Eeeeeee, ara Stacy Bartolo fit-Torca!
Here's Kurt Sansone's Stacy Bartolo - in It-Torca today. Gosh, what an amazing coincidence.
God, these people can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery or they think that the rest of us live on another planet and can’t make connections.
So The Times sends out Kurt Sansone (ha! the least said, the better) to take a vox pop of protestors at Labour’s rally on Friday evening. And yesterday, the newspaper duly carries the views of one Stacy Bartolo, aged 21, who was there to protest against the price of diesel because it’s enough that now she will have to pay for the ‘park and ride’ scheme when she drives her car in to her Valletta job.
Today dawns and goodness, what a coincidence, we discover that out of that supposed crowd of thousands (Kurt’s words; it was actually hundreds), It-Torca has also somehow managed to home in on…..yes, our very own Stacy Bartolo.
The cack-handed public relations is just unbelievable.
As for these supposedly independent reporters, I am so not impressed. If Kurt Sansone of The Times is so damned keen to help get Labour’s message across, then he should at least have the good sense to make sure that the stooge he ‘interviews at random’ doesn’t pop up 24 hours later, also ‘interviewed at random’ by the General Workers Union media.
Pajjiz u media tal-biki.
Stacy told Kurt Sansone that she drives a car (at 21) and has a job, but doesn’t want to pay more for diesel or to park in Valletta. But what did she tell Tony Zarb’s intrepid journalists?
“We young people are finding it very difficult to build a future for ourselves. We are crucified by loans and endless financial burdens, and our wages just aren’t enough.”
Note: Stacy, like all Maltese 21-year-olds, lives with her parents and doesn’t have to pay rent, buy food or pay for the myriad expenses of running a household. That’s why, despite her various endless financial burdens, she is fully made up, her hair is dyed and straightened, and she is wearing a rather nice jacket. Perhaps she bought less diesel this week so as to pay for them. Who knows?
Ah, but this is why Stacy, unlike other 21-year-olds the world over (oh, if only she knew) can’t afford to build her own home:
“Because of our debts and our financial burdens, we can’t build a house of our own. This is the situation in which the majority of young people in Malta and Gozo now find themselves.”
Yes, Stacy, I feel so sorry for you. When I was 21, in 1986, we all rushed out to buy cars and build houses for ourselves. And a quick look around Europe and I feel even sorrier for you because, oh my dear, the continent is chocka with 21-year-olds complaining because they have a job and a car but my, the price of diesel! And they can’t build a house!
You know how some countries had compulsory military service? I think we need a variation of that: the minute Maltese people turn 18, they should be obliged to spend at least a year in the real world.
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F**king ridiculous. ‘Stacy Bartolo, 21, Impjegata’.
‘Stacy Bartolo, 21, Bla Xoghol’ – now that would make more sense at a mass demo of the oppressed and starving masses.
Pass the hat round to buy some diesel for Stacy’s car, so that she can drive it to her job every morning.
I’m running out of cuss-words here.
Hadthieli minn halqi! And it seems she is not the only one. Mr. Borg, 22, listed beneath her, is also employed. What is he complaining about? Is he asking for a one-way trip to Ireland, Spain or Greece?
Never mind the job or the car or the straightened hair. It’s the SMILE that jars. If you look at photos of the 1917 revolution, not one starving peasant was smiling. They all had the EYE OF THE TIGER.
And we have not seen her nails job.
I noticed the deprived Labour trio at the helm of the ‘passigata gol-Belt’ wearing long coats and huddled together for warmth (ghax anke il-kesha tort tal-gvern) with Michelle’s arm wrapped round Toni’s for extra comfort.
And all the rest of the blinded followers in rags, ghax times are hard, jahasra!
Stacy must have forgotten that the protest was about the Great Depression and went out in her Sunday best, standing out from the crowd and thus was interviewed by so many journalists.
What? Did Joseph Muscat’s “human recession” (I only heard about it once or twice in March 2010) turn into a “Great Human Depression”?
Exactly what I meant in an earlier post. Looks like the LP have got themselves another daily. Maybe The Times think this will prevent another bonfire this time round.
What! this lot organising a piss-up in a brewery?
You would first need to explain to them “piss-up” and “brewery”.
You’re absolutely right, Joseph.
They may think a piss-up is some kind of a contest, the winner being the one who can shoot his p*ss the farthest.
Just dawned on me – we have not heard anything lately about their gay-lesbian club. Have they given up on them already?
If you tell them it’s an idiom they would probably think that idiom is an acronym and would spend a couple of days trying to decipher it before they give up as they did on their gay-lesbian club.
Garbage in – garbage out.
The Labour Party seems to turn garbage into pure nonsense and who better to express herself than Stacy Bartolo who claims to own a diesel car, no less, but is finding it difficult to pay an extra few cents for fuel?
She should take a basic course in budget management (not economics – that would be beyond her comprehension). In times like this it is easier to rethink priorities than to blame her wages. Drive a little less, Stacy – after all the LP constantly bitches about the government not doing enough to lower pollution.
Eeeeeee ‘impjegata’ qrajtha ‘injoranta’. Honest mistake, hux.
Poor Stacy. Maybe she should apply to the MCCF for help. They did pretty well this Christmas and I am sure they will oblige.
As I said yesterday, 25 years of PN government have produced a generation of spoilt whingers.
They are not content with owning a car at 21, they expect cheap fuel to boot.
At university in the late sixties, around ten of the 300 or so students owned a car. Nobody complained about the price of fuel then.
We all had a jolly good time, had no loans and travelled around “b’tal-linja”.
Those attending the Friday stroll at Valetta, and happened to be interviewed ‘by chance’ for The Times and on Xarabank, invariably were very irked by the ‘paga doppja li ta lilu nnifsu!’, which, (I recall one of your best articles actually) proves that you can build a political platform on the typical Maltese ‘lanzit’ (can’t find the nearest English word).
And this could be very dangerous. Seen from a distance the serious troubles in Tunisia were clearly directed at the President and his wife’s familes who have pillaged the country’s wealth for themselves, while the rest are left wanting – still ‘lanzit’.
Although in Tunisia’s case, this was clearly justified, the PL should stop playing with peoples’ sentiments as it is doing, as the end product could be very unpredictable.
Stacy must have stayed home this weekend because she couldn’t afford to go out.
Isn’t she a sweetheart this Stacy Bartolo? Next time a blonde thicko approaches Kurt Sansone for an interview he should remember to run a mile.
What kind of serious journalist would let blonde Stacy go without asking her how much she pays every year on her car insurance? How much did the car cost her? What percentage of her income goes towards her precious diesel?
Dik anke fuq il-Kullhadd dehret. Mela dawn it-tlett gazzetti reporter wiehed hemm?
Ha nghidlek mhix tifla kera din Stacy.
She must be the new visual identity of Labour.
Stuff those brent gajdlajns, Marisa.
Indeed, Stacy has to protest vociferously while driving her car at 21 years of age.
The norm is that 19-year-old university students already drive their own car. Needless to say, some of these spoiled brats still protested on Friday because Gonzi qatilom bil-guh.
While Stacy objects to the price of diesel for her car, which she drives to her job in Valletta, where she objects to paying to park, a young Tunisian university graduate, caught selling fruit without a trader’s licence because there are NO jobs at all, set himself on fire when his stock was seized by the police, and died of his burns.
Apparently, they have cheap petrol in Tunisia.
This Stacy may be a Labour supporter, but she’s a PN product through and through.
When post-secondary students topped 20000, stipends should have been phased out. Instead they were extended to absolutely everyone – anyone from prospective doctors to hairdressers to pastry chefs, in anything from university to MCAST, where you can get in without an O level to your name, never mind A levels.
If the whole point of stipends was to encourage a drive towards excellence, why hand them out to students who’ve failed their secondary school-leaving exams?
Stipends have become a taboo subject and so we march towards oblivion and an explosion of Stacys – the permanently-tumescent demographic with plenty of bling and no intellectual sobriety. This Gonzian “kuxjenza socjali” will be the undoing of us all.
Baxxter – MCAST offers courses at different levels of entry and different exit points.
And you can proceed from one level to another, depending on your potential, up to first degree.
Yes, you can enter MCAST with A Levels, an Ordinary Technician Diploma, a Higher Technician Diploma.
Of course, MCAST is the place where you can obtain both diplomas. And you can join MCAST at the lower levels.
MCAST is the Nationalist Party’s major gift to our young people for the millennium. There is more than one type of tertiary education – vocational and professional education is offered at MCAST ….. as well as at the university.
Bollocks. I know the inside story of MCAST. It’s a big expensive joke. The vocational courses aren’t vocational at all, because students still have to obtain the national diploma in academic subjects – eek! – Maltese, English and Maths, whose level is less than O Level, and therefore, if we want to be pedantic, they’re not actually sitting for a post-secondary exam. As for the more technical or business-type courses, they produce half-baked graduates. I could write reams about MCAST and University. Let’s stick to Stacy here.
Baxxter – please note that you referred to MCAST in your earlier contribution – I reacted to your statement.
As regards to your other observations on MCAST, I’ll simply quote what Lawrence Zammit wrote in an aricle in The Times dated 10 December 2010:
“I strongly believe that the setting up of the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology has been the best thing that happened in education in the last 15 years in this country. The extension of the Mcast campus together with the provision of the top-up degrees is probably the second best thing. Employers will tell you that in certain areas Mcast students are of a better quality than graduates of the University of Malta.
“Apart from the fact that this line of thinking is reminiscent of a conservative socialist mentality, that not even the Labour Party embraces, it is also indicative that some of us refuse to learn from the successes of other countries.”
You may continue to stick to Stacy.
Stacy looks MUCH older than 21, for a start.
I too am 21 years old, soon to be 22. I am a university student. I drive a car. But while the government does of course take some unpopular measures, it’s not all gloom and doom.
I completely appreciate and understand the fact that fuel prices are rising through no fault of our own and obviously we have to pay for this.
Granted, no one enjoys it, but it’s a fact of life – just deal with it, for crying out loud. Subsidies aren’t the way forward, in any event, if that’s what Joseph Muscat seems to be proposing.
I completely understand that at my age, what with myself and most of my friends getting around in our own personal vehicles, we are privileged to actually be in such a position.
My mother told me that when she was my age, having a car was a mere dream for her. Yet nowadays, upon turning 18, quite a few people are given the keys to take a vehicle out for a spin and trash it accordingly.
I totally appreciate the fact that government forks out an annual €465 for me to spend on my education plus an additional €84 per month that goes directly into my bank account.
Multiply that by 11,000 students, notwithstanding those rewarded with a higher stipend and Smart Card output, or those people who qualify for a higher grant, or even first year students, who get a higher amount on their Smart Card; plus the 5,500 odd students you find at post-secondary level or MCAST, and you’ll find that the cost runs into the tens of millions.
I’m forever grateful for entry into the European Union, and the adoption of the Euro. Without the latter, our economy would have surely come under greater pressures as a result of the financial crisis, but due to some good governance, we’ve come through a tough time for many practically scot free.
As for the former, well, the opportunities speak for themselves. I’ve been able to, as a student, enter competitions to go to the European institutions and get a feel of what they’re about; I’m able to go on Erasmus and experience life at a foreign university; I’m able to find working opportunities abroad if I want to; I’m able to travel freely around this continent as if it were all my home – which it is.
And that’s just skimming the surface. Of course I’m entitled to be grateful, for this government has given me so much that people elsewhere could only dream of.
Matt made my Sunday.
I am three times his age although, after what he said, I feel I am a contemporary.
For a moment I had thought that all 21-year-olds were Stacys
What a welcome relief.
Ah, but the Matts will flee Malta’s shores, while the Stacys will remain behind, carping, moaning and complaining and doing nothing to improve their lot and everyone else’s.
Did anyone think to ask those thousands whether they walked, took the bus or drove their own cars to Valletta?
Has she suddenly become a public figure Daphne?
Does she merit this vilification?
[Daphne – Those who make their views public must also expect public criticism. What makes ME a public figure, David?]
Oh come on, David. This is not vilification. This is the road to stardom. After this, she will soon be giving her opinion everywhere – I mean, on Xarabank (although she has her own car), Bondi+, Affari Taghna, TX, Inkontri ….
MattB, if there are many more like him, and I suspect that there are, makes me reconsider my suspicion that may tax money is being squandered on university students becoming distraught at the difficulty of obtaining condoms from vending machines on campus.
I noticed a long time ago that many people in Malta would never take a bus because they think it is beneath them. Using your own transport to go to work could be a status symbol. Stacey could be one of these people.
Well, she works in Valletta so ishe can take a bus. That’s a whole lot cheaper and she won’t have to pay to park, either. irridu kollox hobla u tredda.
Nahseb din Stacy mal Korp tal-Pijunieri tahdem, ghax dawk mal-‘jack hammer’, biex ihaffru t-toroq fix-xemx kienu jaghtuhom karrozza wkoll fiz-zmiem il-Labour..
Rest assured, MattB isn’t alone. I am another 20-year-old university student, who drives his own car to university every day.
True, basic commodities have increased in price, and instead of paying 15 euros a week for fuel, it seems like I’ll be needing an extra tenner a week.
The majority of university students my age drive their own car to university, seeing that going to campus later than 9am is the equivalent of committing parking-harakiri.
The government provides me with a monthly stipend, an annual smart card allowance, and a more-than-decent university education at no cost whatsoever.
True, studying and exams can be very stressful at times, but other than that, student life is such a breeze.
We work for money during the summer, drive our car to university, attend a couple of lectures here and there, have a coffee or three at one of the many cafeterias which are packed day in, day out; eat out at least twice a week, and go on holidays and trips frequently; whilst my friends studying in the UK have to battle with exorbitant tuition fees and housing rent.
‘You’re living in your own bubble’, you might say, thinking I’m some spoilt brat coming from a rich family. The truth is that I come from an average middle class family, with 3 other siblings and two hardworking parents.
This government isn’t faultless, and the Minister’s wage increase was definitely ill-timed;but this is the same government that has turned Malta from a quasi-communist backwater, to a modern and developed European State.
The brainwashed rabble protesting in Valletta might not have the brains to look at the bigger picture, but many others like me shudder at the thought of having that Super 1 joker as President of the European Council in 2017.
What world does Stacy live in exactly? Loans? What loan was she forced to take out? I’m guessing one for her car. So while she screams out in hunger-induced pain, let me enlighten her.
I couldn’t go to Malta university since what I wanted to be trained in is not offered in Malta at degree level. So I worked for four years to save the money to study in the UK.
I also gave up ever going for driving lessons and owning a car because I knew my parents would have to be paying extra for my education and thought that the money for such things could be better spent.
I also took out a loan to help get me through. Still falling short of enough money to spend on my tuition I went out and got sponsorship, and luckily I got enough.
My parents help with my rent, which stands at around £255/ month. Rent in London is usually £800 per month for one room to yourself in a flat shared with another two people if you’re lucky, so you can imagine what sort of place I live in.
I got a job at school which means I have to be in at 8am every day even if my first lesson starts at 15:00 or 18:00, because I need the extra cash.
There have been times when my budget has left me eating soup and seven slices of bread for a whole week since I spent my money on theatre tickets, a necessary expense for a drama student. I’m all for traditional Maltese cooking, but after a while even brodu gets old.
My only other income is my stipend, which technically I never see because it goes straight to paying off my loan.
No one forced me to move to the UK, so I am not complaining. It’s supposed to be part of the adventure after all. But the way this Stacy is talking is laughable.
Yes, I was lucky to have found sponsorship. I’m training to be an actor. That’s hardly a secure investment. But rest assured I would not have got a penny if I hadn’t proven that I am a dedicated and hard-working student.
Perhaps I will not become a successful actor, but at least those who helped me out know that they gave their money to someone who tries their hardest. I would feel far too guilty if I didn’t go that extra mile to make their charity worthwhile. Whining would have got me nowhere.
So, what is Stacy complaining about exactly? If she can’t afford a car then she should sell it. There are far too many in Malta anyway, and she doesn’t need one to get to work because she works in Valletta and all buses head straight there. Sounds to me like the only obstacles for Stacy are all in her head.
Couldn’t they have interviewed an over-qualified graduate who has been unemployed for three years and can’t pay his rent?
[Daphne – No, Edward, because there aren’t any. There are only people with jobs and homes, complaining about the price of milk (because we really drink a lot of that), gas and diesel.]
Edward, all young Maltese people ought to go through an overseas experience like the one you are on. That would teach them a lesson or two about the world, and how they have to help themselves through life.
Stacy would feel more lucky if her social circle extended beyond the crowd at the hairdresser’s to discover things like tuition fees, paying rent and struggling with a part-time job – all things that are standard for any student abroad
Idiots