The truth hurts more than lies
The Labour Party mocks because the Nationalist Party has brought out a remake of possibly the most iconic and successful political billboard of all time: Saatchi and Saatchi’s 1979 poster for Britain’s Conservative Party, which helped put the disastrous Labour government out of power and give Britain its first woman prime minister (score and score).
The real problem here is that the Partit Bla Isem knows that this is its weakest point: that the electorate associates it with ruinous economic decisions that result in escalating unemployment and desperate measures to conceal the jobless by creating Potemkin Village enterprises.
Labour has an impressive track record of ruinous policies, though the stand-out two are the decision, put into disastrous effect, to cut Malta off from the West during the height of the Cold War and hitch us to Gaddafi’s bandwagon when he was an international pariah and terrorist, and the other one, fortunately rejected by the sensible part of the electorate, to keep us out of the European Union.
Those of my age and older (and the younger ones who bothered to find out) know exactly where the first got us in terms of riches and employment opportunities and economic prosperity and hope. We can only imagine, with a shiver, where we would be today had Joseph Muscat and his boss Fredu got their way with the second.
I don’t even want to think about it. No wonder young people don’t trust them, when they tried so hard to screw up their future.
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Nahseb li b’dan il-billboard qeghdin jibzghu ghax il-generazzjoni zaghzughha tkun taf kif konna fi zmien Muscat Labour Party biex wiehed jixtri TV tal-Kulur, biex wiehed jimla’ barmil ilma mill-booser, biex wiehed jiehu linja tat-“telephone” wara li kellu jdendel Lm50 lil xi kanvaser tal-MLP, biex jirregistaw biex jidhlu:- fil-Korpi (Dejma, Dirghajn il-Maltin, Izra u Rabbi, Bahhar u Sewwi, il-Pijunieri, u biex nxitru xi haga bil-bulkbuying.
Not only that! Remember when we were not allowed to take out money with us when going abroad, that is not taking enough? I think if my memory serves me right, only 100 Malta pounds. You had to go to the bank, with your passport, airline ticket, and the amount will be jotted down in the passport.
I remember going to London in 1984, the first time on my own, with a bunch of friends. We were going to stay there for 15 days, as we wanted to go to Scotland too. I had money at a branch of Lombard Bank there, so wrote to them to ask whether I could take out some 800 sterling from my account.
The answer was, ‘Of course, Miss the money is your own, you can do whatever you like’. I was amazed that I was not asked whAt I was going to do with them. I was amazed that in other countries, people could do what they wanted with their own money.
My friends didn’t have accounts abroad, so we sent money ‘as a gift’ to a cousin who lived near London, and then we met, and he gave us the cash.
Do we really want to go back to those times? Heaven forbid. Give me PN any day.
You’re wrong it was LM30 but obviously if you could tirranga ma xi hadd ta’gewwa, allura all right.
So it was Lm30. My memory deceived me.
Tweet tweet:
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Joseph Muscat @JosephMuscat_JM
Fact: That #GonziPN copied a billboard coined by #Thatcher’s #Tories 33 years ago says a lot about its mindframe. #stuckinthepast
Tghidx cucati Daphne, dejjem jekk ktibt din il-blog inti. Labour isimhom maghhom, Partit tax-xoghol.
Hekk hu, imma insejt kelma habib: “bla” li allura taqra’ Partit ta’ BLA xoghol.
Dejjem hadmuna, mhux hekk Peter?
“dejjem jekk ktibt din il-blog inti!
Peter, mela ma tafx li dan il-blog jiktibulha Il-Guy?
Labour isimhom maghhom, Partit tac-Cucati.
What? Can’t they come up with their own slogans or designs? Sarkozy, the Tories… David Agius should go back to cracking his whip.
I might be tempted to say “but 30 years ago is the past”. However, given that the main players in the past are still there, then yes, very appropriate.
You can say 30 years ago is the present. Just look at Joseph’s Malta Labour Party line-up.
Mal-Labour Ma Tahdimx
Mal-Labour Tinhadem.
Mal-Labour, mhux inhaddmuk, imma nahdmuk.
Try harder Daphne. This is pure plagiarism and will not stick except with persons in the PN who have been caught at it.
[Daphne – It isn’t. I work in the field, and I would know. What you should be worrying about, really, is the way the Labour Party engages communications coordinators who have to look up the major events of 1979 on the internet – and still get them wrong.]
“What you should be worrying about, really, is the way the Labour Party engages communications coordinators who have to look up the major events of 1979 on the internet – and still get them wrong.”
Maybe they’re not all the dinosaurs you make them out to be.
[Daphne – They’re not, my dear. The skivvies are in their 20s and 30s. But they’re not the ones who bother me.]
This is a great bill-board advert. Pity however that it is not in Maltese, which would read “Mal-Labour ma tahdimx” which would be an effective two-pronged message
The pot calling the kettle black.This from the PL when they have now copied everything under the sun from the PN, including most conspiciously the colour blue in everything PL today.
Now that the colour red and the word Labour are all but banned from anything Lejber. Remember is-sewwa jirbah zgur? Isthu.
‘Labour won’t work’ 1: All they say is that they are ‘safe’. ‘Safe’ means growth is not an aim, it’s retaining the status quo. Even a person with limited academic knowledge knows that this is never possible. Economies are never constant. If Malta decided to take Labour’s opinion not to enter the Euro to maintain the status quo, the repercussions would have been horrific.
‘Labour won’t work’ 2: One can only observe the 1996-1998 statistics (easily available on the DOI website) where unemployment spiraled. Compare this to the current situation given the economic crisis – bullseye!
‘Labour won’t work’ 3: Having no economic plan, why would an investor chose Malta over other countries where their economic plans are clear? Would you invest in a bank without reliable performance and goals?
‘Labour won’t work 4’: Or that is Labour won’t let you work. A lack of economic plan, means a lack of investment, meaning much fewer new jobs, lower quality jobs, and no chance of that promotion you deserved after all the experience you obtained.
‘Labour won’t work’ 5: Even as a party in opposition they have a huge identity crisis. They can’t even stick to a colour, emblem or straight-forward political dynamics. Can you really trust these people?
‘Labour won’t work’ 6: Like all other people politicians are merely employees with much bigger responsibilities, both to their parties and to the country. If the government was your business do you think they have the talent and Human Resources to lead it? Especially when considering the performance both their ‘star’, ‘new’, ‘fresh’ and ‘veterans’.
Whoever told you that young people don’t trust the Labour Party?
Just because one survey showed thus means jackshit. And then, you should have also checked the percentage of those youngsters that bothered to give a reply, compared to those of the other age groups.
However you look at it, we’ve had up to our noses with the PN and anyone who doesn’t see the dire need for change, for the good of democracy, the PN itself, and for the natural positive effects created by “change”, is blinkered.
Stop, take a step back, think….and be honest about the way things are.
[Daphne – Who told us that young people don’t trust the Labour Party? The very same surveys that tell us that Labour is going to win the election. I don’t agree with the rest of the statement. And in any case, the young people in question are aged 18 to 25. They’re not in their 30s as you are. So stop talking about ‘we’.]
Mandango70, there is need for a change, I agree. To be lumped with a PL candidate list which is partly made up of that party’s obscene past and no sound policy as of yet just for the sake of change makes no sense.
I shall be happy to do some weeding when I vote for the PN candidates.
Did unemployment increase or decrease during Thatcher’s premiership?
[Daphne – It went up, David, but for the RIGHT reasons (look those up – not doing them are among the reasons Greece and Italy ended up in the crap). The benefits were reaped later and are being reaped still. Margaret Thatcher is a big reason why Britain is not in the mess Greece is in now. Short term pain, long term gain.]
Thatcher had North Sea oil to pay for 3 million unemployed.
Bullshit. Labour and all socialist parties – see the two Papandreious of Greece as well
Malta’s MLP in the past and the UK’s too – are driven by the motto tax and spend.
No entrepreneurship, no growth ideas, no idea of how to create wealth by giving space to the adventurous among the population. Nada. Just squeeze and ross ic-cinturin but this policy works for a short time as sooner or later there’s nothing left. We’ve seen it in the Seventies.
Those of your age, and still more those of my age, remember Dom Mintoff’s lament that he could attract money from abroad to fill his coffers but he could never attract new jobs for our workers to fill their pockets.
With the survivors from that depressed era being recalled from forced retirement in exile during the days of Alfred Sant and now flanking Joseph Muscat on his rostrum, Malta can only expect more of the same rise in unemployment.
This billboard is very apt indeed.
No EU….., subsidized docks , Sea Malta and Air Malta, no low cost carriers, MIA run in government department fashion, stinginess, a tired infrastructure, CET in full bloom and on and on. SAFE FOR BUSINESS MY FOOT.
Super One News has spun this story as GonziPN going back to 1979.
Fair comment, but it unwittingly reminded me that after 34 years, the same mindless vindictive hopeless band of losers, dumped by the electorate in 1987 for the economic disaster they created, are back with us, standing behind the new “Fenech Adami” Muscat.
Exactly what are they using for brains?
I think I read it in a letter to The Times: young people have faith in the PN because they are jolly head in the air, and are not bothered with the daily hardships. Sometimes I think that I’m living in another world when I hear these people speaking or writing.
What an excellent way of reminding us of the past.
The PN is right to bring up this rather “old” UK poster because it makes people of my age compare those times with today and appreciate more the great achievements for our people practically under Nationalist administrations.
And the only taste of 18 months of Labour in 1996 resulted in a disastrous ending for Malta.
Let us remind ourselves and our youngsters that during Labour times, queues were the order of the day. People queued to register for work, to enroll in military corps, to obtain housing accommodation, to apply for a telephone service, to buy a colour TV, to ask a minister for a favour, etc etc etc.
This is what Karmenu Vella, Alex Sceberras Trigona, Joe Debono Grech, Marie Louise Coleiro, and Leo Brincat, who formed part of the Labour team at that time, could guarantee.
Labour’s reaction in digging the 1979 events shows panic. Instead, they should tell us why they will work.
Labour never worked, and with their current line up they never will.
” No wonder young people don’t trust them.”
I think if you believe that you are in for a big shock! I have spoken to a lot of young people who will be able to vote for the first time in the next election.
Practically all of them are going to vote Labour and the ones who said they were not going to vote Labour said they wouldn’t be voting at all as they didn’t see the point.
Practically all of them agreed that Joseph Muscat had a lot to offer young people whilst they described Gonzi and idiots like Gatt as boring old farts who can’t be trusted. You have to admit, they have a point.
[Daphne – You’re the same Joseph Attard who pops in here to do battle on behalf of Astrid Vella’s FAA and her belief that Sliema was inhabited in the ‘baroque period’. So nobody’s about to take you seriously. You’re the kind of person who projects your own ideas onto your interlocutors, instead of getting them to speak freely and truly listening – which is what I do.]
Folks, MLP has a secret plan- To pull Malta out of the EU.
The old Labour MPs realize that they can’t function within the EU parameters.
Young people, who care about their future, should run away as far as possible from MLP.
Labour is not fit for purpose and the Maltese have amply shown this in the past 30 years or so.
Losing seven elections out of eight consecutive ones is a real shame when you only have two parties contesting.
The Maltese voter has time and again given proof of good judgement and wise decisions when it comes to choosing the right and capable people to put in government.
Labour is moreover disadvantaged by Mintoff’s legacy which will continue to hound it.
How very typical of Labour and what a bunch of hypocrites led by THE hypocrite par excellence.
“GonziPN stuckindpast”
So what should we call most of Joseph Muscat’s future cabinet ministers? Jurassic Park?
Mal-Labour ikollok hafna vaganzi, ghax ma jkollokx x’taghmel.
Hafna minna insejna il-gimgha t’erba t’ijiem , jew ahjar il-four day week fejn haddiema ikollom jaghzlu li jahdmu erbgha t’ijiem u jithallsu gurna paga inqas.
U insejna wkoll it-“Time in Lieu” fejn haddiem jithaddem extra u minflok jithallas bis-siegha siegha u nofs tas-sahra ‘jithallas’ bil-leave biex imur jaghmel xi part time job ghal-rasu mhux iddikjarat !Tat-Tarzna kienu specjalisti fiha din.
Ghamlu tajjeb li qabbdu ritratt mill-pasat u addattawh ghal-lum. Xaghlulna l-memorja.
Tiehux il-hall biex isirlek inbid.
Imma bit-time in lieu kont tista’ tghix hajja ta’ papa, tixtri x’tiekol, tmur vaganza, tohrog u ggemma kemxa flus :) u mela le.
Tony Blair’s autobiography helps one understand what Labour’s electoral programme will be: generic policies so they cannot be attacked, sectoral targeting and fomenting of dissatisfacton.
But new faces and radical policy changes are missing.
We see the same tired old 1980s faces, with less hair, more girth but the same IQ and attitude.
Saying that Labour is safe for business is like saying that Malta is a democratic island. It should be taken for granted.
You associate anything but democracy with North Korea. Same with the Malta Labour Party. Expect to see more state intervention, more pjaciri, more mediocrity – insomma gvern tal-messaggiera u l-cleaners.
Nowadays, business can vote with its feet and move operations abroad and let the devil take the hindmost.
Caveat emptor.