Oh, but I thought we were starving
A 1930s dole queue in Britain
The Labour Party does its best to convince us that we’re starving, that people are out of work and that by tomorrow we’ll all be in the gutter (probably, if they’re elected).
But now the European Commission has said that Malta’s economy is expected to perform much better than the Eurozone average. I know who I’m best prepared to believe.
And yesterday, we all saw it was madness: traffic jammed bumper to bumper in the direction of all the restaurant areas, and absolutely no luck, anywhere, for those who left their reservation attempts to the last minute. We may be starving, but it looks like everyone and his mother can afford to eat out on Mothers’ Day. Oh, and drive there, too.
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I disagree with you , there are pockets of poverty in Malta .
Tale of two Cities ,
From the Times -Sunday, April 15, 2012 by Claudia Calleja
‘We fight over food’
The Millennium chapel in Paceville.
Tessie* placed her microwave oven in storage, no longer uses her toaster, turned off the freezer and rarely irons clothes as she tries to slash her electricity bill.
“I can’t cope … I used to always dress up to go out,” she said, as she looked down at her black tracksuit trousers – which do not need ironing.
“I started collecting water from the washing machine in buckets, which I used to flush the toilet, even if it’s black,” she said, as she stood in a queue outside the Millennium Chapel in Paceville yesterday morning.
The 60-year-old from Żabbar was among the 200 people who waited for the chapel’s large garage door to open – to collect a few packets of pasta, rice, bread or crackers provided by the EU food aid programme.
People in the queue ranged from children accompanying their parents to pensioners – all qualify for food aid because they earn less than €6,275, or 60 per cent of the median national annual income.
Smartly dressed young women looked out of place as they waited in the queue that showed the reality of a hidden poverty.
One woman pushed an old pram which she hoped to fill with provisions for her family. Others were armed with carrier bags and held their identity cards and entitlement papers as they eagerly waited for the door to roll up.
“Life has become too difficult. Costs are always rising and now the price of gas went up again… Even the price of meat went up. I can only afford 250 grammes and give it to my grandchildren,” Tessie said.
[Daphne – That report is a joke. If that is poverty, then I’m Mother Theresa. That’s not poverty; it’s neurosis. I suppose you didn’t stop to wonder about the ‘smartly dressed young women’ who ‘looked out of place’. Of course there are pockets of poverty. There is poverty everywhere. But you can bet your last banana that nobody truly poor was in that queue. Why does ‘Tessie’ buy 250g of meat and give them to her grandchildren? Don’t they have parents who work? And if their parents don’t work, shouldn’t ‘Tessie’ be telling them to work instead of bum and scrounge off her?]
I regularly donate good clothes my children have outgrown to a children’s home, and have been assured that nothing goes to waste, since what they don’t use themselves, they pass on to needy families who go to ask for what’s available. (Anything left over is sold at the home’s bazaar to raise funds.)
I was apprehensive about dropping off some bags of clothing a couple of weeks ago because, on arriving there on my way to work, there was an (unemployable?) middle-aged man waiting directly outside, covered in tattoos, nervously smoking, and looking around furtively.
It was only after actually going in with the bags that I realised that he was accompanying a woman, who happened to be going through bags there to see if anything was suitable for her.
I came to the conclusion that if he was there at 8.15am on a weekday, then he probably did not work. If they lived close by, the woman would have walked or caught a bus there. I could only come to the conclusion that he was unwilling to work, and yet drove a car and chain-smoked, while his wife begged for charity.
I felt bad about being judgemental, but could not help thinking that some people have really got their priorities the wrong way round. If he ditched smoking, he would save a good deal of money, which could be put to better use elsewhere. And then he could always work.
I wonder how the 60 year old from Zabbar managed to find out that Millenium Chapel in Paceville was giving out foodstuffs on that particular day. The poor lady must have rung all over Malta to find out.
God knows how many mobile pay-as-you-go cards she must have bought to seek out those precious pasta packets which in truth where never destined for her.
Why doesn’t she admit that she’s taking them from some other hungry mouths who really deserve it?
Oh for goodness’ sake, slice of Soho, grow up and let’s stop altogether with this Dun Victor Grech stunt.
Yes, poverty exists in Malta, as it does everywhere else in the world.
Still no one of those who truly need help ever begs. That is why the number of social workers in Malta has more than trebled over the last years, so that the real poor people can be sought out and be given the proper care they need.
But in no way can anyone use the queues that line up for the EU food aid programme as a statistic or any form of criteria to judge the poverty rate in Malta.
If this is some pathetic attempt at giving the Millenium Chapel a media boost for all the good work it’s doing, kindly stop, because the “Millenium Chapel queue” is hardly exemplar in this EU food aid programme.
It’s the poverty mentality some people have managed to get stuck in their heads, that’s creating problems.
It will be difficult to diffuse this fear if the church is magnifying everyday problems we all experience and which we all have.
Fear is a strange thing. All this media about the new poverty in Malta is scaring the fearful.
Slice of Soho – check out this unfortunate soul from another report by Claudia Calleja. Look at the general theme of the comments below. Poverty, or just sheer ignorance and bone idleness?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120429/local/-Someone-needs-to-take-notice-of-people-like-us-.417456
The ‘Faqar Rant’ again. Ta’ kuljum din. Daqt johorgu serje ta’ kotba fuq il-faqar f’Malta. X’depression ta’ nies !
Life comes with sufferings and people need to accept this.
The only two devastating conditions that people can’t run away from are, natural disasters and serious health problems which very often destroys the ability to go out and work – everything else can be resolved.
The woman in the story above (and many like her), needs to learn how to deal with the adversities of life. And the stupid church should teach her rather than encourage her to moan.
Life brings many changes (some good, some bad, very often more bad than good) and the problem with the Maltese is that they’ve had it good for so long, that they’ve forgotton how to be responsible enough to face the challenges in life.
The woman may be experiencing an unimaginable hardship as of this moment (as all of us at some point do, she’s not alone) – she needs to learn to accept and adjust.
Poverty is only in her mentality.
I know of a house help who has the barefacedness to offer a generous portion of the EU food to her sinjura. Precisely why I am against means testing. It is so sad to see a large portion of the aid going to the undeserving.
Once you mentioned it, I know of someone who queues for EU aid food, gets bottles of free jam and distributes to her neighbours ‘ghax helu hafna he’, ‘tal-EU misshom jibghatu xi haga ahjar’.
So now not only have the Maltese become beggars, they’re also choosers. Well, they have the option, tenks God. But this is hardly a description of poverty.
Poverty means eating the jam, bottle, label, lid and all because you won’t be eating for two weeks. Poverty means telling your neighbour, wow, I ate jam and biscuits today. I hadn’t seen a bottle of jam in ages. And not telling them: ‘huduh ghax helu hafna he’.