The politics of headless chickens
I'm all for Joseph! He's so progressive!
The leader of the progressive party – you know, the one who has given himself a label that says Progressive without putting forward any policies to prove it – has demonstrated once more his new way of doing politics.
The people are fed up with what the government is not giving them, he told his usual Sunday gathering, and when the time comes they will take to the streets to tell the government what they want from it. If this is Muscat’s idea of progressive politics, then he must have learned the meaning of the word from those states and ‘political parties’ which slot ‘progressive’ into their name and then go on to become a bad-daddy dictatorship, locking The People behind an iron curtain of human rights abuses, deprivation, total dependency on the state and erratic hand-outs.
A really progressive politician would urge people to stand on their own two feet and make social and economic headway for themselves, instead of encouraging them in their misguided belief that the government is there to hand things out so that they don’t have to make much effort themselves.
What is even worse is that Muscat does something a really progressive person would never do: he continues to cultivate the notion, fondly held by so many Maltese and heightened by the insularity of life on two tiny islands, that we live and work in an oxygen bubble that keeps us cut off from the rest of the world.
Instead of telling people to look around them and count their blessings, he tells them they are suffering. He is speaking to people who take no interest in what goes on beyond the hamster’s cage in which they live, and to others who do but who insist on thinking that Malta has to be different somehow, and like Mintoff and Sant before him, he manipulates their sorry ignorance, their credulity, and their understanding that Malta is not connected to the international economy.
Privately, he knows that the signs of a real crisis, which are manifesting themselves close to home and further afield, are major, century-old businesses ceasing operations and leaving tens of thousands unemployed overnight, a river of people filing for bankruptcy, thousands losing their homes because they cannot meet mortgage repayments, families living in their cars, near-empty high street shops and prices slashed across the board. In Britain, there is now a fresh phenomenon: people trying to sell one of their own kidneys – which is illegal – for cash.
Meanwhile, back home in Malta where Muscat tells us that all that suffering is going on, over the last few months starving citizens have withdrawn 350 million euros in liquid money that had been sloshing around in the banks earning not enough interest, to snap up bonds issued by various Maltese companies. Also over the last few months, half the population appears to have fetched up in the UK on the hunt for a used car to drive back down to Malta, stopping at several places en route to savour the local fare. There are new shops everywhere I look and I can think of just one that’s closed down, because of mismanagement and not the economic situation.
Yes, the number of unemployed has gone up by 1,300, but we are not living in fairyland and that is hardly a catastrophic figure. It might not even be a nightmare for some of the individuals involved (though it would be for others) because, as Muscat knows well, lots of people really don’t want to work and do all they can to sabotage the job interviews to which they are dispatched by the Employment & Training Corporation.
Imagine how much worse that unemployment figure would be had there been no MCAST, proper catering school or university open to all.
In my work, I meet people who run a great variety of businesses, and still the most common complaint is that they can’t find the right people. Yes, some businesses are enduring a fall-off in orders and struggling to keep sales ticking over, but that’s normal and cyclical and not extreme, and any business that doesn’t shore up resources in the good times to keep it going through the bad times has a fundamental problem.
It’s far from progressive politics to say that if you don’t get what you want, you will send your people out into the streets to protest. Every year on 7 June, with a controversial public holiday, we mark a day when this was done, and behaving the same way now seems utterly ridiculous – a patently obvious desire to create instability and problems as an expedient to personal ambition.
Protests, if not driven by genuine rage and suffering, are empty political things, as meaningless as Muscat’s words. The huge protests of the early 1980s were driven by real despair, anger and fear. I should know, because I was at all of them. Joseph Muscat was not. He was at Labour’s hdura-raising rallies with his Mintoffjana harridan of a grandmother, which he describes as his first lessons in politics. He should be so proud.
Now that he has acquired another headless chicken or two, he’s almost got himself a full coop.
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How I wish you had chosen a different picture. I used to work night time in a chicken farm while studying and it brings back gruesome memories.
Daphne, people go to the UK to buy cars because the price of them in Malta is an absolute scandal, due to taxation and, I’m fairly sure, but I can’t prove it, due to the government’s willingness to keep the new car importers happy. Why else would it be such a nightmare to register a second hand car in Malta? The EU is founded on the principle of free movement (of goods and people) but it certainly doesn’t apply to cars, because the automotive lobby is so powerful.
I agree it would be ridiculous for Joe Muscat to organise a demonstration, but let’s not get carried away with the idea that Malta is some kind of Utopia. People should count their blessings, you say? Yes, they are free, and that’s a big deal, after what the Labour Party did in the 70s and 80s but most of the population take freedom for granted. But apart from that, what is there to brag about? Ridiculously expensive real estate, ridiculously expensive cars, limited choices in the shops (e.g. in clothes), limited competition in many many areas due to virtual cartels (e.g. mobile telephony, cable TV, insurance) and small market size, poor care of the environment, a laughable public transport system and a poor road network, virtual traffic gridlock at certain times and in certain areas and chronic parking problems, expensive restaurants with generally poor service. The list is long.
I’m not saying the government isn’t attracting investment. I agree that the unemployed are often quite pleased to be so, but let’s be honest – which employer in Malta pays €28000 (gross) starting salary for a clerical/secretarial job? An aircraft maintenance technician at Lufthansa Technik earns a basic €1000 per month (gross) for skilled, sometimes hazardous, work. Hardly inspiring, I’d say. The last job I had in Malta in 2005 I was paid a measly LM320/month (gross) (plus a commission), plus I had to use my own car for my work. Try supporting three children on that, my dear Daphne. You say you meet many business people and their main complaint is that they can’t find the right people? My question to them is will they pay the right person a fair salary?
You frequently point out that one of your major gripes about Joseph Muscat is that he tried to deny your boys the right and opportunity to get off the rock, and I fully agree with you there. But if the rock is such a great place, why complain about someone making it difficult to leave it?
[Daphne – It’s tiny, Tim. You can only grow so far. But no government can change that. It’s the result of being geographically isolated and very, very small. But for despite being so small and so isolated, it’s still a lot better than being in, say, an Italian, British or German town with the same population – because Malta has the trappings of statehood, and all that goes with it. That actually makes it seem less remote and ‘dead’. Salaries – they can’t be forced up by governments. They rise or fall according to market diktat. Twenty years ago, good graphic designers were paid around Lm800 a month, for example. When the media began to expand with liberalisation in Malta, it was so hard to find journalists that salaries sky-rocketed. Tile-layers earn a fortune, but they’re self-employed.]
“it was so hard to find journalists” and still is! If Marie Benoit can get paid for swooning (in writing) over Dr Alfred Sant, week in, week out for 10 years, well . . . I rest my case.
She’s employed by her brother.
Admittedly,it is difficult for us, who come from a certain direction and standing in life, to understand that the majority of the PL supporters are not holding any serious discussion between them on who Marisa Micallef is, was, and what she has done in the past to their party; they probably couldn’t give a rat’s ass forn the whole issue as long as One News makes it seem like a big victory for Muscat. They do not read independent newspapers, much less follow the blogs, and therefore cannot be expected to contribute one iota of intelligence to the open, even healthy discussion which goes on in these blogs.
The only language that they are all familiar with is ‘ninzlu fil-pjazzez’ – remnant of the dark Mintoffian days, and adopted in later years by the GWU. So do not be at all surprised that the PL will manage to organize a massive street demonstration, which, after all the hype has gone, will prove nothing and achieve even less. That event, intended to disrupt and dishearten the rest of the Maltese people, will on the other hand, provide their news section with enough material for a few weeks of repetitive North Korean style propaganda, aiming directly at inflating further their Gonzi-hate campaign. And naturally, that would be very progressive.
Just to point out that in the 1980s the PN used to hit the streets on every occasion it had.
[Daphne – The People did, and with very good reason.]
Question. What inevitably covers the floor of a chicken coop?
Where was Joseph Muscat last Saturday when you could not find an empty restaurant/bar/cafe table in Valletta or yesterday at Valletta Waterfront when the same thing happened just because the AFM had an open day?
McDonalds!
But didn’t Dr. Gonzi say that our “finanzi” were “fis- sod”.
I live in Britain Daphne and I heard of no-one selling his kidney. I think you should better check your sources … I know the internet must be very hard for the older generation to comprehend … not everything on the internet is true.
[Daphne – Actually the internet is enormously easy for me to comprehend. I work in the field, remember. You live in Britain, clearly, the way some Maltese live in Malta. Or perhaps you only read The News of the World. There was a big report – report, I hasten to add, and not opinion column, just in case newspapers are hard for you to understand – about it in a London broadsheet called The Sunday Times last week.]
On another note try blaming the high utility rates on the economic crisis. That money could be spent on food, nappies and donations for the massive campaign the PN will have to do so as not to get a trashing at the next general elections.
[Daphne – You live in England, you say. Come on, tell us what the economic situation is like there – and be honest.]
Young Daphne cut off and part of the older generation. Now that’s hard to comprehend. I guess it’s all relative.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6850791.ece
Here is the link for the selling own kidney story.
The economy here is a mess. But it doesn’t matter really – the fact is that since the recession started the government has helped us by reducing VAT, interest rates went down (how come in Malta banks decided not to follow the ECB cuts?), house prices went down drastically (houses in my area went down 50-60k in a year, I was one who reaped the benefits of this ).
[Daphne – My goodness, Herbs, you really have to get on top of things here. Falling house prices are not a good thing, but a terrible one. It is not just a consequence of people losing their jobs en masse and being unable to repay their mortgages (the fall in prices is caused by too much repossessed property coming onto the market at once, coupled with very poor demand that is the result of people having no income) but also a further cause of the crisis. As property prices plummet, people who are paying mortgages on houses bought at boom-level prices find that are left with negativity equity: paying, with interest, for a capital asset that is worth much less than when they took out the mortgage. I never cease to be astonished when I hear people clamour for a fall in property prices, as it demonstrates their ignorance of how falling property prices are quite unlike falling prices of coats, shoes and cars in terms of the economic causes and consequences.]
An example of how good the government here has supported the public and the industry is the cash in your car and get a new one for £2000 less. Gas prices went down, petrol prices went down and here they are not even regulated by the government. The fact is that Malta’s situation is different because the government has done nothing to help. First he said that the economy in Malta wasn’t going to be effected then when it started to bite he blamed everything on the economic meltdown.
[Daphne – Governments are not ‘he’. They are ‘it’. Or at least ‘they’. The prime minister is ‘he’, but the prime minister is not the government. I have always been curious about the way Maltese people call the government ‘he’, in both English and Maltese. Is it the lingering effect of centuries of ‘is-sultan’ – from overlord to grandmaster to governor? As for the rest of your paragraph, I hope you understand that those measures come with a huge cost. If you read the London broadsheets regularly, you would know that that they were preceded with a huge debate about the cost to the taxpayer, which will run into billions with payment deferred until the crisis is over. In other words, the savings you are making now will be paid for in higher taxes in a few years’ time. Again, it is very Maltese to think that governments have secret goldmines or money-trees, and that the money comes like magic. I see you have exported this idea with you.]
In Malta everything gets taxed for some reason or another. Portugal is cheaper, Spain is cheaper, Greece is cheaper … our main competitors in the tourism sector.
If the PL gets into government nothing much is going to change but leaving power in the hands of the PN is even worse, in my opinion. I think we’re back to the 1960s. A lot of youngsters are trying their luck somewhere else just because there’s not enough going on in Malta at present.
[Daphne – They’re going away because they can, Herbs, and not because they have to. They’re going away to explore, to see how far they can grow, and to work and socialise in a wider, more interesting environment. In the 1960s, people – usually men – emigrated with 10 shillings in their pocket and nothing else, no job to go to, and walked the streets of Portsmouth, London, Sydney and Detroit looking for manual work – not much different from the African immigrants we see around us today, except that they did it legally. You certainly can’t compare the situations. In the 1960s people went to survive. Today, they go to grow. All talk of growth is a luxury that you can afford only when all your survival needs are taken care of. Another point you miss is that unlike their grandparents’ generation in the 1960s, they don’t have to emigrate, cutting their ties permanently with Malta. They pick up their EU passport and cross borders to live and work as they please, free to move back or elsewhere as and when they need to or want to, without any problems or any permanent decisions having to be made. Take Marisa Micallef, for example: yesterday London, today Naxxar – flight ta’ Air Malta imur fin-nofs, biss.]
Things don’t look good, Daphne, and you should be the first one to admit that we’ve seen much better times, independent of the global recession.
[Daphne – On the contrary, I happen to believe that we have never had it so good. I am the perfect person to ask, actually, because I track these things. People’s standard of living is now at its best ever, right across the board. There has also been a huge social shift, with the children of manual labourers rightly making the most of aspirational opportunities and living lives their parents and grandparents associated, only a generation ago, with ‘il-puliti’. I think you are confusing – and it happens to lots of people – the trappings of comfort and security with the general mood. I see that lots of people look back at the post-1987 years and think what good times they were, how much better than today (hence the 1992 election result) – but look at the hard facts. People earned much less then, the standard of living was low compared to today, many things we take for granted were unaffordable or exceptional luxuries. So what was different, and why is it our perception that things were better for us then than they are today? The short and simple, but correct, answer is: our mood. Post-1987, the country was in a state of euphoria and excitement – change, change, change, catching up, shaking off chains and shackles, everybody was caught up in it. Now, we’re bored, suffering from an existential crisis, and looking for trouble. To my mind, it is no coincidence that those who are mainly responsible for throwing a big wet blanket over the country right now are in the 40 to 60 age group. The social and political mood coincides with their personal mood – the grumpy questioning and ‘is this all there is to life?’ negativity that affects so many people in that age group. They are projecting their personal unhappiness onto the public sphere, and because there are so many of them (these are Malta’s baby-boom generation, when post war the birth rate shot up and infant mortality plummeted) – I should say us, but I don’t feel that way and am grateful for every blessing including life itself – theirs is the predominant sentiment. It is also the reason why so many marriages are cracking up in that age group. Everything is interlinked, make no mistake. I have noticed that when people in this age group grumble negatively non-stop about the government and the need for change, there is almost always something profoundly wrong in their home or business life. Unable to change those things, they project their misery and disillusionment – their wish for change in their personal or business life, in other words – onto something they think they can change with their vote. It gives them the feeling of some measure of control.]
My god Daphne … how did you not get that the “he” meant Dr. Gonzi. My least favourite person in the world. Anyways …
[Daphne – It’s because you wrote ‘the government’ and not ‘the prime minister’.]
Yes, interventions from the government came at a huge cost to the taxpayer but banks were saved, jobs were saved and productivity. I also would like to add that unemployed people still come at a cost to the taxpayer in job-seekers’ allowances and such benefits.
[Daphne – Just like in Malta, where – though you may not have heard – the Labour Party and its supporters are hauling the government over the coals because of the burgeoning deficit. At least you know that job-saving measures come at a cost to the taxpayer – immediately or eventually.]
With regards to your saying that we never had it so good and the euphoria of 1987 … at the time I couldn’t care less, Daphne, I was 3.
[Daphne – Yes, I had worked out that you are the same age as my children because your perspective on events is truncated. The difference is that they don’t think the world began when they were born, and that what happened before they came into the world has no bearing on the present. Nor would they describe anyone as ‘my least favourite person in the world’. But anyway, each to his own.]
But I remember 1994-1999 which actually spanned across two governments and life was brilliant. We used to live on one wage at home.
[Daphne – Herbs, there are so many holes in that statement that I don’t know where to begin. 1. If life was so brilliant in 1994 to 1996, why did your people (I assume you are under their influence) vote out the government? 2. If life was so brilliant in 1996 to 1998, why did electors charge out in force to vote out the government after just 22 months, with a majority of around 9,000? 3. Wages are paid by the week. Anyone who is paid by the week does not earn very much. So I assume you lived off one salary and not one wage. How much was it, how many of you were there in the household, did you go to fee-paying schools, how many mobile phones and cars did you run, how many holidays did you take, how big was your wardrobe and how many times did you go to restaurants, bars, cinemas and so on, what sort of food did you eat, when you wanted a book were you bought it – so many questions? 4. If you were three in 1987, then you were 12 to 15 in 1996 to 1999, and I would strongly suspect that this, and not the government or life off one wage, is why life was brilliant. I too thought life was brilliant when I was 12 – but it was 1977 and commonsense tells me it wasn’t.]
Then 1999/2000 life started getting a bit more difficult. Everyone had to work … and that’s when things started going wrong.
[Daphne – You mean you came of age, childhood was over, and you had to leave the Garden of Eden and face reality in the world of work. Tough. What can I say? It happens to all of us, even to women like Marisa Micallef, who grew up in families with no money or business but who were raised with the expectation that they would marry money and so they “never expected to have to support myself financially”, as she put it in an interview. Fortunately, I wasn’t raised with any such similarly silly notions about the myriad joys of living off others, despite having been born in a family with money and businesses, and it has served me in immeasurably good stead. It is character-forming, for one thing.]
Your argument about post-war baby boom, moods and such is a bit thin and runny.
[Daphne – Actually, it’s factual. I’m talking about my own age cohort, remember. These are people I know and speak to, whose mentality and psychology I am all too familiar with.]
The real issue was the fact that cost of living went through the roof and now everyone has to work … oh oh, what are we going to do? What will be our one and only salvation?
[Daphne – You cannot be serious. You live in a country where even members of the royal family are expected to work, even if it is not for a salary, and you have expectations of living off somebody else – that somebody should fund your existence while you run around and play? What are you – a perennial girl who was schooled at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, St Julian’s, Malta in the 1950s? Be real. The amazing irony in your statement of regret that ‘now everyone has to work!’ is that it expresses the archaic sentiment of the one-time Tory-voting landed gentry forced into a real world of making ends meet and proving themselves useful. It’s not a progressive, left-wing or Labour view at all, I’m afraid.]
EFA had come up with the solution way before the GET OUT OF JAIL card was needed … he’s the cleverest person I’ve seen in my life … the EU.
[Daphne – If you like him, don’t call him EFA. That’s what the nasty people do.]
And nowadays I look at my family and I struggle to remember the last time I have seen us having dinner together at the table. Everyone works, everyone has a part-time job and I had to leave so as not to be left looking for scraps under the table. I wonder what goes through the minds of adults my age that had it so good in the 1990s and now struggle to cope with everyday life cause their minimum wage is not enough.
[Daphne – I must remember to email my sons and ask them whether they feel about my working throughout their lives in the same way that you do about your mother. If everyone works in your household, then it’s because you’re old enough to do so. If you’re old enough to work, then your mother clearly has nothing to do all day except the odd bit of tidying up. Let’s say this mysterious household which you call ‘all of us’ is made up of your parents, yourself (aged around 25) and your two siblings who are also in their 20s. Do you honestly mean to say that you expect four able-bodied adults of sound mind to fool around while dispatching the fifth adult to bring in the money to support all five of you? Where was it written that men got married to become work-horses for others? I assume that with a name like Herbs you are a man. How would you feel if you got married to somebody who refuses to contribute to the family income, whips you to bring in money so that she doesn’t have to, while your lazy 20-something offspring refused to look for a job because the government should make it possible for five adults to live off one salary? Also, the expenses of a household with three small children are not the same as those of a household with three ‘children’ in their 20s – so obviously, those in their 20s have to work if they are not in full-time education, not just to buy their own stuff and help out a little in the shared home, but – and here’s the clincher – because it’s good for their moral fibre and their psychological development. Work is not a punishment. It gives us purpose and direction in life.]
That’s why people want change. Cause the first 10 years of this play that started in 1987 were all about happiness and enjoyment, but now that the plot changed to one of misery and hard work no one likes it anymore.
[Daphne – I get it. Vote Joseph Muscat so that you can sit around and live off….what, or who, exactly?]
But now it’s too late. Now we blame Mintoff for the burden of social services, blame Sant for not letting us become a member of the EU beforehand and blame the economic meltdown but never the government’s policies. He [Daphne – There you go again: ‘he’.] promised us that the sacrifice was about to end but the deficit went up. [Daphne – Refer to the beginning of your comment, and my point about the deficit.] He promised us that the finanzi were fis-sod. He promised us a lot but he never delivered any of them. He just chose to point fingers like a five-year-old does when asked to tell who broke the vase.
The more I read you, the more I am convinced that you are living in another country and totally detached from the real problems that people are feeling. I don’t blame you at all because your everyday acquaintances seem to be, as admitted above, business people and upper class people that cannot feel the burden of cost of living as the middle class are doing at present times.Its not on for this people to talk about these things. I just invite you to do one thing to see the perfect example of unhappiness of the common mortals of this rock. Go to the main office of the Water Services Corporation in Luqa and see for yourself. I am adding no more.
[Daphne – I am not in the least bit cut off. I talk to everyone at every opportunity, as long as they are not at cocktail parties, which I find exceedingly tedious, and I talk to them precisely because I am curious and interested. I like finding out how people think, what their attitudes are and how their minds work. Where there is grumbling and ‘suffering’ – real suffering, I’ll have you know, is not caused by a water bill or scraping by but by terminal cancer, the death of somebody much loved, and extreme grief – I prefer not to take the grumbles at face value and to work out instead what is the real cause. Sometimes, it’s just projection. Sometimes, it’s legitimate. Sometimes, it’s the result of wholly unrealistic expectations: Seneca wrote in his treatise On Anger that anger is the result of hope gone wrong. For example, a major source of anger in Malta is the expectation that a working-class family or even a middle-class one should be able to live, and live comfortably, off a single income. We all know that isn’t possible, and yet the expectation persists. How many of those queuing angrily outside the WSC live in two-income households? When you think about it, it wasn’t even possible for middle-class families to live comfortably off one salary back when I was a child, because most families of my acquaintance did not live comfortably. They never travelled, the children owned no jeans (they were expensive), just one pair of shoes and another for ‘smart’ occasions, most clothes were cobbled together on a sewing-machine, fridges were mainly empty and with no special treats, and meals out were really big deals reserved for major anniversaries and Easter Sunday, not even birthdays, which were celebrated at home.]
I totally agree that in the 1980s you had to hit the streets to be counted. It was time that Labour got the power to their head and unfortunately it punished them for 25 years in opposition. It was so important that the PN took power in 1987 for the benefit of all. But I am seeing the same thing happening with this government. It is living in total denial and take people for granted. It is totally detached from the common people and I am afraid that you too seem to live a totally different reality that the absolute majority of people are experiencing.
[Daphne – The fact that I might live in a different reality does not mean I don’t know a great deal about other realities. I have never been cut off or uninterested in others. It is not my nature, and besides, I have built a career on it. However, I do think that what we are dealing with here is, above all, a crisis of expectations. This country can never return to the days when a household ran on a single income – and not because things have become more expensive because when you think about it, the main household/life staples like clothes and modcons have actually become cheaper, both relatively and in real terms. It’s because our expectations have grown enormously. No one would be prepared to live today the way we grew up – even though we weren’t deprived and some were actually quite privileged. But that takes money and greater earnings. This is hard to accept. Take, for example, the line that most struck me in an interview Marisa Micallef Leyson gave to Malta Today some years ago: “I never thought I would have to support myself financially.” I was incredulous.]
So yes, I believe that a protest has to be organised to get the goverment back to its senses. Because there is no monopoly on how, where or when protests are organised, being 1920s, 1960s, 1980s or nowadays.
So the size of the bank account determines class. Now I know who my betters are.
Daphne, on one salary one also cannot expect to have money for mobile phones (one for each member of the family), iPods, iPhones, Playstations, mp4s, computers, internet, cable, satellite, cigarettes, hair extensions, nail extensions, manicures, pedicures, a yearly holiday, one or two cars to run (and driving the kids even round the corner), birthday parties, and the list goes on. Irridu nlahhqu ma’ kollox ‘biex ma nkunux aghar minn haddiehor’ and if we don’t, we cry poverty.
Alan, you are the one who said the PN is afraid of change, aren’t you. I do try to understand where you want to get to with your contributions but honestly, I cannot. I assume that with this contribution you want to convince others that they should participate in the protests to be organised by the PL, particularly because the utility bills are pushing people below the poverty line. But when we were told during the EP election campaign, by the PL, that it will not revise these bills downward, how can you believe what you write? Can’t you see there is no logic?
I would rather see it as a positive sign of political maturity not to promise what might not be possible to do. hekk, just to gain votes. I strongly believe that the water and electricity bills are caused by the inefficiency and total mismanagement of Enemalta rather than the oil price.
[Daphne – Strong belief does not make for facts. Lots of people strongly believe, or so I am told, that shoelaces which once came into contact with a holy man can cure incurable diseases (bit of an oxymoron, but there you go). You may well be right, however, in which case I suggest that we ask the question of Joseph Muscat: does he plan to solve this problem by making redundant hundreds of Enemalta employees so that the corporation can run a much tighter ship?]
My argument is: what is so wrong that the PL organises a protest when it was regularly done by the PN during the 1980s? I repeat, there is no monopoly on who, when or why people hit the streets.
[Daphne – Nobody’s saying it’s wrong, Alan. People are saying it’s ridiculous, which is different. The 1980s protests were for real reasons – rampant human rights abuses, democracy under threat, thug rule, Haiti-style corruption (and I’m not being facetious; it’s a real comparison), people living in fear, arbitrary arrest, police breaking into the homes of Enemies of the State, people marked down as public enemies and persecuted, framed by the police or murdered in a police cell. If you think all that compares to a water and electricity bill and the inability to buy top-up cards for all five mobile phones in the family on the minimum wage, fine. I see it differently, but then maybe that’s because I was actually around in the 1980s and vividly remember the very same individuals for whom you are now planning to vote, in all their corrupt, violent and hideous glory. I even remember – how can I forget? – seeing one of my girlfriends beaten up with a chain threaded through a rubber hose by men who, just a few minutes earlier, were standing and talking with Alex Sceberras Trigona, then foreign minister if you please and now Joseph Muscat’s adviser on international affairs, on his ministry doorstep in Merchant Street, while we walked past in a small demonstration about something or other. They even chased me, and I was hugely pregnant, but I was rescued in the nick of time by some nice postmen from the post office across the street (where the Tourism Ministry is now), who hauled me in and slammed the door shut. No wonder Muscat keeps telling us to forget the past, with an ace team like that one. I imagine Marisa Micallef won’t be advising him to sack Sceberras Trigona so as to attract my vote; Mrs Sceberras Trigona is her BF of the last few years.]
Alan
“I totally agree that in the 1980s you had to hit the streets to be counted. It was time that Labour got the power to their head and unfortunately it punished them for 25 years in opposition…….. But I am seeing the same thing happening with this government”
First of all, power went to Labour’s head from day one in 1971. I don’t know how old you are but right from the early seventies MLP thugs – affectionately known to the rest of us as il-marmalja – became an everyday reality that we soon got used to. As Alfred Mifsud famously wrote, Mintoff employed violence routinely, as a political tool. If you see this happening today then, clearly, you are living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Labour have not been in opposition for an entire generation as “punishment” but because they have never been credible – except very briefly in 1996 – as potential government.
Grandmothers now? And you have the gall to use the word “hdura” with reference to others?
Mind boggling, indeed.
[Daphne -Why ever not? I only know about it because she gave a television interview. If she didn’t want to be in the public eye, she shouldn’t have given interviews at all. Grandmothers are just people, Twanny. They are not special cases. One of my grandmothers could have felled you with a tongue-lashing in her 90s, for example.]
Excellent piece. What you wrote is what makes me down. Many people are ignorant of the international economic and financial situation. Let him get out the people on the streets. It will be his downfall.
The progressive politician said about his party of the 1970s that it was the most progressive in Europe. Comparing him to the headless chicken really is an insult……to the chicken.
Out of subject: take a look at these, and go tell Astrid that those holes are not doing any damage to the palaces in Valletta but probably the roots are – u sa fejn naf jien it tapestries ma jrabbux gheruq. U skuzani tal-Ingliz u il-Malti f’daqqa, imma importanti li jasal il punt. U zgur min ghandhu jifhem…ha jifhem.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=115368&id=75357968282&ref=nf
Totally unrelated, but don’t you think that we are a wee bit too popular on North Korean monuments, with two plaques!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00623/Korea_08_623378a.jpg
You’re all off your chock. I live abroad (“a broad”? Ed.) and let me tell you: salaries are shyte too, standards of living are slipping, some roads are crap, some areas look like downtown Mogadishu (yes, by cripes, you can call me a racist), and tile-layers earn 6000 euro per month while doctorate holders earn 1800. So Malta is no exception. And you’re better off than most European countries because the small size means you have the whole family support network close at hand. On the other hand, yes, I agree, there are very few interesting jobs in Malta, but that’s the price you pay for neutrality.
Most of you seem to be older than me, and you deserve a sound thrashing. Unlike you, I can still remember my first pair of jeans, our first colour TV, my first holiday, my first pot of yoghurt, and so many other things that make up normal European life. It’s like you were all born post-1987, the way some of you go on about falling standards of living.
Issa ma jigix xi kretin jafferma li qed nghid li miexjin fuq ir-rubini.
I take it you you remember pre 1987 well. What I cannot quite understand is if all those memories you mentioned came after 1987. I wore my first pair of jeans way back in the late 1960s, that was when I was in my early teens. My first holiday abroad was in the 70’s and quite a lot of people visited Sicily regularly to get their Mars and toothpaste. I can’t remember when I ate my first yoghurt, but I remember eating yogurt much before 1987. The coloured TV came just before 1987, that is something to be ashamed of, But don’t forget that up to 1979, we were living with the British forces amongst us and we enjoyed many European standards.
So all those who are fed up of your goverment PN…are now headless chickens?
[Daphne – It’s your government, too, unless you’re not a Maltese citizen.]
People selling their kidney in UK. -come on…..who is the headless chicken now when they believe everything they read…when you believe such things just because you read them on the internet.
[Daphne – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6850791.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6850879.ece ]
The protest will serve to remove the arrogance of this government and maybe start acting against corruption which we have been reading all the time. And let me be clear ..I vote who I feel will do right to this country..I am neither blue nor red.
[Daphne – No, you’re blurred.]
I cannot understand why certain people find it hard to believe that a guy wanted to sell his kidneys to pay his debt. In Malta we do not have homeless people living and sleeping on the streets; we do not have beggars like you see in some European cities. I’ve seen beggars in Rome, Florence, Paris and London – and that was before the recession. Thank God for our social services, that is why we should make sure these services are not abused, only people in need should benefit and all the rest should contribute according to their means.
[Daphne – I think it has more to do with the extended family network than social services. After all, social services in Britain are way ahead of ours, except where hospital care is concerned.]
The issue is that the NP has raised those expectations but appears unable to generate enough value to sustain it. Muscat is targeting that precise segment and politically that’s legitamate. The methods (you say) are crude but he has three years to learn.
Do you honestly believe that by calling Joseph Muscat’s grandmother a harridan you are scoring brownie points for Lawrence Gonzi and his worn out, incompetent and disarrayed party or better still diminishing any of the lead that Joseph Muscat and Labour are enjoying over Gonzi and company according to the latest published opinion polls.
[Daphne – I don’t do and say things to score brownie points for Lawrence Gonzi (and strictly speaking, one can’t score brownie points for others, but only for oneself). Like others in the Labour Party, you have me confused with Marisa Micallef. I say what I think. I think Mrs Muscat senior-senior is a harridan – one of those horrible Mintoffjani women who used to swoon in front of Mintoff’s lorry, dragging their young grandsons with them to make sure that they grow up to be Mintoffjani too.]
Think again Daphne. You are doing nothing but a disservice to the Nationalists with your infantile schoolyard name calling.
[Daphne – Harridan is not name-calling, but a perfectly acceptable descriptive noun. Name-calling would be if, say, I were to call you an ahdar whose guts are churning with desire to overthrow a worn out, incompetent and disarrayed party, as you described it in inept English and, of course, without being insulting or name-calling.]
In Britain, Germany and in most of the truly European countries their unemployment benefit is more then our wages and salaries and their cost of living is at par with ours.
[Daphne – Yes, and their expectations are much lower.]
Then the employers say we are not competitive…whose fault then..surely not our salaries and wages.
[Daphne – Yes, it is actually our salaries and wages among other costs like the extortionate rates paid to stevedores. When manufacturers say that Malta is not competitive, the comparison being made is not to Germany but to China.]
Their cars, white goods, hi-fi, clothes and much more are less costly also.
[Daphne – You know, sometimes I wonder where all you people were back in the good old days when the vast majority of us took home around Lm30 a week, and a washing-machine cost Lm500, a car was unaffordable. the most basic record-player (mono, not stereo) cost Lm90, and clothes were fabulously expensive because you had to leave Malta (and smuggle money out, or use a secret foreign bank account) to buy them. Life in 2009 is utter heaven, even if pennies have to be counted, to anyone who lived through all that.]
Our arrogant minister tells us that we are becoming a nation of secondhand, because we cannot buy new cars which THEY made the most expensive in Europe.
[Daphne – There are different ways of approaching this argument. Everywhere that space is tight and roads are congested, cars are made expensive, either by recurrent prohibitive taxes on use, or by a deterrent tax on purchase. Yet despite the ‘prohibitively’ high price of cars in Malta, the islands are teeming with them, precisely because people can afford to buy them. It takes me an hour to get from home to Valletta in the rush hour, and an hour is considered a long commute elsewhere. So what would happen if the tax on car purchase is drastically reduced or removed? Would there be fewer cars or more of them? Of course, you may have no environmental concerns about the number of cars here, so this would not be an issue where you are concerned. However, it is an issue for many.]
Everybody say that we are ” Taparsi” fl’Europa as only the blue eyed boys are benefiting.Where I live when we dust the cloth turns black and there are black little particles everywhere.( power station without filters ) I complained about Melita at Mater dei hospital and they told me take it or leave it although they are a monopoly( in the mean time everyone says they are robbing us at the hospital as the cards one buys last a day even if you use only 5 minutes ) All over Europe prices are going down because of the economic crisis but in Malta it is the opposite as cartels are left to their own devices…..and you Daphe say we should be so thankfull !
Have…too…cake….it…eat…
You want to live longer but you complain about traffic congestion, which is the direct result of overpopulation. You want a shiny hi-fi, but you don’t want a power station to plug it in to. You want higher wages, and you want to be competitive. You want a huge-arse house, but you don’t want to take a mortgage.
And prices “all over Europe” ARE NOT going down. Renting a minuscule garret costs a fricking fortune, and when your greatest worry is having a roof over your head, a hifi, a car, white goods and a wife, all fly out of the window.
I say again: Don’t confuse overpopulation with bad governance.
Ah, now we are complaining that at Mater Dei Hospital you have to pay for your private entertainment. And this when it is being provided by a private company which won the tender, helping alleviate the high cost of running a public hospital. You are free not to use the service – after all, you can still receive calls without paying.
And after watching today’s news – 800 new trading licences for this year, same number as for last year – it does not seem that people are afraid to invest. On the contrary, they are being innovative and creative in finding new trading opportunities.
This is exactly like the provebial dog with the bone in his mouth, who looks inside a well and goes for the seemingly bigger bone in the other dog’s mouth, losing everything.
Being very involved in the health care industry, I will just say one thing. People have been flocking to CTOs (Clinical Trials Organisations) where companies will pay people to be administered drugs in development against payment not just in the UK, but all over the EU and the USA. Two years ago, these companies found it hard even to bring in 10 people a month for these trials, despite the very good money offered.
People have also been flocking to the private blood fractionating banks to sell their blood for commercial plasma manufacture. And healthy but otherwise poor Adonises have become a regular feature at sperm banks.
As for people selling their kidney, it’s a very true story. National health organisations have been on the alert for people who have sold half of their usable organs for donation. Understandably, there is a huge market for this, although very clandestine and very underground. The Sunday Times (London) report is perfectly factual, although I am told that the report was understated and didn’t reflect that the reality is much worse.
Yet here in this bubble we call Malta, these reports are not believed. We think it can’t happen here. It can and it will. I have lost count how many companies I do business with, healthy companies with long histories, which have folded in the EU and the USA during the last year. The reason is invariably that their largest clients have failed to pay them, and forced them into administration.
People denigrate this government, but one has to give credit where it is due. It has done its best with the available resources, like EU funds and tax concessions, to keep employers from folding. We have no resources to fall back on except the brains and brawn of the people who work hard in this country, invariably the middle class. One also has to remember that we have a huge civil service, bloated and with low productivity, that takes up a huge chunk of our resources. Yet no one is hungry, no one is begging, and we are discussing how best to keep up with the Joneses rather than how best to survive the international crisis.
Joseph Muscat plays on the current unrealistic aspirations of those who do not have the power or the work ethic to earn more money to reach those aspirations, but who demand them by right.
He is encouraging people to be lazy, and convincing them that yes, they have the right not to economise because the government should make up for the shortfall by, among other things, forcing businesses to reduce prices, and giving even more handouts and subsidies. The man is a sham. Let’s face it. That grin on the cover of his pseudo-biography by Glen the Sycophant says it all, doesn’t it: “Qed nitnejjek bik, ghax irrid insir prim ministru.”
The PN kicks its closest in the teeth for five years, and expects them to support it come elections. So far, that has been the case. But things are changing, and unless some good people step forward and help Gonzi lead, the party is doomed. And it’s time some non-lawyers step forward. The party needs an infusion of new blood. Otherwise it is in free-fall, which is a pity for a party so focused on the common good. Let’s bloody face it. The PN transformed Malta and made it rich, compared to other places. If you don’t believe that, then you have never left this island and seen for yourself.
Non-lawyers! In Malta! Ha!
“And healthy but otherwise poor Adonises have become a regular feature at sperm banks.”
And how would YOU know that?!
Why wouldn’t I know it? It’s not as if I have never travelled, my love. I’ll have you know that I’ve just come back from a very long round trip. I saw this phenomenon in two places, one in Germany and one in France, at two privately run sperm banks which are part of two very exclusive private clinics.
Needless to say, I wasn’t asked to be part of the programme, being as far from Adolf’s ideal Aryan as fish and chips is removed from a nice Fiorentina. I will say that my kids are good looking kids, who have a handsome, and as your (expert in eugenics) sister would say, good gene-pool mother.
What really gets to me is when I hear people whining and pitying the young as they find it difficult to cope in buying and furnishing their new homes. Yet they insist on expensive designer bathrooms and kitchens, the most costly tiles and fittings, extravagant weddings, air-conditioners, plasma televisions ,while still enjoying dining out and partying.
I am much much older than Daphne, and I can assure you if they choose to accept the way of life we had their financial problems would disappear.
“The recession has posed a challenge”, she said, “but we’ve seen toy sales increase because so many people are staying home and having fun.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/10/05/sex.sells/index.html
Could pose a challenge to turnout that.
Miz DCG, you are outrageous! And dangerous. There should be a health warning attached to your blog. Because in my brief hopskip through it, I have at several points involuntarily barfed up my mouthful of wine through my nostrils. You bear a passing resemblance to the American comedienne extraordinaire, Joan Rivers, in more ways than one. I’m afraid I might get addicted if I read more…perhaps I should refrain from sipping the grape as I read or I might end up with some formidable medical condition like fibromianostrils-arsnotlessitis…