How much did Muscat pay for this one?
A spinning teaching aid
Here’s Marisa Micallef, who is paid by the Labour Party to write letters against the government, concluding today’s letter with the immortal line: ‘Remember, the truth is very easy for me to remember. Spin on the other hand is not.’
Sigh. Nahseb li l-vera ghamel akkwist, dak Joseph.
The Times, Saturday, 3rd October 2009
Truth on stipends and single mothers
Marisa Micallef, Naxxar
I am very surprised that we have a Prime Minister who chose to misrepresent, as reported in The Times and In-Nazzjon, what I wrote when he toured the University on Thursday. I do not favour single mothers who abuse the state system over student stipends. I pointed out that it has been reported that four times as much money is spent on stipends than on the payments to support families without a father. We all know there has been abuse in both.
However, it is Lawrence Gonzi’s Administration that created the system for single mothers that is so allegedly easy to abuse, and which they have now woken up to. We all know at election time what is promised to everyone to get votes, so abuse has been institutionally encouraged.
I appeal to Dr Gonzi to get his facts right. The PN spin machine has been busy this week.
Remember, the truth is very easy for me to remember. Spin on the other hand is not.
7 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
The sudden avalanche of anti GonziPN writings is a result of the freedom we have enjoyed since Fenech AdamiPN was elected in 1987.
What can you compare to freedom to be enough to hit them below the belt?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEleTdRZUA4
@Marisa
“Remember, the truth is very easy for me to remember. Spin on the other hand is not.”
Marisa, you’re spinning faster than PSR J1748-2446ad. No wonder your memory is hazy.
Daphne, if you were Joseph Muscat, what criteria would you set to assess Marisa Micallef’s success? (Not winning the next general elections; the contribution would be too blurred).
[Daphne – I work in the field, so I know the criteria and they’re too complicated to go into here. Basically, what you have to look at first, before you even begin assessing success or failure, is whether the consultant is fit for purpose. In this case, the answer is no, because she has no track record in public affairs, still less in political public affairs, and makes the cardinal error (in political communication) of projecting her own feelings, which are those of a marginal – though electorally crucial – social group onto the rest of the population. I imagine that Joseph Muscat, who has a long track record in political public affairs and communication, knows this – which is why I wrote earlier that the real reason he is paying her is to serve the purpose of a decoy duck. He’s floating her out on his pond to bring in the real ducks that he wants (“Look, there’s Marisa in the Labour pond. It’s safe for us to go there too”. Bang! Bang!). Yet this objective was undermined by the announcement that Mrs Micallef is being paid by the opposition to carp against the government, which undoes her credibility and undermines her arguments, making them considerably less effective than they would have been if she simply wrote a newspaper column paid for by her newspaper, describing her true feelings. I don’t think Muscat is going to be measuring Mrs Micallef’s success, because that success, in his view, has been scored already by acquiring her scalp.]
Wonder whether Marisa will become BFF with Marie Benoit, who used to trash her in her column. Benlit used to write that Marisa is good for nothing but to seal and stamp the envelopes at the PN HQ.
70 pieces of silver, and rather cheap at the price in my opinion.
So unfortunate. A wayward woman is waylaid.