Well I disagree,

Gordon Brown inherited a disastrous situation in a disastrous time – the worst recession since the 1930s.

All things considered I think he did reasonably well.

Wrong. So wrong. Malta needs more intelligent people, whichever field they come from. And I’m not impressed by the thinking abilities of Maltese engineers.

Just because you see no point, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. All one has to do is understand what really happened in the aftermath of the sub-prime debacle which everyone seems to refer to now as simply an economic recession.

Daphne has already gone on record as being a supporter of free markets. When you have a real free market, failures are not bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions from the public purse, but are left to fail, that’s what the system is all about.

Why add the additional Burden of financial moral hazard (new term for you to learn) to the existing one of deadbeat social security spongers that Mr. Cameron so eloquently derided?

Instead of guaranteeing depositor’s funds and letting the banks go to the wall, the British tax paying public now has to fork out just that ‘little’ bit extra for a whole lot longer, while still paying out to the deadbeats and contend with (still failing) banks which refuse to lend the same money that they so graciously accepted from them.

This is nothing to do with conspiracy theory (your new buzzword for the millenium?), just plain fact.

If you actually believe that any countries’ policies are based on the will of the people and not of special interest groups,
err…what can I say?

Baxxter, engineers create something and are paid for a product which you use and is tangible. More engineers more production more money from real production.

Lawyers, on the other hand deal in the tertiary sector which depends on people who work in the other sectors.

What would happen if there were no engineers? The world would stop.

On the other hand ask yourself what would happen without lawyers.

Both are needed, but we have to strike a balance.Malta needs more engineers and less lawyers.

[Daphne – There you go again, reading and not understanding. I did not compare the two. I said that our political leaders lack eloquence. And I also said that this is what we need to hear, not stuff about living wages. I hadn’t realised that the Malta Labour Party has an ideology. There is no indication of any.]

Gonzi vs Cameron would have been more appropriate. It is not your fault, however, that you had to make a do with Muscat given that Gonzi, unlike Cameron, is not the typical quotable intellectual since he hardly ever makes clear-cut political statements on which one could take a stand.

British politicians assume that the audience at home or reading the papers has more than a few brain cells firing at the same time, while here we seem to reduce our arguments to the least common denominator. But then again, the same applies for most homilies, radio discussions and phone-ins. We seem to work on the premise that we need to pander to the largest audience available and that is never going to be the thinking public.

Back on the subject of Cameron’s message of “go out and work”, and “nobody owes you a living”, I cannot help feeling that neither party here in Malta will ever have the guts to say that. The nanny state is part and parcel of our collective makeup now. Whether it’s the residual damage of colonial rule or not is a moot point. I always cringe whenever a party leader boasts as to how much money from the government coffers is given out in social benefits. Maybe the government sees it as being benevolent and caring; I view it as a sure sign of a sick society that cannot stand on its own two feet and needs dole outs to survive. The respective political parties should boast when the economy is so good, when employment is so high, when so called disability pensions are so low, that the need for social services is less than it is today! But that would take me back to my initial argument, that only the few can undertsand that argument, the rest would consider it as the governement being tight with its money! Will things change? I’m not holding my breath!

Ok, ok, I know it’s The Guardian.

And then his almighty gaffe claiming he saved the world from economic destruction!

As to engineers . where are all the Maltese construction companies who, a year ago, claimed it’s impossible for SmartCity Malta to build and complete a block in 12 months?

Was it Maltese engineers who achieved this? No, it was FOREIGN leadership.

We are just miles behind in the construction industry , be it office blocks , apartments or road building. Just look how long it took to complete Tigne Point – 8 years?

Ray, we can keep dreaming. The reality in Malta is that both of our major political parties are too far to the left on socio-economic matters and too far to the right on matters of civil liberties.

Not much choice actually between the two. One of the major differences that I see (besides thinking by myself whoever is more competent of the two blocks), is that one party is steadfastly pro-Europe (and has an open mind towards globalisation in general), while the other is still a bit of a Euro-phobe.

Xeno-scaremongering comes to mind. In my opinion, the PL (if in fact it is genuinely pro-EU) has still not convinced its followers that they are whole heartedly pro-EU.