Il-LiFFFFFinKKKKK weyCHHH ta' Joseph Muscat
Come the revolution, the one on the right is going to have to do a Silvio Berlusconi and wear a bandana round his head.
Not to bore on about it or anything, but if Joseph Muscat is going to bang on about the living wage, hadn’t he better learn how to pronounce it?
It’s a V, a hard G, an A and then a soft G – not an F, a K, an E and a CH.
These things really set my teeth on edge. I know it’s difficult for those raised speaking only Maltese to get to grips with the V sound except at the start of a word and with a hard G at the end of a word, because Maltese turns the one to an F and the other to a K.
But it will come with practice. Muscat has a treadmill at home. If he finds it among the heaps of teddy-bears, gingerbread men and gay professors from the Sorbonne, he might usefully run on it and repeat in time with his paces: living wage, living wage, living wage.
The interesting thing is that the shallow so-and-so actually admitted on Bondi+ tonight that he ripped the idea straight off Ed Miliband, and that he hadn’t given a thought to how he would implement it before announcing it. He still hasn’t.
Prime Minister Muscat plans to dole out an extra EUR50 a week to each of the 40,000 people on the public sector payroll – you know, just to get their votes – but he hasn’t a clue as to where he’ll get the extra TWO MILLION EUROS EVERY WEEK the Treasury will need for this harebrained scheme, because what do you know, he’s also going to reduce taxation.
By any chance, does Michelle administer the family’s finances? Did this man ever hold down a summer job at his father’s fireworks business, doing a little bit of light book-keeping? Does he have an O-level pass in accountancy?
I don’t think so.
Din nahseb gejja bhal tas-CET ta’ Sant. The other day I pulled a book off the shelf and a propaganda card from the 1996 general election fell out (I had been using it as a bookmark):
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GET RID OF VAT.
We voted – well, I didn’t – to get rid of VAT and then 22 months later we beat a path to the polling-booth to get rid of Sant.
And that’s what will happen again. We’re going to vote – well, not me – for our EUR50 a week fun-money, then spend the following two years in hell as a former Maltastar journalist and a former police inspector, with a little help from their friends, work out how to pay the bills. And half the workforce will be taxed even harder to pay for the fun-money ‘liffffinkkk weych’ of the other half, until the economy grinds to a halt and then reverses, as it did with CET.
It’s like watching somebody hurtle straight to the edge of a cliff.
And do you know what the worst bit is? There won’t be a Dom Mintoff to bring down Muscat’s government after 22 months when the inevitable disaster ensues. We’ll have to struggle through the entire five years.
Actually, there’s an even worse bit: in 1996, we weren’t in the European Union, so our problems were not compounded by a mass exodus of the young, the best and the bright as things here became intolerable. Now, when the going here gets rough, there is a very real chance that the people we need here will be trying their chances elsewhere, safe from the madness of Muscat’s living wage.
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Thanks to this windfall they’ll be able to afford a “hobza tal-islajsd”
On the whole I thought that Joseph Muscat looked uncomfortable throughout the programme. Apparently he still hasn’t learnt how to field awkward questions without coming across as evasive and ambiguous.
He was more eager to speak about (against) the government and the PM than about his own party, but Lou Bondi wasn’t going to let him wriggle out of the corners he painted himself into.
1. “And do you know what the worst bit is? There won’t be a Dom Mintoff to bring down Muscat’s government after 22 months when the inevitable disaster ensues.”
Would it not be Alfred Sant’s turn to bring the government down and attempt his political comeback?
2. Daphne, you suggest Joseph practises his V and G on the thread mill. I’d add that as he gasps and sweats while he reaches for his vocal V and G, he will experience in first person what the economy will go through if he is given the opportunity to introduce the living wage.
The sort of people who make up the bulk of the public sector payroll think that businesses grow money on trees or by turning on secret taps in their backyards.
So all they’ll see when they’ve got that ballot-sheet before them is their fifty euros a week and the assumption that tal-business can always find the money to hand over to the taxman to pay for it.
And that’s precisely why this country is screwed.
Is Joseph’s next big thing going to be Peter Serracino Inglott’s “People First Economics”? He referred to it with some excitement on Bondi+.
Reminds me of the Ic-Cittadin L-Ewwel.
Watching right now and with two thirds still to go I say it’s either Bondi has lost his touch, or Muscat is learning fast.
Ibdel it-tyres, Lou – qed tiskiddja, man.
Muscat is learning fast, eh? That makes a change from his predecessor who said he was learning on the job as PM.
I agree with Kev. Lou should have asked Joseph Muscat about the global conspiracies involving the use of quantitative easing to devalue our money, the Soviet superstate, the Builderbergers (no, not hamburgers) and the American libertarian movement.
Lou’s questions about declarations made about the Chief Justice, about whether judges should live a lavish lifestyle with large houses, Joseph Muscat’s vested interest in the fireworks industry where so many Maltese lives were lost this year, corruption, the living wage, divorce etc were totally irrelevant to the Maltese people.
Oh but the chummy buddy-talk overture about “Kif kien is-salf tieghek, Joseph? Kif inhi sieqek?” was certainly irrelevant. And that sort of approach sets the tone for the rest of the interview. Very professional indeed, Bondì.
[Daphne – I think the bit about the leg was pretty good. I agree that the chumminess is off-putting, but then civility never is. Reno Bugeja is very civil, for example, and it works to his advantage.]
We need to re-learn the art of being civil without resorting to first names and familiarity in this country. As for Reno Bugeja, he’s the least worst interviewer I suppose but he takes “devil’s advocate” to mean “pretending to be thick”.
[Daphne – I agree with you about using first names in interviews with politicians. I wrote about this a few times. The protocol is that, even if you know the politician personally and call him ‘Joseph’ or ‘Lawrence’ in private, on television and in any other public/official scenario, it shoukl always be ‘Dr Muscat’ and ‘Prime Minister’.]
That part about how Joseph had spent his summer was very effective. It was the way for Lou to get to talk about Joseph’s leg incident.
In fact, Lou was brilliant to pull Joseph’s leg with that one.
I would of course have preferred you paraphrasing me correctly, Ciccio2010, but given that we’re talking about jesters and clowns, I’d say you weren’t bad.
Mhux obvju li se jkun ‘chummy’? Mela l-hobz ma jibqax jindilek bil-butir jekk jilhaq Joseph pirrministrru?
Min jaf kieku nsejjahlek “Kev” waqt intervista…
I think many of the talented young people of Malta will flee the island. The island isn’t big enough to handle that amount of brain drain. Sadly the average PL supporter will not understand that.
Who are the gay professors from the Sorbonne?
[Daphne – The ones who drop by just by chance when Joseph and Michelle are being interviewed, as Jose Herrera might put it, At Home.]
Where did this thing about the gay professors come out? I had not spotted it, and you never posted a blog specifically about it.
[Daphne – Oh, I’ve written about it many times. My colleague Marie Benoit dispatched one of her people to interview ‘Joseph and Michelle at home’, for a magazine, and what do you know – we heard how the house is full of Michelle’s teddy-bears, how Michelle makes gingerbread men, and then – oh what an amazing coincidence, ding-dong the doorbell goes and a token gay couple drops in to visit, purely by chance and to speak French with their hosts: a professor from the Sorbonne and his make-up artist boyfriend. Talk about obvious.]
Well, maybe Marie Benoit thought that the plebs would be impressed.
Thanks, Daphne, that is now much clearer. It is a pity we do not get these coincidence visits during the interviews on Bondi+.
Still waiting for Profs E Scicluna ‘s reaction to this living wage fantasy.
We have to wait some more. News travels slowly to and from Brussels.
This lif- in waych is pure economic tomfoolery.
If, God forbid, anything so daft is ever attempted we will end up having to eat Weiwei’s sunflower seeds when he has finished with them at Tate Modern.
This guy is trapped in Super One journalist class.
Why “journalist”? I feel that is to big a word for tle Leader of the progressives.
I am trying hard to source the 4 million a week needed for the Living Wage.
Will it be related to this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8057885/Lord-Browne-review-cost-of-university-tuition-will-hit-36000.html
Perhaps he plans to raid his daddy’s bank account.
What I loved best about his living wage “plans” was: “Il-Gvern jista’ jgħin permezz li jagħti rikonoxximent lil dawk il-kumpaniji li jagħtu l-living wage fil-public procurement”. Excuse me? I think Commissioner Barnier might think otherwise…
Oh, and by the way, “ħobża tal-islajs tiswa ninety cents”…
I found this poem by an American poet, Richard Armour – 1906-89, published in the London Sunday Times and it’s called Money. I believe it is very adapt now that the living wage is an issue in local politics.
That money talks,
I’ll not deny,
I heard it once:
It said “Goodbye”.
I have discussed the living wage matter with my fellow masters students at university here in London. They all agreed that Labour can say anything they like when not in government, really.
Once Labour are in government, well, then they can do whatever they want and say that the living wage is not really feasible. Back to square one…again.
Hopefully Sant will fill the void that Mintoff left behind him. It would be a redeeming factor in his favour in my eyes anyway.
Michael Falzon wrote a good article for The Sunday Times (3rd October), proving exactly how stupid the idea of a living wage is.
It’s a shame the good people (how many are there?) in opposition speak up when they don’t have much influence!
In my humbe opinion there is only one word valid for Muscat’s living wage proposal: ‘farce’.
I need to know whether there is even one international company that will still invest in Malta when it knows that this is how it will have to do business under Joseph Muscat’s government.
What about the €5 per person as financial assistance?
That’s a deal. It’s Euro 5 to finance both major parties and the other lot. Contrast that with the Labour’s SMS charge of Euro 6.99 for a one-party membership and 1 ice-cream.
Exactly! If that bastard tries to ruin my career prospects with a New Labour style socio-economic experiment, I will look for prospects away from these shores.