Better an increase in salary to nine people than a Living Wage right across the public sector payroll
All of this begs the question, of course, as to why Joseph Muscat wishes to sell people the canard that increasing the salary of nine cabinet ministers is a great burden on the economy, but increasing wages and salaries right across the board on a public sector payroll of tens of thousands, while ‘persuading’ other employers to do the same, is fine.
Those who listen carefully, instead of just skimming the surface of things, will have noticed that he has now stopped banging on about salary increases for MPs, no doubt because his own MPs have put a nice, big rocket beneath him and told him that he can do what he bloody well likes with his money but they’re keeping theirs.
Now, he’s talking only about pay increases to ministers, trying to shift the heat away from his own MPs, who will be keeping their extra money after all and hoping that we don’t notice they haven’t given it to charity or told gONziPn to stuff it….into a cushion.
If we’re talking lack of foresight in this sorry debacle, how about if we stop and think for a moment about the lack of foresight of a party leader who announces, as soon as he hears about the salary increase (he says) and with parliament as his witness, that he will give his to charity and his people will do the same?
He is free not to accord his wife the basic respect of consulting her before taking a big decision about their income (though the messages it gives us about his idea of marriage are negative), as she may well have consented to being a doormat to his ego, and this by his own admission in an interview with The Malta Economic Update of all things.
But he was not free to commit his MPs in front of an audience and without consulting them or getting their consent.
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When Muscat was elected leader of the PL, he carried on as an MEP for a few months. I wonder if he was collecting his Opposition Leader salary while still on the European Parliament payroll?
[Daphne – Don’t forget that Joseph Muscat wasn’t elected by The People, and that he couldn’t become Opposition leader for some time after he was elected party leader. The Constitution doesn’t give a damn about whether you are the party leader or not. The only thing it cares about is that you have a seat in the house. And he didn’t. So there was a major crisis there until that found that sucker Joseph Cuschieri and browbeat him into giving up his ghas-sahha tal-partit. But isn’t this just typical of the Labour Party’s ‘do first and think later’ approach? Imagine allowing somebody to contest the party leadership when they don’t have a seat in the house. What were they planning on doing if they couldn’t find a poor sod to strong-arm into giving up his?]
“When Muscat was elected leader of the PL, he carried on as an MEP for a few months.”
I suspect he carried on those few months to ensure he was eligible for his MEP pension.
Actually we went through this situation in Mintoff’s time.
MPs got a rise – I can’t remember the actual amount – when we only got a 50 pence pay rise.
When I pointed out this difference in the pay rise, an MLP supporter told me that ther are relatively few MPs and wouldn’t cost the taxpayer that much.
Also In Mintoff’s time, MPs became entitled to two pensions while the rest of us got only one, and I believe workers could only get the 2/3 pension and couldn’t get another even if they paid for it privately.
In fact many private companies which had a pension scheme stopped them. Because of this pension law, widows of ex servicemen, to whom the Thatcherite government issued a pension, had the English pension deducted from their Maltese one. So much for Mr. Mintoff’s love of the needy.
So, Joseph Cuschieri has lost his income as an MP on the day he relinquished his seat for Muscat. Or did he? Is the LP dishing out the equivalent salary?
No wonder he is writing letters galore begging to be let in the EU parliament where the salary is much higher than a Malta MP.
Seems that one is a loser in the LP and a loser even out of the party!