When you have a slow puncture, you change the wheel and not the car
This particular wheel has long since burst: Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando
This is my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday.
The Labour Party, The Times and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando have picked up Robert Arrigo’s metaphor of a government with a slow puncture.
They are wrong to do so, because he is not the brightest crayon in the box and will not have tested the metaphor, as one must, to see whether it holds up.
When you have a slow puncture, you don’t change your car. You change the wheel.
Those who demand a general election as the solution to the difficulties created by two MPs – Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono – are the sort who would buy a new car rather than replace the wheel.
In this situation, it is Pullicino Orlando and Debono who are in the metaphoric role of the wheel with the slow puncture (actually, Jeffrey has burst).
They are the ones who are halting the car’s progress or making it difficult to drive. They are the wheel that has to be replaced.
We are all accustomed by now to the brass neck and lack of self-knowledge of both these two. It is on parade all the time, all over our television screens, newspapers and the internet.
So nobody will have been surprised that Pullicino Orlando was the first one out on Facebook – very appropriate, for a member of parliament pushing 50 – with talk of an early election because of a slow puncture. And The Times, not realising that his credibility rating is now close to zero (they should have a look at the comments beneath their online report, from Labour and Nationalist supporters alike) thought it would be a good idea to dedicate a story to what Jeffrey thinks.
All well and good: they gave him some of the limelight he has craved since Debono stole the show.
Nobody will have been surprised, either, to see Pullicino Orlando on Super One on Friday night, talking about slow punctures and early elections. There was nobody there to tell him straight and plain, to his face:
‘Jeffrey, you’re the damned slow puncture. So let’s change the wheel, right? Resign your seat and let a new wheel without a slow puncture take your place. And while you’re about it, persuade that other slow puncture, Franco Debono, that we need a new wheel there too.’
The Super One discussion was surreal. Pullicino Orlando, one of the men who has been a main cause of the disruption which his own government has suffered over the last four years, sitting there and talking as though the problem was caused by something that had absolutely nothing to do with him. Or better still, by something or someone that he was fighting against.
Why does the government have problems? Why is there pressure for calling an election now and not next year?
One reason only, and it’s not Lawrence Gonzi. There is no accounting for what Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, whose second-wife-to-be is now back with the Labour Party along with his first, and Franco Debono will do next.
They are loose cannon who cannot be relied upon to behave decently, or to refrain from pulling yet another self-serving stunt. Yet they are the ones who have the ruddy nerve to call for an election because of the uncertainty – when they are the very ones causing that uncertainty.
Are they thinking straight, or is their self-delusional so very great?
They don’t seem to realise that others – including newspaper leader-writers – are calling for an election precisely to lance the boil these two have become, and not because they have a problem with the prime minister or wish to see Labour in government a year before time.
Then there’s the Labour Party, hyping it up.
Two years ago, they were talking about ‘incertezza’, with posters and banners to match. Now they’ve reworked the posters and banners and catch-phrases with ‘instability’.
We are told that there is much instability in this country. My teeth are on edge with irritation, as clearly, what they mean here is uncertainty. They are too careless with words to bother – but we saw that in their misinterpretation of what Franco Debono meant about his voting plans.
An unstable country is one in which the economy or rule of law (or both) has collapsed, leading to widespread riots, chaos and even civil war. Libya, for example, is an unstable country.
A country in which there is uncertainty is something else altogether. It could be economic uncertainty, caused by the collapse of banks or the breakdown of financial institutions and the introduction of austerity programmes, or it could be another kind of uncertainty.
What we are seeing now in Malta is the other kind – for in terms of the economy, as we know through the facts and figures, we are fine. It is the uncertainty that always rears its head and stops people spending or taking decisions when there is a real and imminent risk that Labour will be elected to government.
The Labour Party, like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Franco Debono, completely lacks insight if it cannot see this, or if it can pick up the general feeling without working out what’s causing it.
Businesses and individuals do not draw in their horns and slow down or freeze into action because one member of parliament or another throws a giant wobbly. But when the giant wobbly leads to talk of early elections, and worse, signs that the Labour Party already feels itself victorious, then the uncertainty turns to a wary fear that Labour is going to be running the country sooner than expected and there is no time to bring out the sandbags or supply the bunker.
This uncertainty, this fear that Labour will be in government and a snap election will mean there is no time to adjust to the dread prospect (for that is how businesses and right-thinking individuals see it) is entirely the Labour Party’s fault.
Almost four years after the last general election, it has still not put any policies before the people. Nobody knows what Joseph Muscat’s party stands for. Or rather, we do, but wish to be persuaded otherwise by means of a proper programme of policies. A vague assertion that it will be ‘safe for business’ – while still magically slashing water and electricity rates as oil prices escalate in the face of Iranian troubles – is not enough.
Labour not only lacks the insight to see that it is the cause of all this uncertainty. It also lacks the brains to understand that this is the direct consequence of telling electors to choose a closed box which will be opened for them only when the closed box is in government and cannot be dislodged for five years if the contents are a shock.
41 Comments Comment
Reply to Richard Borg Click here to cancel reply
Very well said, as usual.
Great title. Prosit.
But Daphne, you should well realise that when you have 2 punctures as you are metaphorically stating, the car comes to halt, since one will only have one spare tyre unless someone helps him on the way, which in that case should be the opposition. Obviously the opposition is trying to help by removing the driver whatsoever but Gonzi has the lust to drive even if with 2 punctures. Was expecting you would have been using your wit to realise this.
Also keen readers, try to save the picture and have a darned look at how DCG saves her pictures.
[Daphne – BC, all my regular readers know that I name my picture files specifically for their entertainment, not for ease of reference in my archive. As for the rest of the comment, if you change your car when two wheels are punctured, then…]
Dear BC, no wonder you vote Labour. You just don’t get it.
el bandido I am proud with everything I believe in, and that’s why I vote Labour. Partly because of people like you who seem to get everything yet, you seem so far. Now back to Texas guapo.
[Daphne – You’re so proud of your opinions that you don’t even put your name to them. Impressive.]
My name, pff which is one of the most common on the island and which won’t make a difference, and which I’m sure you already know. And still, I have no problem to voice my concerns.
You are proud, perhaps, of what you wish or expect Labour to be. You can hardly be proud of what it is now. If you are, then, well, what can I say? It takes one nut to know another.
In all fairness BC does give an indication of who he is. A chap from the old testament – thought and all.
A bit more creative than gonzikrah.
actually – you change the tyre – not the wheel.
[Daphne – No, you change the wheel. That’s the idiomatic expression and that is what you in fact do. Then you get the tyre repaired and you replace the wheel again. However, given that Franco and Jeffrey cannot be repaired…]
Have I ever stated of changing the car, just teh car comes to a long long halt, hoping someone will help it all along, which is next to impossible considering that everyone needs his spare tyre, and let’s not forget Gonzi had 4 punctures throughout this legislature, which by the way yes might as well change the whole car especially when the car is a lada ta 40 sena ilu bis sadid u bit tank tal- fuel iqattar.
[Daphne – Siehbi, jekk tahseb li dan il-gvern huwa Lada ta’ 40 sena’ bis-sadid, missek kont hawn fis-1971-1987 jew fis-1996-1998. Ghax God bless, il-vera ma taf xejn. Mur gibek Spanja, jew l-Italja, jew il-Grecja, ha tkun taf kif ikunu gvernijiet bis-sadid. One of the most dreadful aspects of surviving in Malta is having to deal with people who think this hamster’s cage is the beginning and end of it all.]
Daphne, meta tiddeciedi li ssejahli siehbi itlobni permess ghax hawnhekk la qieghdin il-kazin niehdu t-te fit tazza u lanqas m’ qed titkellem ma Wenzu l-fire. U jekk dan ma kienx gvern bis-sadid mela liem kien, jekk mhux dan li l-passigiera stess imwerwrin qed jghidulu ssuqx aktar, imbaghad bil-vilta kollha biex jikkonsla Gonzi, MISKIN, se jmur jara il-partit iriduhx, ma jmurx ikun qed imexxi kontra r-ried tal partit, ghax bhal li kieku Malta jmexxuha dawk it 800 delegat tal PN. U qisni ga naf ir rizultat x ha jkun, Gonzi ha jghidilnha jien ghandi r-ried li mmexxi u hekk ser naghmel. Bla kredibilta.
[Daphne – Look, I know the standard of discourse on maltatoday’s comments board can be a bit unchallenging, but if you’re going to keep coming back here, raise your standards. I’m not speaking about the language, but about the reasoning.]
As long as your reasoning is 6ft under the ground, that’s where you will see mine.
Now that’s an open challenge Daphne. They persist in not wanting to see.
They think they understand why Gonzi is asking for implicit trust and fail to see he is asking for a secret vote, not a show of hands.
If that’s not democratic enough for BC, then I don’t know what is.
With his weak arguments, BC demonstrates that theirs is the mentality of narrow-minded PL supporters who firmly believe that their party is the centre of the Universe and their leader the sun around which all revolves.
But as they say… where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise. Now that’s an appropriate PL motto.
BC does not get it, (this time about the reasons for Gonzi’s actions) yet again. Yawwwn.
Ehh u Defni is-sahhara, hi, ara kif tkellmu lis-sur BC, gejja b’ “siehbi”, ta’. Bniedem ta’ dak il-kalibru u intellett, b’l-gherf u r-ragunar anke lilek ha’ jiftahlek ghajnejk ghall-ideologija progressiva u moderna tal-Labour.
BC, intom tal-marmalja għandkom iktar ġenn daqs Joseph Muscat biex taħtfu l-poter. Min jaf kemm qed tlesti u taħseb li se tgawdi u tiffanga.
BC, you should change your nick to BS cause you’re full of it.
Instead of wasting your time trying to outwit the blogger, why not enlighten us as to how Joseph Muscat is going to drive the country forward in the battered old guzzler he calls the PL? It’s the same old karakka junk which has merely been re-sprayed.
Building on the metaphor, Muscat seems like a spoilt child who just wants to sit in daddy’s car with his hands on the steering wheel going “vroom vroom”, because his silence on governing issues gives the impression that he has no idea how to drive. At all.
Antoine, nies bhal BC, anke jekk ma jiffangawx, x’aktarx l-ewwel li jahsbu hu li jivvendikaw. Minn hekk isibu it-tgawdija.
I started reading BC’s comments and thought finally a Labour supporter with legible English and decent comments, but sure enough the conversation degenerated quickly.
Anyway, how can anyone compare this government with a Lada bis-sadid. The irony is that we had plenty of Lada’s in Malta in the golden years when this was all many could afford.
BC was either not around or forgot completely what MLP in Government was like pre-1987 and to a certain extent even during 1996-98.
Before 1987 we had a coal-burning power station, undrinkable water, water and power cuts on a daily basis (even in Christmas) a telephone system which was dumped on us from some third-world country and whenever you made a call you would get crossed lines, schools that were the pits, roads that were made with just gravel and a thin layer of tar, government departments that were a shame to visit, a hospital that was not exactly state of the art etc etc.
If the PN has done anything right it is the change in mindset from one “tal-lappazzar” under MLP to one which always aims for the best. Today we take for granted things like a reliable power and water service, IT and Internet and WIFI hotspots in all localities, the decent promenades everywhere, the flowering roundabouts, the traffic lights, signs and roads (ok maybe not perfect but before 1987 we barely had one traffic light on the island – now maybe too many), the hospital, the gozo ferries, the airport (remember the airport?) and so much more. Wake up BC
BC, ara twegibx din:
If your wheels are greased, can you change them? Discuss.
‘Ixtri Lada u jiddispjacik l-ghada.’
http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUvagsM176o
What Daphne can do, I can do better, says BC… Jixtieq.
@ Izzie
Very well said. The PL “tunnel vision” never ends.
Tom Cruise has heard that Joseph is about to be elected, and he can’t wait to join us.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/298648
This could well be an opportunity for Franco to contest the party leadership. The more so since he said he has no trust in Gonzi.
He could well be interested in running for leader even though he denied allegations of conspiring to topple the Gonzi premiership.
A direct showdown would clear the air and reduce uncertainty.
“Direct showdown”. Should Franco Debono submit his intention for party leader, I’m sure Dr Gonzi will not lose any sleep over it.
Franco Debono has lost the respect of the top acolytes in the Nationalist Party and it is only obvious that Dr Gonzi should continue with his mandate.
The uncertainty currently shrouding Malta’s future is entirely linked to the possibility of a change of government.
Labour is trumpeting a change of direction and this is what sends shivers down the spines of all those who are in a position to fuel the economy.
Economic retrenching and regrouping has already begun to the detriment of investment and hence jobs and development.
To add insult to injury this “direzzjoni gdida” is just a huge question mark. The only criteria and indicators available to potential investors are to be found in the PL’s political baggage which is nothing short of obnoxious.
The more talk about changing the entire car more than a year too early, the harder the country’s economic prospects will be walloped.
Should be compulsory reading for every sane person.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/sharing-obsession-revealing-every-detail
Literally…..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2012/jan/29/literally-a-much-misused-word
About 8 years ago I had ALL four tyres slashed by a gang of vandals somewhere in Pembroke.
I had to repair all four wheels which was a pain…. but my car’s been running beautifully ever since.
Pity the vandals never got punished. But they didn’t stop my car.
(this is a true story – not a metaphor)
Why didn’t I come up with that?
Daphne, was the photo above obtained from Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s Facebook profile?
[Daphne – From somebody else’s.]
Somebody who mustn’t care much about him to upload a photo of him like this it seems. Looking at this photo makes me think that he should change his name to Jeffrey Purcinell Ordinat.
I’m not sure what you people expect from politicians….he only thing that this picture is showing is that JPO still has a life, other than that in the parliament.. that is, unlike most of you commenting here.
[Daphne – The current fiction: in order to have a life, I have to be seen to be having one, by uploading details on Facebook, with suitable illustrations. I don’t think so. I rather think it’s the other way round. The people who really do have a life don’t want to tell others about it.]
Great article.
I take it that your reference to “the best crayon” etc in your Sunday’s write up was meant for Robert Arrigo.
If that is the case, I am afraid it was uncalled for.
This is surely not the time to irritate future candidates. The P.N. has enough on its plate.
Whether he is or is not one of the best crayons is not for me to decide. What I am certain about is that he is a very well loved and respected by us Sliema voters, and the results confirm this.
[Daphne – Silvio, you and others need to understand that I do not work for the Nationalist Party. I do not tailor what I write according to what suits the Nationalist Party. I write what I wish to write about what I think. End of story. If some politicians get upset and sulk, well then, screw them. Can’t you see what you are saying here? That the free press should control itself so that sulking politicians don’t sulk even more? What sort of reasoning is that? Robert Musumeci said pretty much the same thing on Inkontri last night. BUT HE WOULD, WOULDN’T HE.]
Brilliant article. JPO thinks he’s so observant and astute just because he makes a (faulty) metaphor. hah…bet he’s feeling ridiculous now.
BC, ghandek tkun taf li l-PN anke b’4 punctures xorta jmexxi ahjar mill Labour – u mhux bi ftit tafx?
Labour’s given to hyperbolic metaphor. Let them enjoy their little game. Boys who play soldiers soon find out the real thing is not a game.
The Times is at it again with its now usual style of reporting
I will focus on one particular article Franco Debono: I will not be leadership contender
It is unsigned – so no particular reporter is taking responsibility for it
ToM reports that Dr Debono maintained his ‘no comment’ when asked about developments since the no confidence debate on Thursday.
however
for every speculative comment that the article contains the phrase – sources close to Dr Debono – is mentioned much more than once.
the article continues with sentences or phrases like “The sources close to Dr Debono said Dr Gonzi’s decision to call a leadership vote was an ‘exercise in futility’ ”
and
“Dr Debono has persistently – and with considerable stamina” a clear vindication that the reporter is no longer an independent but highly biased in favour of Franco Debono
So, if Franco Debono is maintaining his ‘no comment’ stance, who are these sources close to Dr Debono? How credible are they? If ToM can speculate then so can I and state that the whole article was fabricated by the same reporter (because that is all they do – report) without having
actually spoken to anyone. Remember that an article starting with Franco Debono said will entice the hungry public to read the article.
To finish off the article, JPO has to have his say, otherwise the article is felt to be incomplete.
I will ask once more – What is the ToM agenda? Who have they pledged their allegiance to? Joseph Muscat ? or perhaps the person trying to overthrow Dr Gonzi personally or the government ?
The readers of ToM, a supposedly independent paper, have a right to question
Come on Franco show one and all what a clever MAVERICK you are and challenge Dr.Gonzi for the leadership of the PN.
We know you will not try it because you don’t have the guts to face the result. Buy a one way ticket to Italy you might stand a chance of resolving the financial crisis they are in.