Joseph Muscat's cant in The Sunday Times
If Joseph Muscat were a woman, I’d call him a brazen hussy.
I have as much sympathy for Muscat Junior and Muscat Senior as I would have for a family of crack dealers who give donations to Caritas and talk about how they want to help addicts.
So Muscat Senior snatched a petard from a boy who was about to blow himself up, did he? I’m impressed. What was the alternative – walking on and leaving the kid to kill himself? And he was the one who probably sold the stuff that went into making that petard in the first place.
Fascinating, wasn’t it, that Muscat Junior somehow managed to write his thousand words of cant without using the sentence ‘My father is a leading importer of fireworks and fireworks chemicals.’
Instead he told us that he’s a humble salesman. Yes, that’s right. A salesman. Whoever wrote that article for him (and take my word for it, he didn’t write it) was disingenuous in calling Salvu Muscat a salesman because he sells things – and without telling us that those things are fireworks and the chemicals that go into them.
Salvu Muscat is a MERCHANT. If he were to employ men to knock on the doors of fireworks factories to pick up orders for chemicals – and he probably does – those would be SALESMEN.
Joseph Muscat applied for a MEPA permit for a house with a swimming-pool while still in his 20s. Who or what was going to pay for it? His Super One pittance? Or profit from the sale of fireworks chemicals?
The hypocrisy is sickening. Muscat claims he wants stricter regulations so that people aren’t blown up. Really? Well, if he had any conscience at all, he would start by selling the family fireworks business. It’s just too bad that it isn’t a limited liability company and so we can’t look up the shareholders’ names. We might discover some transfixing information about a business owned by one man in his 70s who has just the one child who happens to be leader of the Opposition.
So he lived in fear of his father dying, did he? Don’t make me laugh. His father sold chemicals. He didn’t make fireworks. If his father was ever going to be blown up, it would have been while on a selling visit to those who make them.
His father sold the stuff that other people used to blow themselves up. Sold? He still does. And when he no longer runs the business, unless it is sold off it will pass to his son.
I see no reason why it would be sold. It makes pots of money and allows Joseph Muscat to keep living the life of Riley while ostensibly on a salary.
It tells you everything you need to know about the situation when you read that ‘this humble salesman’ and heroic saviour of small boys referred all press questions to his lawyer.
And what in God’s name was that revolting charade on Super One earlier tonight? It was straight out of the William Hague School of Public Relations: Joseph Muscat’s second attempt of the day at drawing public sympathy, after I revealed that he profited and still profits from a fireworks merchant business and that he spent the last week cruising about the Med, courtesy of Norman Hamilton, while telling us that he was indisposed with a leg problem.
There he sat, with that tad-daqqiet ta’ harta expression unique to those who have been mollycoddled from birth, telling us how much ‘Michelle’ bled during pregnancy and how he used to wash her.
Utterly, utterly gross. No gentleman would ever say anything like that, even with his wife’s consent.
What next – a rundown of Michelle’s menstrual cycle? Failed attempts at pregnancy leading to IVF? Oh sorry, we’ve had that already, when he was last out on the hustings trolling for votes.
Perhaps he should have learned a lesson from William Hague and his recent attempt at deflecting attention from rumours about his room-sharing with a male aide by telling the world about his wife’s many miscarriages. He ripped away at his wife’s privacy and exposed all those intimate details to take the heat off him. And also, of course, as an indirect way of saying that despite what people think, he’s not gay because he had sex with his wife. Here’s the proof: she got pregnant even if there’s no baby to show for it.
The reaction to this unsavoury stratagem was widespread distaste.
Many people are instinctively wary of those who, like William Hague and Joseph Muscat, use private pain for public gain. I am one of them. The subtext is that nothing is sacred to them.
It says a lot that Joseph Muscat hid from the public the fact that he was raised on the profit from fireworks chemicals but gave that same public a detailed description of how his wife bled during pregnancy and how he washed her. We should perhaps think ourselves lucky that he stopped short of pointing out where the bleeding occurred, just in case somebody ran away with the notion that it was somewhere fairly easy to wipe up, like her foot.
I apologise for only telling you what I think now, when I know that some of you have been waiting for me to say something about it, but I was out all day and he was the last thing on my mind.
13 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
‘Whoever wrote that article for him (and take my word for it, he didn’t write it)’
My thoughts exactly. And nobody from the usual Kurt gang (identified by the use of GonziPN or !!!!) had any input either. I first guessed that maybe somebody is finally earning her keep, but the way certain ‘delicate’ matters, were glossed over, makes me think otherwise. I would bet on a half-decent lawyer, which excludes our friend the inspector.
[Daphne – No. It was definitely not Marisa, whose ‘style’ and usage are typically Sacred Heart circa 1970. I’d recognise something she’s written; her articles always set my teeth on edge with their girlish gushing and non sequiturs. That piece was written by a man.]
My guess is that some form of ad hoc emergency meeting was held and the article was drafted and vetted, everyone putting in his suggestions. Although there are personal details in the article, it gives out the feeling of being very impersonal.
One thing is certain. there would have been no article in The Sunday Times if Daphne had not written about Joseph Muscat’s father.
Mario Vella?
The article was written by a spin doctor.
It is designed to appeal to the emotions in favour of Mr. Muscat.
We are immensely grateful for this blog. You, a lone blogger (no offence intended) without any resources or any corporate backup, is able to so quickly unmask the hypocrisy of the corporate media.
The Times (purposely or due to inadequate staff) failed to inform its readers about the dirty business of Joseph Muscat’s father and waited until you had broken the news to seek him out for comments.
This blog’s effectiveness is vindicated by the fact that Muscat felt compelled to write a damage limitation piece for publication in The Sunday Times, and The Sunday Times felt compelled to replace a regular column (Fr. Peter’s) with it.
At this point, The Times must realize that its reluctance to tackle the so-called elephant(s) in the room will tarnish its historic reputation.
In a matter of just a few months, The Times avoided certain stories (Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera, the Muscat family business, etc) while it pushed others to embarrass the PN administration (Piano, Sliema, etc).
Unlike 1996, this time the internet will fill the void and counteract the systematic bias and hidden agendas of certain newspapers and their employees.
[Daphne – I have it on good authority that Peter Serracino Inglott has been indisposed for around a month, and that’s the reason his column hasn’t been carried.]
I couldn’t care less about what nooks and crannies this pathetic Joey has been washing. This was just a cheap exercise at deflecting public attention.
I want to know what detailed plans he has to make Malta a better place all round in two years’ time.
There were several deaths caused by fireworks in these last two years since Muscat has been PL leader. Why did he write only now on the need for stricter regulation?
[Daphne – Because last Monday, while he was off cruising with Michelle, I decided it was high time I told our so-called national media reporters that, far from being the son of a labourer as he likes to make out, he’s the son of a rich merchant who freights in roughly half of Malta’s requirements in fireworks chemicals and sells them to those who make fireworks. That’s why Joseph Muscat has the air of the spoiled rich kid about him – because he is one. Then when he got back last Wednesday he thought he had better do something about it.
And I’m guessing that the dwarf jester at the court of King Joseph, Kurt Farrugia, hasn’t a clue where Bidnija is despite issuing instructions to the Labour media to refer to me as the Bidnija witch. If he did, he would know that Bidnija sits just above Burmurrad, and that if I walk down the lane behind my house I’m in San Pawl Milqi in five minutes. So to me, the Labour leader is a local boy, it-tifel tad-Doggy. And that’s how I know that he’s working-class all right, but working-class with pots of money from the family fireworks business.]
I have a nephew who when younger used to pronounce the word “pathetic” with such roundness and cosmic tone that it really exceeded the description intended by the word itself, that I thought no action could merit that address!
That is until I read Joey’s lament.
This must be more pathetic than “hobbuha ghax thobbkom” amongst others, apart from being utterly nonsensical.
Any clue as to who was the fireworks chemicals supplier to that loony in Naxxar who was the cause of that terrible explosion which killed a woman and destroyed her home?
Joseph’s story of the young lad with the petard raises many more questions than answers.
Was there a proper police investigation after the incident (a man had half the palm of his hand blown off) and if not, why not?
Where and how did the boy come across a petard?
Who was responsible for the safe-keeping and distribution of those petards? Who was expected to keep a log of what petards actually ignited and which did not go off? If there was no police investigation why was the incident swept under the carpet?
[Daphne – You know what? I don’t believe him. And the clue is that he referred to the boy as ‘unknown’. Picture the scene: a boy bangs a petard against a wall. A man yells at him to drop it and then takes it off him. A commotion ensues. The petard explodes. And nobody witnesses this and identifies the child? I don’t think so. Another reason I don’t believe him: if a petard goes off in your hand, you don’t lose a bit of your palm. You die. Or you lose your face, your stomach and half your body.]
I’d like to ask who fills out all those documents for Salvu Muscat to bring all those chemicals in from China? There is lots of paper work to do. I don’t think he is able to do it, so maybe Joe does it for him.
Daphne, I wase so happy to see Muscat’s half-page yesterday, because I knew you’d give me something good to read and absolutely slate it. Thanks.
MISSIER JOSEPH KIEN JAHDEM IN-NAR UKOLL.