Please don’t! Absolutely Fabulous happens to be one of my favourite shows and I won’t see it turned into something like “Deceduti”

True, Maryanne. Did Prof. Edward Stipend-Soft-Loans Scicluna say his salary was Euro 5,000 per week?

Antoine, tal-Labour need more candy-dates like Joe iz-Zejza. So far, they have kept their policies close to their chest. Now they can even hide them down their cleavage.

What you say is very true but nothing compares to how the discussion ended.

Edward Scicluna must have regretted mentioning the increase in ministers’ salary. Tonio Fenech was excellent. However he should have added that while ministers pay a considerable amount of their salaries in taxes, Scicluna’s salary is tax free.

This is the FOI, which in the same document was telling government to cut costs. Engaging a University Professor and former Chairman of the MFSA as a secretary.

Labour has now followed suit, and has engaged “economist” AAron Farrugia as a secretary of its manifesto. As a typist.

This statement made on TVM by the professor is worse than his statement about the stipends. But the fact remains, however, that in 2005, he was commissioned by the FOI to draw up a report, and in that report he called upon the government to change tertiary education stipends into a soft loan. That is exactly what the poorer families need in 2012/2013.

But in the 2005 paper, Professor Edward Scicluna, acting as secretary to the FOI, also told the government that manpower levels in the government and institutions (read authorities, boards, government agencies etc) were unsustainable. Can Professor Scicluna be made to answer about that as well?

It seems that under Labour, the poorer families will get two important blows. The breadwinner risks being made redundant, and the children asked to take a soft loan to pay for their tertiary education.

Vote Labour, get Labour.

“2. Tertiary education student allowances
Unlike the Dutch disease, this clearly unsustainable scheme has no precedent in other countries. As with any unsustainable programme, even though the problem could be foreseen way back in the early 90s, time tends to exacerbate the problem and bring it into sharp focus. Malta has reached that stage now. While proportionately (as percent of GDP or percent of Government expenditure) it devotes its average share to education, more than half that amount is given to students as allowance, with little or no strings attached. It can be shown that if it is considered as a social programme than it happens to be a very regressive one. It is a very unproductive use of scarce resources, since it tends to divert them away from high yield investment, as with education proper, into conspicuous consumption (cars, mobiles and entertainment). Since tertiary education has been shown to give high returns to its recipients there is no reason why the person involved should not share in their personal investment by getting a soft loan.”

http://www.edwardscicluna.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/FOI_Reactions_to_the_2006-2010_Pre-Budget_Document_2005_10_10.pdf

Incredible, but true. So much for the NEW Labour movement.

On the same show, Edward Scicluna made various dark references to the ‘circle of evil” and “dik” mil- Bidnija u “dak” li jikteb fit-Times.

[Daphne – How sad to see he’s become One of Them, with his ‘dik mil-Bidnija’ remarks, but then he probably always was. He wouldn’t have joined that sorry mess of a party if he hadn’t been.]

Lou Bondi asks what Labour’s proposals about jobs are.

Scicluna says: “Mela dawn gimmicks?”

Bondi: “Le fuq proposti qed insaqsik.”

Scicluna: “Mela din tal-one liner?”

Bondi: “Le, fuq proposti jahasra.”

Scicluna: “blah blah blah…”

Bondi: “Ok, fuq il-proposti ghadna daqsxejn lura milli jidher…”

and Manu Maltes as a prop.

Possibly. I really have no stand on the matter because I too don’t know what it is really about (and not that great an inclination to find out – like Daphne I tend to have faith in smart people avoiding taking actions that are truly dumb, so I’m quite sure we’ll be OK – and if mistakes are made, they will be sorted) but Times of Malta comment-board-warriors who can barely spell yet have an unshakeable opinion on ACTA really get to me.

The overwhelming concern of just one of them, for example, was that the film and record producing companies were making millions at “his” expense… go figure, as the Yanks would say.

Conversely, a lot of smart people post on here and the arguments are interesting, but till the day (if it comes) that I bother to read what ACTA is about first-hand, I’ll sit on the fence, thankyou.