Going by what many Laburisti say, your comments contain some contradictions.

According to Laburisti, the 70s and 80s were the ‘golden years’ and Mintoff had eradicated poverty, created social services and when else failed employed the masses in various corps and with the civil service, en masse.

In such an affluent time, when Mintoffjani boast that the Socialists left millions in the treasury, you say that people could not afford a bar of cheap chocolate? Then how do you account for many who crossed over to Sicily and smuggled back what they could?

Income taxes went down steadily during George Dupuis time, before 2002 leaving more in the pockets of the workers. Since 1987, foreign investment started to pour in, new factories opened and wages started going up – again well before 2002. Tourism quadrupled and unemployment started to be tackled in a serious way.

The pasta factory in Qormi closed down because it never modernised, was inefficient and in all probability produced an inferior product. In other words, the free market influence started to work in the consumer’s favour.

Today wages are better, jobs are better, selection is vast, people have money, but all Laburisti say is that “Gonzi qatilna bil-guh”!

Today our exports are open to half a billion Europeans but we still have to compete, we still have to become efficient and quality control a must, otherwise we will go back to the ‘golden years’ of no water in the taps, intermittent electricity and a crumbling infrastructure.

While governments have a direct impact on the quality of life, it is up to each and every one of us to pull in the same direction because the ultimate winners will be all of us, whether red, blue or green

I couldn’t help but relive the horror of those years again. Ignorant people talking to the interviewer, real dummies who parrot like kowtowed to anything Mintoff and the MLP implemented against everybody else’s will. Mintoff already had failed as an architect, he was no genius in economics either.

The bulk buying system could have been tagged “the government knows what you’re eating: Big Brother is watching you!” It led to abuse as always happens with prohibitive methods. I recall how a few laburisti would go to the UK (later the masses started flooding Sicily buying all the shit much the same way as Libyans used to buy anything in Malta in the 70s) and come back with chocolates selling them at 50 Malta cents and toothpaste tubes which they sold at one Maltese Lira. Yes, there was an underground black market. When I went to the UK for my studies, I used to receive numerous requests for chocolate, toothpaste, tea and biscuits. At the customs they used to search my luggage and insist on asking whether I had any of these articles. It was almost a crime if you had some. Customs officers also were guilty for they blackmailed and harassed people. You had to give them some of your wares and you’d still pay those damn customs fees. I shudder at such memories.

I cannot forget Guido de Marco’s memorable speech in one of the budget debates where he, fearless and upfront as ever, looked Mintoff in the eye and — “Belt il-Ħażna u m’hawnx zokkor? Belt il-Ħażna u m’hawnx dqiq? Belt il-Ħazna…?” We were all behind Guido then, urging him on. It was as if each and every syllable he uttered was our own.

Seriously, do we want to go back to that kind of life, if one could call it a life? It was hell, a very rotten hell indeed, the one the Mintoff Yana and McKenna whatever never experienced and which their “generous” father so kindly dumped on us.

Today we feel sorry for the people of North Korea, but while I waching this video, I understood that only 24 years ago we were subject to the same treatment and stage-managed propoganda.

I must admit that this propoganda was effective. Joe Debono Grech was right at the time – the state TV was the perfect tool to create generations of socialists.

The climax of this distorted sense of identity imposed by the MLP as if the regime and the people were one and the same thing (very similar to the People’s Republic of China, Korea, and the rest of totalitarian regimes) was crystallized on a notice hanging along the fence of the then newly built runway extension at the Hal Far end. This notice was warned,

“TIDĦOLX – PROPRJETA TAL-POPLU MALTI”

Listening to Herr Mintoff made me shiver – would that his stay on earth is prolonged in as dreadful a way as possible..

Is this Joe Muscat’s idea of going back to the Golden years?

Greece within a year.

What socialist rubbish!