It’s no mystery, Kurt
Kurt Sansone is puzzled because young people don't fancy this man.
Kurt Sansone of The Sunday Times hit the road to ask “young people” why they prefer the Nationalist Party to Labour. He writes today:
Taking a leaf out of last week’s The Sunday Times election survey Kurt Sansone seeks some answers on what is motivating the young to vote PN, before shifting to Labour.
New voters should be flocking to the Labour Party, attracted by its young leader and his forward-looking stands on issues like divorce and in-vitro fertilisation.
Honesly. How completely people like Sansone forget what it means to be 18.
Oh, yes. When I was 18, I really cared about divorce and IVF, and, yes, 38 seemed really young and hip. About as young and hip as my parents, who were 43 at the time, who might as well have been from another planet and who clearly didn’t understand the pressing mysteries of being 18 because, obviously, they had never been 18 themselves but were born, fully formed, as Grown-Ups.
And here’s some perspective, Kurt. Guess what? When I was 38 like Joseph, I actually had an 18-year-old son. I wasn’t his contemporary and he didn’t think how, gosh, young I was. I was his mother. A Grown-Up. A completely different generation.
Joseph is bald, for crying out loud. He’s dumpy, with middle-aged spread and bad clothes and a wife who looks like a manna and a history of trying to keep young people out of Europe. There is no way on earth that any 18-year-old is going to look at him and see a kindred spirit.
Oh, and another thing, Kurt: 18-year-olds don’t give a damn about divorce. On the contrary, most of them are against it because they don’t want their parents to divorce and they’re not old enough to think in terms of marriage themselves.
And IVF? When you’re 18? FFS.
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However, Joseph Muscat’s stand on gay marriage has attracted many young voters, as it seems to be the “hip” thing nowadays.
[Daphne – Joseph Muscat’s stand is AGAINST gay marriage.]
They also tend to be attracted to less conservative views and in fact the great majority of 18 year olds I know are pro-divorce and pro-life (not sure what Muscat’s stance on that is), although they don’t really seem to care about IVF.
Unfortunately they tend to think less about the economy and that is what is most important right now.
– an 18 year old Nationalist supporter.
Pro-life means they are against abortion. Pro-choice is being in favour of having abortion made legal so that people have the choice, which is the more liberal idea.
Muscat is not in favor of gay marriage, and has often spoken about being against same sex couples adopting.
Sorry I meant to say pro-choice above. For some reason I thought that Joseph Muscat was in favour of gay marriage, thanks for clearing that up :)
Well, to be accurate, the PL opened up an LGBT labour section. But this is just a group of people who meet up every so often and talk about how to get Labour votes.
When it comes down to actually doing something, they don’t. There is plenty of proof of this.
Despite having this LGBT section, Dr Muscat has never actually said he was in favour of gay marriage, and that the union be called marriage. And he most definitely is against gay couples adopting.
Breaking News.
Franco Debono demands that Gonzi goes to Peru to inform the president (the Maltese president, that is) all about Franco and Jeffrey’s latest tantrums.
This beats the lot
“G Schembri
Today, 10:21
Under the 80s MLP government, youths were better off than they are now.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120715/local/How-the-young-vote.428551
When I read that comment I laughed myself silly.
I’m so envying you.
Kurt Sansone will probably ‘battle’ the other tiny Kurt (hmm, on second thoughts they have a similar size/structure) for the post of head, government communications.
Unless Labour intend to ask Sansone to continue ‘waving the flag’ through The Times.
I realise that since the influx of the ‘modern’ young writers at The Times newsroom, criticism of Allied Newspapers by the PL has vanished.
“New voters should be flocking to the Labour Party, attracted by its young leader and his forward-looking stands on issues like divorce and in-vitro fertilization.”
Hardly.
The young aren’t dumb enough to actually believe that ‘young leader of the PL’.
In fact, they are more likely to see the messes he keeps creating and be turned off by him. He’s a bit of a sh*t stirrer and no one likes those.
As far as many are concerned, all the problems the PN is facing at the moment are all brought about by the PL who are encouraging them to cause all this mess just to bring down the government and have an election.
Dr Muscat’s goal was not to be in Opposition and win over votes, but to be in Opposition for as little time as possible.
It’s as if his aim is to have an election before we are supposed to have an election.
The young are less likely to vote for a party which goes on and on about how we live in a dictatorship when they have everything they need/want.
All those allegations about how people are oppressed and starving in the street go right over their heads because it is just not true to begin with, and when they are at university they are starting to be encouraged to use their brains and only believe what is fact and not some emotional irrational nonsense.
“I expect these people to embrace change but it seems the message is not reaching them.”
Yes, they embrace change. And they all feel that the only party that can actually bring about change is the party that has actually done so in the past.
The PN has been the party of liberals.
If the PL was so liberal then why was it so against the EU to begin with?
What nonsense is this man talking?
Does he really think he can just forget the entire past of the party and its people and talk like it never happened?
What a liar.
And let’s talk about change for a second. The only change the PL can speak of is the way it has brought back those of the dark and violent times that we are being told have nothing to do with the present PL.
They just won’t believe that sort of rubbish.
If in the past you signed a secret agreement with North Korea, what’s to say you’ve changed your views today? You judge a party by their past actions, because that is all one has to judge them by.
“This phenomenon, known in sociological circles as a late transition, may also shield young people from everyday issues that are of greater concern for families, such as utility bills.”
I am pretty sure that they are all aware of the price of utility bills. They must hear their parents talking about the price of this and the price of that.
But they are also aware of what causes those prices to rise, i.e. oil. And they also know that the government has little control over the price of oil.
So how on earth does anyone expect the young, who have not had a blinkered and spartan education thanks to the PN, to believe Muscat when he talks about lowering utility bills?
Muscat still hasn’t told us how he plans on doing that. Is he going to make PN supporters pay for the electricity of the PL supporters?
I couldn’t agree more.
And that’s not to say that most people in the 18-24 year old category – the majority of which are students – are firm believers in the PN’s education policy.
They are scared that if Labour are elected, all which the PN has provided in terms of educational opportunities, stipend and the like, will be taken away from them in a single moment.
And who’s to blame them.
This group of people are tech-savvy and read blogs like these, and most even remember the fantastic 22 months that Labour had in government back in 1996 to 1998, where all hell broke loose. Of course, students back then – including the likes of Deborah Schembri – protested against the government.
And now Schembri is going to be one of Joseph’s star candidates in a party where nothing has changed. Correction, something has indeed changed – the ghouls of the past have been brought back to life.
If that’s not warped logic, then I don’t know what is.
Honestly from all I’ve seen and read about the Labour Party, it’s a wonder anyone would even vote for them. Almost makes me lose faith in democracy.
I lost my faith in democracy a long time ago.
It dumbs down to the lowest common factor, i.e. the many dumbos outvote the intelligent minority.
Democracy gives you leaders like Berlusconi, Hitler and Mintoff.
It means that politicians pander to the wishes of big business and make the rich richer in the name of boosting the economy.
Hitler wasn’t voted into power.
“New voters should be flocking to the Labour Party, attracted by its young leader …”
Kurt, by the time you get to 50+, you will understand that to you anybody below the age of 40 is young.
To those below the age of 30, those in the 40 bracket are not young.
So how does this put Maximus, the “young leader of the PL” in the eyes of the young generation?
If the LP has decided to ignore the past, how can the electorate with some grey matter just overlook it?
It is true that “il-passat mhux garanzija tal-futur.” but “il-passat HUWA mera tal-futur”.
The LP wants us to forget the past because Joseph is only interested to talk now about the future.
By the same argument why doesn’t the church bring back those defrocked priests found guilty of raping a few boys, forgive and forget their past and put them back in active ministries? After all their crimes occurred so long ago!
Here is the Labour Party with a number of former ministers of the 70s and 80s in tow who did not rape just a few kids, but the whole country, and we shouldn’t forget and forgive their past?
Don’t they deserve another chance?
Kurt Sansone seems content to spew out the former Labour Party secretary-general’s claim that Labour means change, along with other “positive” reasons he believes people should vote Labour – such as Muscat’s age, as though this means anything other than that he is totally inexperienced.
Why didn’t Kurt go and meet “the young”?
He should have obtained at least one single opinion as to why the young want to vote PN.
Instead, he “disguised” the reasons the young would vote for PN as due to their selfishness as individuals.
Had he bothered to ask even a tiny sample of “the young”, he would have found out that its not about yes or no to IVF and divorce.
It is about the EU and “the young’s” future.
On the other side of course, there are those who tried unethically to steal their right to EU accession, robbing them of their future too had they succeeded.
It’s still not cool to vote Labour, or be a Laburist, or be seen with Laburisti.
There are various reasons, but the point is that being PN is still cool and desirable.
At election time we will see the best looking, ‘hippest’ young people at PN parties not Labour ones, even though Labour will be the government-in-waiting.
True, Labour is still the “kollox jghaddi” party, from candidates, to “policy” to style.
Oh and the reasons are pretty much the following:
the stories about the 80s;
the EU referendum (which we all remember well);
the ‘rough’ factor.
Kurt should be careful what he asks for. Those scum might just burn his workplace down again in the near future.
Old habits die hard especially with so many of the guard still calling the shots.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120716/opinion/Gift-horse-runs-loose-for-Labour.428742
I think The Times has been infiltrated by PL propaganda writers and that makes me not reading it ANYMORE.