Mind your own business
Here’s the Maltese tax-payer who thinks that ‘the EU’ gets its money off a tree to give to its unaccountable commissioners as pocket money, and who hasn’t yet realised that Malta is part of ‘the EU’ itself.
This comment appears beneath the story in which John Dalli told a reporter that it’s none of his business who he engages or does not engage as part of his cabinet.
timesofmalta.com A. Zahra
The fact is that Mr. Dalli is appointing his own private secretariat. Who he approaches is nobody’s business. Any journalist may ask but Mr. Dalli is not obliged to reply. There is no arrogance in this. After all the appointees are not being paid by us but by Mr. Dalli himself out of funds provided by the EU.
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“After all the appointees are not being paid by us but by Mr. Dalli himself out of funds provided by the EU.”
So I ask, who exactly provide the EU funds?
So I answer, us , the tax payers!
So, YES, it’s ARROGANCE, and at it’s BEST!
As they say ‘If ignorance hurts the guy must cry all day.’
Cm’on Daphne, we know this is a ‘developed’ country peopled by ‘developing’ minds. That’s what makes it so loveable.
They see it that way because they are hardly ever reminded of outgoing funds – only ‘EU funds’ exist and that invariably means ‘incoming funds’.
[Daphne – You miss the point, Mr Sharon. Those funds come from tax-payers, wherever in the EU those tax-payers might live, in Malta or elsewhere. Dalli is an EU Commissioner-designate. He is answerable to tax-payers all over the EU, and not just in Malta. He has quite obviously not yet made that quantum mental leap.]
@Daphne Quite.
You are the one who is missing (or fudging) Kev’s point. And the point is that the commenter said what he said because in Malta, the money allocated to MIC supposedly to inform the Maltese electorate about the pros and cons of EU membership and instead used them for an all-out, no holds barred YES campaign.
[Daphne – They were not used for a Yes campaign. They were used for an information campaign. I happen to remember this quite well. I think you are a little silly to suggest that Malta had no No campaign and nobody alerting people to the deep perils of EU membership. We had an entire political party doing that – the opposition party, no less.]
No mention was ever made of Malta’s contributions – only the benefits.
So it is no wonder that people like A Zahra think that the EU’s funds fall from heaven like manna.
We had two parties (the PN and AD) promoting the YES vote and one party (the LP) promoting an alternative, such as it was.
We also had the MIC, funded from everybody’s taxes which was supposed to present a balanced view and which, instead, was part and parcel of the YES campaign in concert with the PN.
Those are the facts.
[Daphne – No, Twanny. The fact is that there were and still are more pros to joining the EU than there were and still are cons. People like you expected the MIC to invent cons where none existed, or to ‘balance’ the cons against the pros. Hence, if the MIC comes up with 50 reasons why Malta should join the EU, then it should also magic out of thin air 50 reasons why Malta shouldn’t join. The list of benefits in being an EU member was and still is much, much longer than the list of negatives. If you couldn’t take that on board – and clearly still can’t – then tough. If there were more negatives you can bet your last cent the Labour Party would have trotted them out. But it didn’t. Sicilian hairdressers, anyone? AIDS?]
Yes, indeed, MIC’s was an “information campaign” not a Yes campaign. Do you always believe you’re speaking to idiots, Daphne? Or do you truly believe such idiocy?
Who’s missing which point?
[Daphne – There speaks the man behind No2EU.]
Not so. You of all people, should know that even the way you phrase a communicatio and the type you use can convey a message. And even on matters of hard fact you are wrong. See if you can fins one single MIC publication that explains Malta’s contribution to the EU in detail.
The MIC was 100% on the YES bandwagon. That is not even debatable.
PS: I see you were one of those who swallowed the “KMB said no to EU because of AIDS” spin. Who would have thought it?
[Daphne – I was there, Twanny. I remember sitting down over coffee with a friend who was at the British High Commission here and laughing so much over the ‘jekk nidhlu fl-Ewropa ingibu l-AIDS’ speech that KMB had just made that I spilled that coffee all over myself. It was around 1990. There was something else too that he said that time: about how we shouldn’t join Europe because Maltese women are so houseproud and in Europe everyone lives in rabbit hutches. Do you remember that one? Yes, right, Malta’s contributions to the EU weren’t explained….I think what you should really be looking at here is that your party is now led by Mr No to Europe himself, the one who needed hindsight to see that the Yes vote won the referendum, and the one who still hasn’t said he was wrong about EU membership. No, all he says – if you listen carefully – is that ‘heqq, we’re in Europe now and we have to accept it’. That’s a damn sight different to saying, ‘Sorry, buster, I was wrong – and stupid.’ Mur arana issa, li kieku ghaddiet tieghu. Kieku konna qeghdin sew.]
Twanny,
Your comments show that, despite what Joseph Muscat says, the Labour rank and file has not yet come to terms with Malta being an EU member.
U mbaghad jghidu dawn li huwa ahna li kull meta jkun hemm l-elezzjonijiet tal-MEPs nfakkruhom li kienu kontra l-Ewropa.
GHADHOM kontra l-Ewropa.
U halluna. Ghandhom tahwid!
BTW Daphne, inzertajt qed nara l-gbir tal-bierah (prosit lil kulhadd :-)) u ma stajtx ma niddarras meta rajt lil Arrigo jaghti d-donazzjoni tieghu. Tela’ kiesah u biered (l-ohrajn kollha waqfu jghidu kemm taw u jawguraw il-festi t-tajba) kemm ta l-envelop u telaq. Veru li l-aqwa l-flus, imma deher li ffastidjat; issa ma jkollux ghand min imur ‘iqerr’ la ser jitlaqlu Dalli u jibqa’ jzomm go fih.
Nispera li elezzjoni ohra jiehu l-lezzjoni li haqqu.
By “balanced” I meant, of course, a fair and true picture of what membership meant for Malta. And the MIC did anything but that. I know, you know it and everybody who is not a fanatic knows it.
Some good news on what otherwise has been a dull and grey day.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tv_and_radio/sports_personality_of_the_year/8410840.stm
In my opinion this is just an unfair play of words.
Whilst no final decisions have been taken, I think Mr Dalli is not bound to give any explanations. Once the members of his team are finally appointed then everyone will know who has been picked.
After all he is not obliged to involve the rest of us in the decision making process, just like the PM is not obliged to do the same when choosing which EU commissioner to appoint.
Missu lahaq flok Dr Gonzi dal-kiesah. Konna nigu ottu b’Muscat u Dalli zewg silgiet tal-Alaska. X’differenza mill-karizma ta’ Dr Gonzi.
U ma nistax nifhem kif Dr Gonzi qed ihallieh ibazwar is-sistema tat-tabib (konna weghda b’xejn) u jhallieh jitlaq u jhalli t-tahwid ghal min jilhaq floku.
Jara x’jaghmel Dalli qieghed biex iwaqqa’ l-kelma ta’ Dr Gonzi fuq li s-sahha se tibqa’ b’xejn. U zgur issa jaffegg kollox u Dr Gonzi joqghod jara kif se jirranga s-sitwazzjoni warajh.
Did anyone ever doubt that the vast majority of Labour Party voters are still anti EU?
And you have the temerity to accuse ME of still obsessing about the EU issue.
Seen any Sicilian hairdressers around? KMB, his side-kick and Sammy Meilaq are still pontificating on Smash TV. KMB with that perennial frown as if he had some lemon rind stuck between his teeth. Anybody ever seen him laugh? My grandma used to say that his frown could turn milk into gbejniet.
If you ask Joseph Muscat he might still remember some of the cons of the EU from the referendum campaign. But maybe that was the time without his makeup.