least half a mind, consider these things without feeling cheap and dirty on the inside and out?
Hi Daphne. Why don’t you take a leaf out of Ms. Micallef’s book and “cross over” to the PL. We are a movement of moderates and progressives and would welcome everybody with open arms, yes even those who have tried to make our life hell along the years.
[Daphne – You want reasons? Here they are. I’m probably a hell of a lot more intelligent than Mrs Micallef (and I only say ‘probably’ so that you don’t run off with the idea that I’m getting above myself here), I make my living entirely in the private sector using my own initiative and entrepreneurship (and hence don’t need to knock on doors for jobs and favours) and most crucially of all, I have a backbone and self-respect. Oh, and last but not least, the Labour Party is crap, its leader is shallow and ridiculous, it is riddled with people I despise for their stupidity, their ham-fisted attitudes, their lack of respect for the norms of behaviour and protocol, their corruption and their violence. Six years ago the Labour Party, that I would rather be pegged out and eaten alive by driver ants than join, tried to block Malta’s EU membership and Joseph Muscat cried when it didn’t succeed (or so he said on radio). Here’s more: it couldn’t organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery, it doesn’t know that the leader of the opposition has no role in representing the state (such ignorance, honestly), it is teeming with hodor – including its latest ‘tal-pepe’ recruits – and it has no policies to speak of. I hope that explains things. I would rather support no party at all than support something cheap, tacky and jacksh*t like this Labour Party, but given that with or without my support I will still get a government, then I am going to choose which I prefer, and it sure as hell isn’t any one with that lot of mentally and spiritually challenged creeps in it.]
Daphne, I think you’re the best thing since buttered toast for Malta – or should that be mono-saturated fats? I don’t know, I get lost in the recurring update by “leading” scientific research on what will kill you and what won’t.
Whether I agree with all you say or don’t is a moot point – I feel it needs to be said and you really must have a writ from God herself to say what you do and get away with it. Maybe the Maltese jurisdictional dept is too tied up with its monumental backlog (that three-hour lunch break – just gotta go!) to deal with such petty issues as libel cases. Anyway. I agree with much of what you say, and you say it with balls, which I admire.
BUT you”re accusing the Labour camp of incompetence at a time when the current administration is hardly showing competence. More like they reckon they’ve got a winning team of contestants for the 300 metres incontinents dash just because they have the cunning aplomb to wear waterproof underwear. It doesn’t wash. In more ways than one.
Come on, let’s face it – both sides of the political spectrum are loaded with corruption and BS. It’s all about the money. And in the meantime much of Malta’s greatest assets are getting washed away in the deluge of negligence. Step back a minute from political allegiances and tell me, if Malta were a living entity, one of your own per se, would you care for it the way it is being cared for now?
I didn’t get the “half red, half blue leader”. So political allegiance is now genetic?
Well said, Ginger. It is about time that people are responsible for their actions and face the consequences of them. The worst injustice is that since single mothers take precedence for social assistance, for housing, other families fall behind.
I’m curious…. what happens if the PN decides that it requires her services after all?
Don’t let that worry you. The PN will never require her services anymore. They don’t need any voltegabbane within their ranks.
Tal-Muzew, I’m sure Marisa will set up some kind of Dutch auction…you know, he who offers most gets her invaluable services.
Tal-Muzew
“I’m curious…. what happens if the PN decides that it requires her services after all?”
As it happens, the PN has never required her services. Marisa Micallef never worked for the party either as an employee or an activist. She came practically out of nowhere and was appointed Chairman of the Housing Authority, if I remember correctly sometime in the late nineties. Later she started a political column and eventually was a candidate in one or two general elections where she fared rather dismally.
This whole affair is what a certain man from the Midlands would describe as much ado about nothing. With all due respect to Ms Micallef (I mean Marisa), she was never a significant figure in Maltese politics and her taking up a job with the PL is of no great import really. Perhaps Joseph Muscat intended the announcement of her employment to counter-balance the other Micallef’s defenestration. If this was the case it was a double-edged sword because PL grassroots saw it as a double blow. For all talk about having an inclusive party, PL stalwarts are not eager to share the spoils (they are already counting their chickens) with anyone they perceive as an ex-Nationalist.
@ Tal-Muzew
If the NP required Marisa’s services, they would have found a way to keep her. People come, people go, no one is indispensable and if the NP needs someone in a responsible position, it will not hire a two-bit kiddies’ fable writer.
Nonetheless, good luck to her and one hopes that she will not spend the 40,000 euros too fast in case she needs to start knocking on doors again in the near future.
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I think she meant “the fathers of whose babies did not support them…”
That is the only bit of the whole article I read, anyway
It seems to me that this article is written for children. When Joseph Muscat was made leader of the opposition I must admit that I too got a wee bit swept away by all the furore. Coupled with all the bidu gdid propaganda (reminicent of Alfred Sant’s rih tal-bidla) the light must have been blinding for many.
Let us hope that this infantile approach is a mere teething problem and not an example of how the new PL intends to convince intelligent people to vote Labour.