Nazis and Che Guevara – the great clichés of political metaphor
Using the Nazis and their victims as a metaphor for anything that has happened since can never be anything but grossly inappropriate. As an exercise in suffering and evil, that was beyond comparison.
It’s safe to say that the Labour Party’s news website, Maltastar, hasn’t yet got to grips with the fine art of the leading article. Its ‘leaders’ are invariably among the most inept, badly written and ill-thought-out pieces on the site – which is rather tragic, because the leading article is considered to be the proper voice of a news medium, and this particular news medium is the official voice of the Opposition party.
Maltastar’s leading article yesterday made the extraordinary claim that government minister Austin Gatt has begun to model himself on the Nazi concentration camp victim played by Roberto Benigni in the film Life Is Beautiful.
Anything less likely than Gatt playing the vulnerable victim led off on a tumbrel is hard to imagine – Adrian Vassallo dating the star of Bambii Gets It On, perhaps? Yet what really astonishes is the facile manner in which the leader-writer draws this comparison, belittling the horrors of the death camps and the suffering of those processed through them.
He or she – the writer commits the ultimate error of using the first-person ‘me’ and ‘my’ in an unsigned leading article – is not alone in this equation of the Nazi death camp with victimhood.
It is rife among the unimaginative, the small-minded and the not-particularly-bright, whose range of knowledge is not broad enough to allow for more skilful and apt descriptions and who, therefore, reach for the facile and the obvious. Nazis are, like Che Guevara T-shirts and bedroom posters, among the great clichés of political metaphor.
A daft woman of my acquaintance recently described me on Facebook – where else, given that she is 50 and thinks that a conversation on Facebook is like a conversation in the Marsa Club bar after tennis – as doing to Labour supporters what Hitler did to the Jews. I rang her immediately to enquire what she had done with the few brain-cells that were left at her disposal after she had fried the rest with LSD circa 1978 (and she was born with precious few to start with anyway).
When, I asked, had she caught me rounding up Labour supporters to gas them, burn them, cook them in ovens, use them for slave labour, and mass-murder them?
If any attempt at burning human beings had been made, I reminded her, it was against me and my family, and police suspicion fell at once on – bingo – admirers of Adolf Hitler. Or was she too thick to have gathered that?
But the thick, like the poor, will be with us always, so let’s leave her aside and concentrate on another candidate for the Nobel Prize for Science.
Maltastar’s leader-writer begins with the words “There is no cinema lover who hasn’t watched Roberto Benigni’s La Vita E’ Bella”. Well, I am one, for starters. At the time of its release, I wrote an article explaining why I would not watch the film, and drew a barrage of criticism. To this day, Benigni irritates the hell out of me.
I didn’t watch his opus for the same reason that I object to the unthinking drawing of parallels between real or perceived victims in politics and those who were persecuted by the Nazis.
But this is not a discussion about Life Is Beautiful. That’s over. It’s the past. This is a discussion about silliness and stupidity and how they should have no place on the political parties’ official organs of mass communication. A website like Maltastar, because it is the party’s shop-window, should be run by the party’s best minds and most skilled thinkers and communicators. I hate to think that this might in fact be the case.
I suspect that Maltastar has been left in the hands of a few students and others of that sort of age. It is quite possible to be young, sharp, literate, knowledgeable and a fluent writer, but Labour appears not to have understood this, and seems to assume that poor thinking and writing skills are the default position among people in their lower 20s, perhaps because this is their sole experience of that age group.
I imagine the Labour Party reasons that anything to do with the internet is for the younger generation. That is not the case at all. The internet is for everyone of any age – even for daft housewives who think that Facebook is a private space where they can gossip with their friends about people they bump into socially, like they do over coffee.
The important thing for the Labour Party to remember is that immature thinking and inept reasoning (to say nothing of poor writing) will strike a chord only with others of similar inadequacies.
SPOILSPORTS
The suspension of EU funds for students was just waiting to happen. It wasn’t a case of ‘if’ but of ‘when’, and it certainly has been a long time coming.
The administrative system is rife with hitches and difficulties for students, who must approach an application to travel overseas for a semester with the trepidation of a commando facing an assault course. It appears to be designed to put off and discourage as many students as possible, when it is supposed to do the opposite.
Demand for places overseas is low enough as it is with the whole gamut of parental objections, anxiety about living alone, fear of the unknown among those who never travelled much, and lack of character-building and self-reliance skills in the typical Maltese upbringing. You’d think that once a student has got through all that, he or she is home and dry – but no.
There’s still the major obstacle course of the administrative system to get through, the guiding principle of which appears to be ‘let’s trip them up and put them off’.
Several of the young people who went through the system told me that it seems to be designed to frustrate their plans for a term or a semester at a university elsewhere. Some of them got the impression that the administrators they had to contend with were simmering with resentment of the ‘I had no opportunities so I am going to spoil yours’ variety.
“They seemed to get a perverse pleasure out of finding reasons to be as unhelpful as possible,” one told me. “I got the impression that she (one administrator who was mentioned by name) delayed the process on purpose. She even claimed to have lost my transcript three times.”
In other cases of which I was told, students received the funds, which were supposed to help them survive abroad, after they had returned to Malta, or when they were due to return shortly.
Meanwhile, they got by on interim loans from the Bank of Mum and Dad – and if there is no Bank of Mum and Dad, as there often is not, students are left with no choice but to stay in Malta, because funds which come through in November when they are due to leave Malta in September are not of much use.
How difficult is it to understand that funds which are there to help students to study abroad should be made available to them at least a month before they leave, and not a month before they are due to return home?
I didn’t think that the accusations by students of deliberate sabotage because of passive aggression are farfetched at all. After all, I’ve been around longer in Malta than people who are half my age and know that bitterness, simmering anger, envy and resentment – summed up in the brilliant Maltese words ‘hdura’ and ‘lanzit’ – are characteristic of this society, which is precisely why we have specific words to describe the sentiments.
I suppose it is too much to expect of the authorities that they place in those positions public servants who actually like young people and who share their enthusiasm for the opportunities that they themselves never had. It’s not the fault of today’s students that people who are older than they are did not have the same choices.
So why are people who are older than they are taking it out on them? They should just be happy for them and help them make the most of it – but that would be going against the grain.
This article was published in The Malta Independent on Sunday yesterday.
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Daphne (this is continued from our previous posting)
Did you really write about the suspension of EU funds? Oh I see, the one you just uploaded. [Daphne – That was written last Saturday. It’s irrelevant when it was uploaded.]
In pure hyberbole, bent-over-backward style, it blames..ta ta.. the employees! What a joke.
Do you actually believe these employees operate in a vacuum of lanzit & hdura, without any management and political responsibility?
[Daphne – Possibly unlike you, I happen to have had direct experience of the system as a parent – THREE TIMES OVER – and I also know several young people who have gone through the system too. I therefore know exactly what I am talking about and don’t have to rely on political gossip and Super One.
Students have no dealings with the minister, or with her underlings, or even with senior civil servants. The most damage is done at the point of contact with the students: the civil servants at the university – I can’t speak about MCAST or the catering school – who are the ‘gatekeepers’ to the system.
One of my sons, almost four years ago, took the trouble of writing a detailed letter highlighting the various obstacles and shortcomings in the system and sent it to the university rector copied to the relevant EU office. He needn’t have bothered; it was no skin off his nose and he had returned to Malta already by then. He only did so because he felt he had a duty towards others who came afterwards. He didn’t so much as receive an acknowledgement. Perhaps a letter from a student wasn’t considered important.
It is precisely because the higher levels of administration and the political class are cut off from what the lower levels are doing that the lower levels do what the hell they like, knowing that the buck stops with the ‘unaware’ (or more likely, head-in-the-sand) boss. Yes, the higher levels of administration, the permanent secretary and the minister are to blame – for not putting a proper performance audit in place. But the people who really screw things up for students are a lot further down the line, I can assure you. Knowing Dolores Cristina personally, I can say that she would bend over backwards to help young people and encourage students, and it probably kills her to know that the blame for suspension of EU funds now lies at her door. She wasn’t the minister responsible at the time my son wrote that letter, incidentally.]
Do you realise that this management and political class have been there for twenty plus years?
[Daphne – Yes, I do – especially when I look at my passport and thank God for the last 20 years bar a specific 22 months. I still can’t get over the fact that I no longer live in the Libyan offshoot in which I grew up. Or in the Switzerland in the Mediterranean with which I was threatened.]
What about the head of our civil service? Doesn’t he shoulder any responsibility for the state of affairs?
[Daphne – Head of the civil service? For heaven’s sake. What next – a return to the days of micromanagement? There’s a happy medium, you know.]
But no, you write about the lanzit and hdura of employees, which whilst I’m sure exists, as a puerile attempt at muddling the issue.
[Daphne – No, Jean. It’s not at attempt at muddling the issue, but going straight to the heart of the matter.]
You profess at being in the know of private-sector employment. I can tell you what my boss would tell me if I had to blame the inefficiencies of my department on lanzit and hdura of my staff, but it would be way to rude. The buck stops with the people responsible.
[Daphne – Ah, but here’s the thing. Employees in the private sector would never dare behave that way or cause that kind of trouble, and this for two main reasons: 1. they tend to be positively motivated, unlike public servants, and 2. they know that they will be fired after a couple of warnings. Public servants at that level behave badly because they know they can and best of all, they know that when they are found out, their superiors will carry the can and be forced to resign, while they will stay on. In the private sector, you get fired alongside your boss – or even better, your boss gets to fire you.]
Anyway, it’s your blog and yes I agree you are an ‘entertainer’. Only that more often then not I find myself getting more entertained by trying to guess on what you are NOT going to write about.
[Daphne – That’s easy, Jean. Anything that’s boring. But you’re spoiled for choice for boring stuff and columnists trying to be smart by snapping at the government to show how ‘balanced’ they are. So you don’t need me as well. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There’s a lot of wisdom in that. I’d acknowledge that I’ve got a problem if I were suffering from atrophying or ageing readership, but I’m not. I seem to have acquired a whole new raft of readers who are a generation younger than I am.]
Below is an extract from Maltastar article. I must say, the authors of those leaders must have great imagination to put 87 words into one sentence – and this in an article which is supposed to keep one interested. By the time you finish reading it, you’ve forgotten how it started.
“He manifests a fear that he is no longer trusted by the PNs big guns including above all his Supremo Lawrence Gonzi while he is trying to eye the concentration camp of his own politics to try to come clean after the BWSC Power Station Extension Contract which also was piloted by Austin Gatt himself and may have brought him in the position he is now in to try and seem to act in a pro-active manner if there will be a smell of wrongdoing, possibly corruption.”
@ ciccio2010 – Is it because I am thick that I cannot understand what they are trying to say?
Rita, it must be that we are both thick then. Look at the positive side of things: at least there are 2 of us.
“bitterness, simmering anger, envy and resentment” also summarises perfectly how the adminstration and clerical staff in the Health Department treat paramedical staff, nurses, doctors and medical students, putting every obstacle in their way, and as you described, getting some perverse pleasure in the process.
Why doesn’t the government put these administrators and clerks in their place? If there’s one thing the PN will lose votes on it is this inexplicable lack of control of public servants. Surely twenty-odd years is enough time to sort this out!
“Why doesn’t the government put these administrators and clerks in their place?”
Because the government would have to do what it did to the shipyards. Fire them all and start fresh and start receiving applications from the previous workforce and weed the inefficient, lazy bunch out.
Easier said than done!
It’s the system, not the clerks.
The system has ensured that the best ‘clerks’ get employed by the private sector and just for the sake of political correctness the government has been packed with average employees.
Moreover, our centralised system means that the only person who can fire a public servant is the PM.
[Daphne – Wrong. Our public service is modelled on Britain’s and is designed to ensure a prime minister CAN’T sack a civil servant, for the obvious reason that giving a prime minister this ability would be the source of outrageous abuse and expose civil servants to the mercy of angry or resentful politicians. There is a complicated procedure for the removal of public servants which includes boards and hearings.]
The result – a ‘clerk’ who does not perform finds him/herself playing musical chairs with depts/ministries. The result is that the civil service is losing out and not the clerk.
To hell with political correctness, and decentralise the whole system. So if you need a better civil service, improve the wages so you can to attract more qualified and more experienced employees, and implement a meritocratic system where you get a job because you deserve it and not by seniority, and place a hire and fire system.
[Daphne – A hire and fire system is extremely dangerous in the public service, and you don’t need an excess of imagination to see why.]
The PM in our system can sack an employee acting on the advice of the Public Service Commission – see the PMO 10.9 … but yes as you said to reach that point it is a very lengthy process with a number of boards, etc.
I agree with you that a hire and fire system in the Public Service might be very dangerous but if this country manages to distinguish between the administrative and executive vs. the policy maker then it would be a different story.
The system as it is to date protects the slackers, it protects the under-performers, and it protects the employees who are not doing their duties.
On the other hand we need a system that protects the taxpayers and ultimately assures that the policies proposed by the people in power are properly implemented.
It’s really shocking to see the Maltese mentality towards others being a success (I’m not Maltese, but I live in Malta). They don’t believe anyone can be a success without it being a scam or knowing someone in the right places.
It’s a really sad way to be. I am the sort of person who, when hearing of somebody doing well, is genuinely happy for them.
In schools in the UK we are taught to excel and strive for the best we can. In Malta (and Maltese friends admit this) you are told to keep your head down and not to make a fuss.
You only need to see the way people react to fancy cars on the roads to see the bitterness that seeps from far too many people here. They see everything in some kind of points-scoring system. The difference in people’s attitudes towards me when I drive a friend’s car compared to when I drive my more modest car is just unreal.
[Daphne – This is not your imagination. It’s fact – a correct observation. It has been studied in anthropology, but then the attitude is common to other small and restricted societies in the Mediterranean, which have their roots in a subsistence culture. In a situation where resources are limited, whatever you get is to my detriment. If you have it, then you have taken it ‘from’ me, unfairly. And you can only have got it through patronage and connections, because that is our history and we haven’t understood the new order yet. It is the precise opposite of American culture.]
I have Maltese friends who come from successful families who became doctors here. They worked their arses off to get into medical school, rejected any kind of social life to pass exams and then continue to work and learn to help the very people who give them abuse.
So many times I heard comments like ‘Oh it makes you wonder how they got into medical school in the first place’ or ‘ well they are related to this prominent person so that must of helped them’. Its absolutely total BS. I have seen what these doctors went through first hand.
I love Malta and embrace different cultures but far too many people here need to get in the real world, pull their fingers out and become doers rather than bitter moaners!
[Daphne – Coming from the right family helps, yes, but not in the way the moaners and losers imagine it does. It helps because intelligence is genetic and hereditary, and go-getting attitudes are learned through positive role models in the home. If you grow up with successful parents, you are more likely to be successful yourself (and you can also rebel by being a total drop-out and resisting any perceived pressure by achieving precisely nothing). By the same token, the children of parents with a loser attitude – and bitter resentment is a loser attitude – tend to have a loser attitude too. They start off with the received wisdom that they can achieve nothing because they have ‘no one to help them’, and they go through life that way.]
Daphne, I would hardly call your attitude American — at least not the America you’re thinking of. You seem to think that the majority of people on this Island are members of a genetical undercast, who will never experience happiness or success, for them or their children.
[Daphne – Did I say I have an American attitude? I didn’t, because I don’t. But then neither do I have the typical Maltese attitude, and that’s bloody obvious. I wouldn’t be doing this job, for a start. I’d be keeping my head well below the parapet and doing my best to bum free rides. And now, I don’t think the majority of people in Malta are “members of a genetical undercast” – I think you mean genetic underclass there – but I do think that bitterness, envy, resentment, jealousy, an inability to cooperate with others for the greater good, the embedded belief that if somebody has something then it has been taken away from you, the family against society, etc, are defining factors of Maltese social culture. And it’s not just me saying this, either. There are anthropological studies which bear it out. We are not unique in this: there are similar studies about the isolated towns and villages of southernmost Italy (the heel bit) and the remoter parts of Greece. It’s kind of heartening to see a different attitude in the upcoming generation, unless they are sheltered from exposure to other ideas and ways of being and allow their parents to mould them in their own image.]
That’s not an American attitude, that attitude is Mediterrenean through and through. Call it the flip side of moaning and resentment.
Americans generally believe that anyone can make it if he or she works hard enough.
[Daphne – That’s why my attitude isn’t exactly American. I too believe that, but with a qualifier: you also need brains, aptitude (depending on what you’ve chosen to do) and a lot of luck. Intelligence is important in everything, though it is certainly not enough and only makes for success in conjunction with other qualities. Your remark about a genetic underclass is actually quite apt; there was abig debate about it some years ago in Britain, when commentators pointed to the development of its opposite: a genetic superclass. Very intelligent and successful people ‘mating’ with other intelligent and successful people and raising another generation of intelligent and successful people, who would in turn ‘mate’ with, you guessed it. This began to happen when people had more choice to marry where they pleased, rather than picking somebody because he or she was from the right social background, or because parents approved, or because there wasn’t much choice, or whatever. Then the debate widened to note the possible link between the so-called ‘poverty trap’ and the fact that people with a low IQ tended to marry others with a low IQ and have children who also had a low IQ, compounding the problems of the poverty trap over generations, a certain degree of intelligence being required to break out of it. A meritocracy, like that we now live in, is a great sorter-out, but the downside is that it compounds the ‘intelligent superclass’/low IQ underclass dichotomy. When you have free tertiary education and stipends, MCAST and the rest of it, smart young people can break free of what might have been a generations-long trap of labour and relative poverty, ‘mate’ with others like them, and move into a new stream of intelligence and success breeding more intelligence and success. The unfortunate aspect of this is that a definite underclass of poor people with a low IQ develops and is quite discernible. You can see it clearly in Britain, for instance. Its poster-girl is Vicky in Little Britain. ]
Well, I can’t say anything you said was wrong. Although I would like to point out that ‘G’ (the mysterious singular dimension which measures a human being’s intelligence) is still very controversial. Some psychologists also consider IQ to be a self-fullfilling prophecy, which explains some of the statistical data which backs it up — although the fact that statistical data backs it up says a lot.
But why blame the employees why the system in itself is outdated and stinks? I know people who worked in this sector, and I can assure that some of them went beyond their job requirements to ensure an excellent service.
Why should in this day and age a govt. dept. take 7-8 months to employ someone due to the red tape? See the process and you will easily realise why the government always manages to lose the best civil servants and gets stuck with inexperienced and average grads.
If a department asserts that they require a new employee, the director needs approval from his/her ministry, then approval from OPM, then it is drafted by DOI (this already takes some 3-4 weeks), published for another 4-5 weeks, interviews are done by a number of people (these are civil servants so they have other jobs to do) so they have to find a date when they can hold the interview.
Once again they need time to find and meet once again to agree on their results. Results are published and once again it takes another 10 days or so where members of the public can appeal, after all this the dept writes to the person who placed first and in the meantime s/he may have found a new job, so they write to the second, etc. This is the reality. That the red tape for the sake of political correctness is having its toll. Not to mention the lower wages govt dept offer so all the best graduates find better opportunities with the private sector.
The government invests in students, so the least thing it can do is to ensure that the civil service captures the best of them.
So I would not personally blame the employees (although there are some who fits the description you wrote – but these are not the majority), but I would first look at the system. Also, the report about this issue mentioned in your blog, highlight a number of system failures, it is true that the buck has to stop somewhere and rightly so, but after all with the kind of the current system setup, unfortunately I am afraid that this will not be the last.
Quoting: “The government invests in students, so the least thing it can do is to ensure that the civil service captures the best of them.”
The best among students opt for jobs within the private sector or abroad, precisely because they are the best workers. Thus they will be able to:
i. earn higher wages – contrary to what happens in the public service, in the private sector wages are determined according to the ease by which labour can be substituted, not by some old fashioned scale of wages, and ii. work within an environment which is free from bureaucracy, apathy, and political pressures.
It’s not like we are still living some 30 years ago where the dream of all school leavers (willing to enter the labour force) was to secure some job within the public service for life.
Nowadays only mediocre workers are satisfied with working exclusively within the civil service until reaching retirement age.
Last week my friend had his website go live and it’s going to be huge. A really fantastic idea launched at the right time.
I was blown away when I saw it because it has such a huge potential. I showed two colleagues (Swedish and British) who looked at the site and were equally blown away. My friend looked at me, smiled and said ‘Yeah, it’s going to be huge’.
I showed my Maltese colleague expecting the same reaction and he looked at me, sighed and said ‘Oh well, it won’t be long till it’s copied by a bigger company’.
I wanted to scream.
Jean asks
‘Do you actually believe these employees operate in a vacuum of lanzit & hdura, without any management and political responsibility?/
Yes, my friend they do and some of them think that they are the ministers and are untouchables. I say this from experience. I agree 100% with you that these people should be made more accountable and disciplinary actions should be taken.
However, I cannot understand the reason why you are taking a stand against Daphne on this issue. What Daphne is doing, if I understand well, is highlighting the problems which exist in all government departments, and she is right to state that this is happening due to the irresponsible attitude by public service employees.
Daphne is trying to defend us, the general public, and in this particular case she is defending people like you personally.
This is the same where curruption is concerned. The PL is always alleging that the present ministers are corrupt. However, wherever an investigation was carried out it was always the employees which were responsible and none of them ever mentioned a minister.
I tell you again that I agree with you, but you have to know that this is a culture in government deartments and it’s not easy to eliminate unless you do the same like it was done with the dockyards, like someone else rightly so pointed out.
I don’t recall any PL speaker alleging any corruption against any minister reponsible for the dockyards, and who knows why? We should thank people like Daphne who have the guts to open a blog like this one and tackle issues the way she does and give us also the opportunity to express our thoughts, which some of them are facts.
When the problem lies with one or two employees, then it is their problem. When the problem is systematic, then it is a management failure + an employee problem.
If it is impossible for a civil servant to be fired, that is a politics problem. Please do not bend over backwards to defend the PN in this matter because they are guilty of helping constituents get jobs.
[Daphne – Actually you’ll find that much of the problem at the student-point-of-contact level is indeed political: people who resent the government, the EU, the PN and the rest of it being made to implement policies which they don’t like and didn’t vote for. One of these individuals, for example, is a regular contributor on some of the vilest hate forums on the internet, and she’s not too embarrassed to use her own name, either. So yes, I agree with you that the government is too blame: for being damned stupid enough to think that people will be loyal and apolitical civil servants regardless of who they vote for (the old style). And incidentally, governments no longer ‘give out’ jobs in the civil service. The jobs in a government’s gift are political appointments only, and that for obvious reasons.]
And do not defend this by saying that the MLP did worse, because a good bunch of us on this blog barely consider the MLP / PL to be able to cook a fried egg let alone run the country.
[Daphne -I never use that argument. Hadn’t you noticed? I never compare the situation today to the situation yesterday. I compare it to the situation in other European countries right now, and I can tell you – and possibly, you would agree – that the most dedicated whiners and complainers wouldn’t survive for a year in the real life conditions of Britain, Germany, Italy, France or wherever. They would come howling back. There is too much detachment from reality here, I find.]
Yes, when there is a systematic failure, some senior heads should roll. That’s what happens in private companies and that is one of the reasons they perform much better. If a manager sees employees mucking things over, he should put in place proper business processes and make sure he has the right team.
[Daphne – I’m not that keen on comparing public with private, though I sometimes fall into the temptation of doing so myself. The raison d’etre is completely different. The private sector is governed by the profit motive. The civil service is purely administrative.]
I am not advocating a hire and fire system, certainly not in the proper sense of the term, which is how American companies work. However being fired from your job if you are not performing should be a very real possibility for everyone.
[Daphne – That would really worry me, because who and how to assess performance? The modus operandi is completely different to that of a private or public company or corporation. What’s to stop a vengeful government minister blackmailing a civil servant with the loss of his or her job, or actually kicking them out purely for spite? Having a tribunal won’t help, I don’t think, and to rely on the power of the media and fear of electoral losses is a bit risky. One to think about, anyway.]
How refreshing to see someone else share my view that “La vita e’ bella” is something Benigni should be ashamed, not proud of.
The impression I have got from various dealings with government departments is that the primary objective of the civil servant on the other side of the counter/desk is how to shoot down your query/objection/application whatever due to a missing document or signature, or being handed in at the wrong department.
They really get peeved when, after doing your homework, you hand in a perfect, boilerplated unassailable request which cannot be refused for any sane reason whatsover and so they have got to do some work.
Just a fortnight ago I walked into a government office at 3.00 pm to find all the staff under starter’s orders behind their cleared desks, computers switched off, handbags at the ready, to be smugly told by one of the employees that they only accept applications like mine between 8.00am and 2.30pm.
No amount of persuasion or cajoling on my part could make them take my application for processing to be called for during their normal office hours. Afterwords I found out that they left their office at 4.30pm as they worked through their lunch hour. So one and a half hours staring at the wall indulging is desultory chatter.
The lower the grade, starting with the ubiquitous messenger, the more negative the approach. I have heard some horror stories about the WSC customer care staff at their Luqa office (not exactly central having been moved there from City Gate due to the project).
Firing civil servants is not such a lengthy and complicated process after all. If proceedings for dismissal by the Public Service Commission do not succeed all that is necessary is compulsory retirement “on grounds of public interest. I do not know of many instances but my case was one of them. It took me twelve years to reverse that deliberate “miscarriage of justice”!
The raison d’etre might be different but that only matters at the strategic level. Even then they are not that different. The excellent private companies nowadays are not just about profit maximisation; the buzzword nowadays is delivering value. That is a word that many government departments would do well to learn.
Operationally there are even less differences. What is so different between clerical work in a bank and clerical work for a government department? Very little I am sure.
Regarding your points about measuring performance, there are plenty of ways to do this. A job carries a specification (and this tends to be more strict in government work). An employee can be measured on how effectively he carries out that work. A manager in a bank cannot just fire an employee he doesn’t like, but they can fire employees who perform badly. It should be the same with civil servants. Keeping the bad apples around has a double negative effect. Firstly they do not perform good work and secondly they destroy other’s motivation to work.
And please, do not say that the government does not dish out jobs. They do…I personally know instances before the last election where definite contracts where transformed into indefinite contracts as a little gift. It might not happen as much as it used to, but it definitely still happens. The civil service might not trade in money but it sure trades in votes. The classic threat of phoning the minister’s PR people to complain still works wonders in fact.
Btw, you are right, you do not usually use the “but look how it was in the 80s” argument. It crops up extremely often when discussing politics however so I automatically defended against it.
I frequently visit Mellieha and because parking is very difficult in Borg Olivier Street I try and park in Misrah iz-Zjara tal-Papa where the police station is located. This square is always full of cars belonging to a car-hire business situated in this same square. The owner of this garage parks his vehicles outside his garage with posters promoting his business.
I also noticed cars for sale parked in this square belonging to the same garage. This is being done in full view of the police and sometimes also of enforcement officers employed by Transport Malta.
To my knowledge all cars avaiable for hire have to be parked inside the garage and not on the road. However, in this case it seems that no one is interested in taking any action although this garage is situated precisely next door to the police station.
Is this a case of not rocking the boat or you scratch my back and I will scratch yours ?
@ Riya I wonder if the Police Commissioner knows about all this!
I hope that 007 is aware of this siruation! You were totally right to say 100 Euros in an envelope my friend.
007, is the situation!