You know things are bad for Labour when they begin taking my advice
Note the flags in this photograph, which was taken today. Oh, and click on it to make it bigger and get a load of the Hallowe’en pumpkin that escaped from somebody’s Swieqi front yard and disguised itself cunningly as the leader of the Partit Laburista.
So let’s see if I’ve got this right. The Labour Party pays Marisa Micallef a generous salary for her consultancy services, but then looks to this blog for advice on how to hang its flags and whether it should use the Labour emblem or not.
Ahjar nibda nibaghtilhom kont.
A couple of days ago I gave the Labour Party a hectoring lecture on flags and how to display them, taking them through the protocol step by step.
This was after Joseph Muscat gave yet another press conference with the flags behind him looking like they’d been arranged by frustrated interior designer Roberto Francalanza of Super One (“Issa jekk niddrejpjahhom hekk ma jigux sbieh?”).
The Maltese flag was to the right of the EU flag and almost totally covered it. The Labour Party flag was nowhere to be seen.
I reminded the Labour Party that the proper place for the Maltese flag is behind the prime minister and the president, not behind the leader of the Labour Party, who does not represent the state.
The only flag permissible behind the leader of the Labour Party, I wrote, is the Labour Party flag.
But if he must use the Maltese flag and the EU flag to raise his status in the eyes of the ignorant, I hectored on, then he should include the Labour Party flag too. Speaking before the EU flag and the Maltese flag means that he speaks on behalf of Malta, not on behalf of the Labour Party, and he is not speaking on behalf of Malta nor is he entitled to do so.
I added that if he wants to brand his blinking Labour Party, and it’s already way too late in the day to do that, then he’s got to use the emblem that Godfrey Grima’s people spent so much time designing.
Otherwise, in never bringing it out except on ‘personalised’ letters to gay men, students and pensioners, it looks like he’s ashamed of it.
And bingo!
This morning he went off to speak in Cospicua and there, for the first time, were three flags ranged behind him: the Maltese flag and the EU flag (in the correct order) and the Labour Party flag.
But he got something else very wrong (kemm hi antipatika dik is-Sahhara): when you go off to speak to your constituents on a Sunday, Joseph, especially when those constituents are C2DE and in Cospicua, don’t wear a bloody suit, double cuffs and an ingravata. And above all, don’t stand on a podium with three flags behind you.
You look utterly ridiculous.
Go there in an open-necked shirt and jacket, stay off the podium, and leave your damned flags in Kurt Farrugia’s picnic cooler. Just take care that your wife-beater vest doesn’t show, unlike Kristall Tucks’s.
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“Note the flags in this photograph, which was taken today. Oh, and click on it to make it bigger and get a load of the Hallowe’en pumpkin that escaped from somebody’s Swieqi front yard and disguised itself cunningly as the leader of the Partit Laburista.”
ROFL.
They even seem to have taken your advice about his “hair”. There’s something full and fluffy resembling candyfloss up top, but at least it’s a little bit thinner than the thick brown bush he was wearing recently.
Daphne, you have to give them some wrong advice every now and then, just for the sake of having a good laugh seeing them implement it.
Sewwa, mela ghaqal fit-tmexxija tfisser Joseph fit-tmexxija tal-pajjiz.
Kellhom ghalfejn jghidulna liema hu Joseph?
Kull ma jonqos vlegga kbira tipponta lejh.
“So let’s see if I’ve got this right. The Labour Party pays Marisa Micallef a generous salary for her consultancy services, but then looks to this blog for advice on how to hang its flags and whether it should use the Labour emblem or not.”
Daphne, I think I must make a small correction here. Marisa is getting paid to read your blog, and then translate it to the bozoz tal-elf who inhabit the corridors of the Glass Palace. Those are her consultancy services.
If you must put it like that, then probably the effort is well worth Euro 40,000.
It’s getting late, should put my head down, but can’t stop laughing. One more glass of Monte Cristo Estate wine may help.
Daphne, your previous blog post was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the three flags on television.
Then I thought, your posts and comments are probably always on the minds of Labour.
They often seem take advice.
If you don’t want Labour to be in government stop giving them good advice.
I’m keeping my observations to myself . One is glaringly obvious but like Joseph, I will make it public when the time comes and when it is too late for the PL to do something about it.
When some years ago you criticized MLP’s RED FLAG last election poster on The Malta Independent on Sunday, by Monday morning it was nowhere to be seen.
Sometimes I make similar mistakes elsewhere and when it is too late I say to myself “Me and my big mouth and ‘mea culpa’”.
Let them have enough rope to hang themselves.
U hemm xi gralu fi snienu ta’ quddiem. Jaqaw kien liebes xi faccata snien bojod, bhal dawk li juzaw il-film stars fuq ir-Red Carpet, u resqitlu ghal-gemb? Mela dan kollox finta?
Give them some bad advice and see if they lap it up as well.
U le, Daphne, ma tarax, se jiehdu l-parir tieghek?
Nahseb li kienet it-tuks fors ta Anglu li ntebhet bl-izball.
Ara veru partit tad-dahk.
Haqqu Premju ghall-Iblah Tas-Sena b’dik it-tbissima ta’ Gahan fuq xufftejh.
Tinsultanix la ma’ nsultajteks Sur Scicluna!
Daphne,
For pity’s sake leave the guy alone. He must wake up in a cold sweat every night calling out your name.
My God…..the next Prime Minister…!
“U l-anqas jekk jigi minn jigi mhu ser jisma minnu”:
Muscat does everything possible to elevate his status and apprearance.