We never know what we’ve got until we’ve lost it
In The Guardian, today:
“… there were reports suggesting that the chancellor, Angela Merkel, was dusting down the economic modernisation plan used to revive East Germany after the fall of communism in the belief that similar measures could be applied to Greece and other struggling eurozone countries.”
If I hear the words, guh, starvation, faqar, ma nistghux inlahhqu mal-hajja, nies bla flus, m’hawnx xoghol again, is shall have to wish perversely that the people who talk this way get a harsh dose of reality.
Except that it won’t only be them, will it?
There’s Luciano Busuttil, for one, who spends most of his day sauntering up and down Republic Street, pops into parliament occasionally, then spends half his life on Facebook, grumbling because his car fuel bill is 2,500 euros a year and he won’t buy a small car because he’s too big for it and he needs to drive his children to their big-fees private school every day, and why isn’t there free wifi in the mythical Ghar id-Dud playground when he’s just been to Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens and found free wifi there.
This is te Maltese version of being unable to cope with the cost of living.
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In Italy one in four children is at risk of poverty.
In Greece, children are showing signs of malnourishment.
In Malta, children are showing strong signs of obesity.
I’ve been to the south of Italy. Poverty there is more or less for the same reason here – lack of education and life skills and wrong priorities.
The key difference is one. Here in Malta we have education handed to us on a silver platter for free. Yet we choose to ignore it.
I clearly remember one day at the university, while boarding the bus home. There was a group of men who were working there as cleaners, and one of them, in his 40s said: “Kemm hawn zwiemel u fidili hawn”, referring to the university students.
Imagine what this guy’s kids grew up with and how much they ‘loved’ school if that was the attitude they were taught.
In Malta, there is a one in ? chance of running into a narrow-minded blockhead any time you exit your front door.
Time to bring in some sort of national service: forced expatriation for six months in a big city at least a full country further north of Catania’s market.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/payback-time-lagarde-greeks
Ouch. IMF ‘s Christine Lagarde telling it straight.
Luciano Busuttil: a daughter named Kayleigh (which he probably pronounces as Kylie) …and a house called Il Sogno.
And interestingly, the Labour Party in tandem with Franco Debono have not presented a motion of censure regarding the country’s economic performance, but on the drug problem at the prisons.
Qeghdin sew. Other countries are on their knees, including the Netherlands now, and Malta’s parliament is deep in heated debate about drugs in prisons and an old Wikileaks cable.