Isn’t this just unbelievable?
Malta Today’s website reported yesterday on a speech which Joseph Muscat gave:
Muscat said that Labour will not have it easy when it is in government because it will inherit a country which was mismanaged for many years by Nationalist administrations.
“A vote for Labour, is not a mere vote of no-confidence in the current administration but is a vote of confidence in the certainty of change which we will bring. It will be a vote for the creation of a new middle class,” Muscat said.
The Labour leader said he is receiving a lot of energy and good will from the party’s grass roots, which he said have been suffering for the last 25 years.
“They have given me the confidence and energy to lead this movement. This energy increases when I see people around us who voted for GonziPN and who are genuine Nationalists. They have crossed over to us because they believe that we can bring change,” Muscat said.
Labour will not have it easy in government because it will have “inherited” a country mismanaged for many years by Nationalist governments.
I don’t know where to begin. For a start, political parties do not “inherit the country” when they get into government. To quote the infamous words of Karmenu Il-Guy Vella to a fellow member of parliament a few days ago: “Mela l-parlament hallietilek zitek?”
The accusation that Malta is in some kind of mess and that the Nationalists have mismanaged the country is beyond horrendous.
I don’t think for one minute that even Joseph Muscat believes that. He is just cynically feeding the message into the system so that those who don’t know any better will pick it up, believe it, and above all, repeat it.
The opposite is true.
We are in a particularly good position, whether compared to our neighbours or not, and it is entirely the result of careful management and sound decisions.
If we had followed the instructions and advice given to us by Joseph Muscat and his then leader Sant (and the entire Labour Party), and stayed out of the European Union, we would by now be queuing up to emigrate but with all doors closed in our faces, because – oh double irony – without an EU passport we wouldn’t have been able to leave in the same way the Spaniards are leaving Spain en masse and spreading out all over Europe.
Secondly, who or what is this new middle class that Joseph Muscat is going to create?
When I leave the house, I am unable to move for the crowds of new middle class people who just didn’t exist in Mintoff’s days, in KMB’s days, or even in the early 1990s. Who are all these thousands of young people in IT and financial services jobs if not the new middle class, children of the Mintoffian working-class?
Many of their parents were labourers, blue collar workers, and their grandparents were illiterate. Yet they are living lives that would have been thought impossible a mere 25 years ago, when Saint Mintoff’s idea of improving the lot of the working-class was to give them fish, and keep them dependent, rather than giving them a rod to fish with so that they could become independent of him and his hand-outs.
We are living in a new Malta where the only people who aren’t middle class are those who just can’t be fagged to make the effort. The daughter of my illiterate chicken-breeder neighbour went to university, got a scholarship to work on a postgraduate degree, and for the last few years has been working with a top communications agency in London.
Under Labour, none of that would have been possible. But more significantly, nobody would have told her that it was possible and that she could have a great education and a fantastic London job. Under Labour, she’d have been helping her mother wash the floor until the time came when she got her own floor to wash.
The daughter of another of my neighbours, a farmer, excelled in languages and communication at university and is on course for a brilliant career.
Under Labour, she would have been out in the fields like her mother, from dawn to dusk, seven days a week. Her mother is glad she is not, that she has been able to have a different life.
No socialist hand-outs or plots on which to build maisonettes, for these people. Education, initiative, drive, ambition and above all, opportunities, and they’re off.
Nothing can stop them.
They have been told it is possible, they have been shown it is possible, they have been encouraged in every way possible to do it, and above all, they have been given the ways and means to break the pattern. And they’ve done it.
They’ll buy their own flat, thank you, and they’ll also earn their own money.
If Joseph Muscat thinks he is going to make a new middle-class out of the people who aren’t middle-class now, he’s dreaming. They’ve been handed everything on a silver platter, with money round the edges and a ‘please take this and make your life much better’ letter, but still they can’t get round to doing it, because they haven’t got the will or the ability, or because they think the world owes them a living.
But I don’t think Muscat really believes that he can make a new middle class out of what’s left. I think he is deliberately and cynically selling an undeliverable.
“I’ll make you middle-class without your having to work at it. I’ll wave my magic wand and you and your children needn’t bother to study or work to improve your lot. It will just happen, because Labour is in government.”
And what was that about the “Labour grass roots who have been suffering for the last 25 years”? Suffering how and in what way? I don’t see anyone suffering.
I see them having a jolly good time, driving their big cars and packing restaurants and crowding into Tigne Point every weekend to raid the shops. There are so many middle class people around nowadays that whenever I leave the house I wonder where they all where 20 years ago.
It’s as though they’re being mass-produced on some middle class farm that I know nothing about. Sliema, St Julian’s and Swieqi have been razed to the ground and rebuilt purely to accommodate the demand for real estate from all the new middle class people who want to live there.
Where were they all living before? Why, in their parents’ working-class homes in far less aspirational parts of the island.
“Le, sorry ta, hi, fully booked. Cempel ghada, orrajt.”
“I’m sorry, madam, but we’ve run out. I’ll see if there are any left in the stock-room. No, sorry, they’ve all gone.”
“Hemm waiting-list, hi. Nahseb ghandek sa Jannar.”
“Leave your telephone number, and if we have a cancellation, we’ll fit you in.”
And suffering compared to what, anyway? Compared to the fantastic and wonderful life they had before 1987? Unbelievable.
Even the supposedly privileged lived in an Albanian hell before 1987, though some of us only saw that in retrospect because it was all we knew and didn’t really have any basis for comparison.
So just imagine what it was like for the working-class under Mintoff and KMB. A ghastly hell – and the only reason they don’t think so is because they had no idea.
But now they have, and there’s no excuse.
I don’t have to imagine what life was like then, 25 years ago when Joseph’s ruddy grassroots were “not suffering”, because I remember only too well. Backwoods primitive doesn’t even begin to describe it.
The extent of deprivation under sainted Mintoff and his puppet KMB and their glove-puppet Karmenu Vella was jaw-dropping. Even shampoo was a total novelty in some working-class households I knew. They used soap and household detergent to wash their hair, when they washed it, that is.
Haven’t you ever wondered why in photographs from the 1970s and 1980s most people look like extras from the film Zulu? It wasn’t because Afros and the Big Frizz were fashionable. It was because washing with cheap detergent played havoc with kinky Maltese hair, nobody went to the hairdresser except on really special occasions, and few people owned a hairdryer.
Toothbrushes? Forget it. “X’jigifieri tahsel snienek?” I still remember a fellow child asking me that.
If you don’t believe me, ask the state-school teachers of the period. You’d find children who grew up in homes without basic commodities even in church schools, let alone in the free schools.
I remember being invited to the homes of classmates in my church-run primary school only to discover that they had no toys, not a single one, and that their bedrooms – if they were fortunate enough to have one – were like an adult’s, with nothing to indicate that a child slept there.
I remember that it was normal for households not to have a car, and we didn’t question it. “I have to get there by bus, because we don’t have a car so my parents can’t bring me.” “OK, right, we’ll meet a little later then.”
And now we are expected to believe that these same people have been “suffering” for the last 25 years, during which time they have been living lives that not even the supposedly privileged lived back then.
How bloody insulting. The 20-somethings who actually believe Muscat when he says this should ask themselves why their lives are so very different to those of their parents.
It’s not down to magic, I can tell you. Take Labour’s Aaron Farrugia (pictured here) for instance. Hadn’t it been for the Nationalist Party’s policies on education, the economy and the European Union, he would have been a dockyard labourer.
And we are supposed to believe that the way he has benefited so enormously from those policies somehow constitutes suffering.
There is a whole generation about to vote which has been force-fed on lies, and another generation older than that which has been lying to itself and others.
I suppose the hardest thing for supporters of the Labour Party to swallow is that it wasn’t Saint Mintoff who turned the working class into the new middle class. It was (boo hiss) Eddie Fenech Adami and (boo hiss) Lawrence Gonzi.
That must be so difficult to accept, hence the lies and self-delusion, and a whole new generation of Laburisti raised on their parents’ fraudulent stories.
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We are being warned: PL will not be able to keep their `promises`. A deja vue..Sant played this game and `found` a hofra.
Back to the FUTURe.
Psychological preparation for the circus and mess that is coming our way – he is already trying to lower the expectation of his own electorate, given the certitude that he is going to be the new Prime Minister in a few months.
Exactly.
Daphne, an excellent piece as usual.
I would go one further and make special reference to the paragraph preceding the last, rephrase and ask: Take Nationalist’s so and so for instance. Hadn’t it been for the Labour Party’s policies on education, the economy and the European Union, he would have been, AND REMAINED, a dockyard labourer. Why? Because only Labour-leaning persons would have been eligible to benefits arising from those same policies.
Can’t agree more – truly an excellent piece! I could identify with the general trend and the individual details in your write-up.
Having reached a certain age, I’ve been through the Labour governments since ’71 and voted for it in ’76 – a mistake that I regretted as soon as the electoral result was announced and ever since: ALL the Nationalist Party clubs were burnt down or otherwise viciously attacked and severely damaged.
Myself coming from a traditional (not necessarily Labour) working-class family this piece reminded me of another one you wrote a long time ago about the ‘true’ working-class’ ethos – which Mintoff destroyed.
Our parents may have been simple folk, unschooled, but they instilled in us the true values of life: dignity, love of learning, hard work, a free and independent mind…
Then, in our rebellious youth, we fell for the ‘socialist’ lie that Mintoff wanted to upgrade, even elevate, the lot of the working class until…
We realised that his own view of the working class was different from ours. It was a working class that was servile to his (not only) political views and policies, which were mainly based on class hatred.
That is until we realised that he replaced the old middle- and upper classes with new ones from his detestable stable. The rest of the ‘working class’ were supposed to be ever-grateful for the economic ‘handouts’ (although some had more handouts than others – in the shape of flats, plots, cushy jobs…)
It should be amply clear to people more or less my age (irrespective of what E Privitera or his ilk say) that with Labour in power Malta was in trouble in many respects – (whether it was violence, blatant arrogance by ministers and their ‘boys’, political discrimination, lack of economic vision, unemployment, (lack of) freedom of speech, humiliation on the international scene…)
Today’s labour leader promises us that he ‘can bring change’. Indeed, as far as I can remember, change has been the leitmotif of all of Labour’s electoral campaigns (except those following their tenure), yet the only change they brought was (on balance) a worsening of the situation they had promised to ‘change’.
Still, quite a few people it seems have such a short memory.
They are only setting the scene for them to not fulfill their promises. Basically, they promise the world and then when they get into government they say “Well, we can’t bring down utility bills because the last government messed the country up”
They will them proceed to screw up more and more and blame it on the present government.
Dr Muscat is not Obama, and Gonzi is not George Bush.
If the current administration is so bad for the country, then I shudder to think what progress is in the eyes of the PL.
Of course it must resemble what Malta was like under Mintoff seeing as those were the golden years, Muscat has done everything he can not bring back those people into the fold, and has promoted those years as something to aspire to.
Thanks to the Nationalists we have freedom, a fantastic way of life and a healthy economy where there is near full employment. What more could Muscat expect? He should know how tough it has been for the PN to provide all this. He worked very hard to put a stop to it all.
Sorry there are a few typos in there. Damn auto correct!
Strangely enough I had just asked a Labour-supporting acquaintance of mine what he meant by “suffering” under PN governments and what he expects when the PL get into government.
His answer was (summarised): it’s now our turn to get a share of the cake (prompted further he mentioned as examples – plum government jobs, promotions, appointments on boards and government tenders.
He also added that government jobs will be found for all those with no education and no skills who don’t want to work in the private sector (too much hard work for too little pay).
And finally, if you have a problem with say the taxman, you will be able to “tirranga” (get it resolved the Maltese way) if you talk to the right person.
Oh and he is a hunter, so he also expects Joseph to turn back the clock.
How can you even start to try and persuade such a person and all the many others like him?
“Do not judge me by what I say….judge me by what I do”, Gonzi.
You are not heeding to this plea. You are judging Joseph Muscat for having used the term “inherit”. If one were to look at substance over form, one would surely judge the current administration as if they own the place. Perhaps they didn’t say it, but they are surely acting in such a way.
But lets comment on the real stuff. You keep harping on about the good position Malta finds itself thanks to the sound decisions taken by consecutive PN governments.
I sincerely try hard every time to reconcile such statements to the reality around us. Some serious mistakes have been committed by Nationalist-led Governments, and I refuse to believe that these were well intended decisions that panned out wrongly.
At the end of the day, it always boils down to a question of credibility, and thus I do not expect you to toe my same line of thinking, your views expressed repeatedly are well rooted in your way of seeing things.
Voting PN is tantamount to signing off all the sins as if they never were.
[Daphne – And voting to make a Super One reporter prime minister with Il-Guy as minister of finance and Anglu Farrugia as deputy prime minister is a suicidal act. ‘Your views…are well rooted in your way of seeing things’: one’s views are not well rooted in one’s way of seeing things. They ARE one’s way of seeing things. View = way of seeing things. My views are rooted in three things: age/experience. in-depth knowledge of politics and politicians, and a certain level of intelligence. They are also well considered and on the basis of all of that, not to be dismissed lightly or even at all. Put brutally, my opinion about Maltese politics and Maltese politicians is not just anybody’s opinion.]
A dose of modesty would fit in nicely.
Anyway I do not know if it is suicidal. Il-Guy didn’t do a messy job in the 20 months he headed the Tourism Ministry, notwithstanding your claims to the contrary.
[Daphne – My dear, I remember Il-Guy in earlier incarnations as a minister than 1996: as KMB’s minister, and as Mintoff’s minister. So I think I do know what I’m talking about. He didn’t “do a messy job in the 20 months he headed the Tourism Ministry”? Of course not: between his finding his feet and his being booted out by the electorate, the ministry more or less ran itself on the old schedule. Do please get a grip. When tourism operators say he was ‘all right’ what they mean is that they were relieved he wasn’t actually screwing them over. Most business operators (and others) have a very high tolerance threshold for abject Labour performance. It’s born of really low expectations. And Il-Guy didn’t exactly fight their pitch by standing up to Sant on the business of CET, did he. Great going there.]
As for the “Super One” reporter (as you choose to define him – you might as well have said a baby in a soiled nappy, because he was that too at one time), only time will tell whether he’s up to the job or not.
[Daphne – We are not babies in nappies through choice. The decision to be a Super One reporter is a personal choice which says a great deal about us.]
What’s fundamental to make it work, for any Prime Minister, is to ensure to have a team of trusted competent people around him who have his ear, and him heeding to what he’s advised after careful measured vetting.
[Daphne – And who are these people who will be advising the Super One reporter?]
The way you see it, there’s doom at one end, and having it really good at the other. To which I take exception. There’s no suicide or paradise in the waiting, whichever way it goes.
[Daphne – No, the way I see it is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.]
A good, instructive exchange there.
I’m not a Nationalist, either by birth, nurture or informed attitude, and still I can’t stand people whose ‘way of seeing things’ is blinkered by some (hidden?) prejudice (or agenda?) to the objective reality around them.
These people claim to be objective, open-ended and neutral because they evaluate the details between the two political parties. This ‘way of seeing things’ may lead to the conclusion that there is not much choice between the two parties, and that any one of them will do.
The other ‘way of seeing things’ is to look at the “big picture”.
Which is really the one that gives the impetus to a country’s long-term development and the people’s general welfare? Age and experience definitely help in seeing the big picture but if one doesn’t have these s/he can study the historical development – again not in the detail but in the overall trend – of the country over time.
To me (and I repeat, even if I don’t consider myself a Nationalist) the PN is the one that has historically and experientially (at least during the past half a century) laid the foundations and achieved the high-level objectives of a modern democracy, based on the freedoms and human rights of its citizens by creating the milieu and providing endless levels of opportunities to succeed in life.
From Independence to the accession to the EU, education and social services (not just monetary, which were always expanded anyway by PN); sound economic planning and long-term investments (e.g. in all sources of energy, which under Mintoff and KMB were in shambles); from employment to tertiary education; from democracy (e.g. local councils which Labour resisted) to wider participation by stake-holders, …
In this respect there is (objectively) no doubt that the PN has the better record by far in education which is the key to the long-term development (and not just economic) of the country and its citizens.
The only reason why Labour will not have it easy is because YOU and your team are incapable to govern, Joseph. And you damn well know it.
I am sure that many Labourites employed in the public sector have benefitted a lot in the last 25 years with all the increases in wages and in the conditions of work.
The last collective agreement was signed a few weeks ago and these workers are going to benefit around 190 million ewro in the six years as from 1st January 2012.
This contrasts with other public sector workers in other countries like Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Spain where wages decreased, pensions decreased, conditions of work worsened and in some instances these workers lost their jobs.
All workers, especially those in the Public Sector have to thank the Nationalist Government for all this and for the brave decisions this government have taken in the last few years, including the closure of the Dockyards, EU membership and the investment in educations and health.
Absolutely spot on!
How about playing or putting on YouTube labour budget speeches?
Do you remember: U it-ton taz-zejt ser jorhos b’sitt habbiet (today’s 3 cents).
8,000 jobs, with the government and parastatal companies, handed out by Labour to the unemployed on the eve of the 1987 general elections.
That’s how Labour creates the new middle class.
Jekk trid nergghu nghaddu mil-istess stejjer tas-70s u l-80s, aghfas Like ghal-Partit Laburista.
“8,000 jobs, with the government and parastatal companies, handed out by Labour to the unemployed on the eve of the 1987 general elections.”
It was worse than that, Ciccio. I worked in a foreign-owned factory where some 20 employees left their jobs there (private sector) to get a “gobb mal-gvern”. They had to promise that they will vote Labour that time round, and they did under a system where they had to meet the assistant commissioners of their voting rooms ‘hired’ by Labour a day before voting day.
On the day they had to declare that they needed help to vote, thus the Labour hired assistant electoral commissioner ensured that the vote was actually given to Labour.
” … The Labour leader said he is receiving a lot of energy … from the party’s grass roots,”
The cat is out of the bag. We now know the source of Joseph Muscat’s cheap gas and electricity to reduce our utility bills.
It is. Joseph is still very much the Super One reporter. He is just trailing and challenging the party in government on petty matters.
The minimum wage and the energy costs issues are not any new political ideas and really nothing to write home about.
The Labour Party has no new ideas because their only experience is the command economy of the socialist days whilst governing and promoting an economy in an open market is alien to them.
This makes it difficult for them to understand and possible match the outstanding performance of the Nationalist governments.
Joseph has realized all this and his strategy is to focus his speeches on puerile and vague situations and promises.
Muscat imagines himself some kind of Obama of the Mediterranean.
Obama? He thinks he’s Moses, freeing his people from the pharaoh.
Sorry it is not 3c but 0.5c
Sorry but it was cavalli li l-lum naghtu lil-qtates u mhux ton taz-zejt.
And adding to the employment success, at least 15,000 foreigners working in Malta (latest data showing some 20,000 foreigners living in Malta).
They all say the quality of life is a lot better here, and they learn English while working here.
On top of that I’m sure there a couple of thousand people with refugee status who have jobs in the construction industry.
Of those Maltese claiming unemployment benefits, the less said the better.
Joseph Muscat must have been drinking energy drinks lately to feel so much full of energy.
Red Bull****
It is unbelievable if one had to take his words at face value.
What I suspect is that he’s changing tack, addressing exclusively the Labour ‘grassroots’ now that his kontijiet mantra has been challenged. The same grassroots who could be recieving state aid to pay same.
A sector which as you rightly said, tend to be those who flaunt it whenever and wherever they can, given that the spirit is, and will remain, poor. I couldn’t care less if this is what they avoid, there is a life outside their Labour.
Joseph’s PL is their prejudice and sense of entitlement made politics. Funny you should mention plots and state teachers, brings back some lucid memories when as a kid I’d end up sitting on some plastic covered red velvet sofa at someone’s new house in the 80’s, sparsely furnished, everything a nasty copy in line with the jangled pretence of the facade. Miserable in tension, no books anywhere to be seen. My parents being both teachers saw to it that pupils’ holy communion or confirmation parties were a fixture.
Nothing’s changed, they will have everything, opportunity shunned to demand more, this time our being, for free, otherwise how dare we exist?
The intent here is to confuse matters until the eve of the election.
“The Labour leader said he is receiving a lot of energy and good will from the party’s grass roots, which he said have been suffering for the last 25 years.”
This is also worrying. 25 years ago we emerged from one of Malta’s darkest ages.
That Labour’s grassroots should feel they are worse of now than in the 70s and early 80s is an indication of the intelligence, culture and background of Labour’s grassroots.
And if what I have just said is in any way classist, then so be it.
Very plausible arguments to whichI subscribe. I had an employee who bragged about his father being haga wahda ma’ Joseph Muscat (not really, but he bragged about it).
He was 19. He had a daughter of 2. He had little or no education to speak of, but a big mouth; and many tattoos. I always thought to myself, why does he have his own name tattooed on his arm? Does he look in the mirror every morning to remind himself who he is and what his name is?
One day he sent me a message. He said to me (this was Friday), I want Sunday off because I want to watch a football match.
So using the same medium, I said, well, first you ask, secondly, you give some prior notice and thirdly, no you cannot because we can’t find a replacement at such short notice. So he simply walked out.
Try and make a new middle class from that, Sur Muscat.
The new middle class has to have rock-solid education, a proper upbringing and some self-imposed discipline as opposed to handouts, favours, queue-jumping and a quick-fix attitude to everything.
The problems that we have in this country, and these are your words, are not partisan but endemic. You getting into government will not fix Arriva, will not fix ARMS, will not fix tM will not fix the infrastructure because ultimately, these are the minions who cannot be arsed.They work for the government and they do not give a rat’s arse about the suffering their indifference and their indolence causes.
Good one, Daphne.
Daphne, it’s simple. He’s gonna make a new middle class out of the “upper classes” by taxing the shit out of them to pay for his cheaper w&e rates!
You excelled yourself this time Daphne. Everyone should print this, stick it to the fridge and read it twice a day or more.
Dr Muscat had first hand experience of a mismanaged country when our Church schools had to close shop.
We had our classes transferred into the dining-rooms of some good-hearted families.
He might be too young to remember the incidents at tal-Barrani, but I can never forget them.
Insejna iz-zmien meta il-Maltin kienu jittallabu biex jidhlu fid-Dejma jew Izra u Rabbi?
Under which governments have people suffered so much?
Today our country hands out scholarships u mhux Dejma jew Izra u Rabbi.
Yet he claims that families suffered during these last 25 years under the Nationalists.
Impressive.
Daphne, this is so obvious. I mean, these guys have no clue what thy’re going to do.
The economic wheel will continue spinning for a year or so after they are elected and then, because of their incompetence, they will run the ship aground on Mintoffonomics.
And they will blame it all on the PN. Bo-ring…or frightening.
Joseph Muscat is desperate to become Important. Not just a Prime Minister but an Important one, someone who changes the course of history. His bombastic hyperbolic statements are the result of this obsession.
He thinks that he can become important not by actually doing something worthwhile but by creating a perception that people will accept. This is why he keeps plagiarising “Important Speeches” and quotes from “Important Figures”.
This started before he had even become the MLP leader as the following quote from Daphne’s blog shows (back in 2008):
“First it was Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’. Now DoctorJosephMuscat is seeking inspiration in an admixture of Jesus Christ (turn the other cheek; the meek shall inherit the earth) and Mahatma Gandhi (peaceful resistance).”
From: http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2008/05/mahatma-gandhi-is-alive-and-well-and-sporting-a-ginger-goatee/
Daphne can rightfully claim to have been the first to take the measure of Joseph Muscat from the very start, as this other article shows.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2008-05-22/opinions/doctorjosephmuscat-has-another-dream-207951/
Why does everyone keep harping about the PN being in government for 25 years?
This hurts people’s intelligence, we all know that Dr Alfred Sant headed a demolition government for twenty two months.It was only twelve years ago and Sant was not a Nationalist prime minister.
On his first day in office he withdrew Malta’s membership from Partnership for Peace and froze our bid for membership in the European Union, then he removed VAT and created CET , Labour made a drainage tax on every dwelling and created an atmosphere of uncertainty.He was the prime minister who put Maltacom’s shares on the London Stock Exchange! Job creation in those twenty two months was zilch.Tax collection was reduced by around Lm200,000,000!
I nearly forgot, Labour commissioned an architect to check the feasibility of demolishing the San Raffaele Hospital now known as Mater Dei, it was Sant who decided to change it from an acute hospital to a general hospital, so he doubled the beds and trebled the spending,may I add. No wonder he labelled it as “state of the art”. He couldn’t do otherwise could he?
Sant is still a member of parliament within the Labour Party and if he gets elected he will be kicked upstairs to fulfill his dream of being an EU Commissioner.He’s is hindrance for Joseph.
Labour is so ashamed of those 22 months that they’re trying their best to make us forget them.
We’ll only have ourselves to blame if we do.
Eddy Privitera is one Socialist who has been suffering for the last 25 years.
He is suffering so much that in a recent article on Times Online about a particular travel agency, he complained that it took him about 3 months to get his money back for a cancelled trip.
People suffering poverty don’t go on holidays Sur Privitera, but that is the suffering for you with this government.
This is exactly the point: people sincerely are oblivious to the fact that their life and the government are independent. They believe they exist in a vacuum, that their livelihoods, their homes, their disposable income is nothing more than a given, not unlike manna from heaven. A freebie, if you will.
I can never forget a conversation overheard in June (incidentally, it was l-Imnarja) whereby one woman was boasting that her son had just finished his Masters in some IT subject and that he had had 3 job offers. The other woman, clearly not wanting to be outdone, was boasting about how her daughter had chosen to pursue her studies in London to finish some catering course after having successfully obtained qualifications in ITS. She already had job offers lined up because she had applied before leaving for London and she can start her career in one of the tourist capitals of the world: London.
These women were certainly housewives who had had no special education. Their vocabulary and accents clearly showed their education level and their outlook on life (happily discussing laundry powder for hours on end). However, their children are pursuing careers which are well beyond their parents’ wildest dreams.
And I wonder; Isn’t this wealth? Isn’t social mobility the only REAL key to fight poverty and ignorance? To motivate people? To really build a society on meritocracy?
Why,therefore, do people say: “il-gid mhux qed jitqassam” and believe it?
Mintoff’s death solved this riddle for me: people actually expect handouts. They expect money at the end of the month for doing nothing. The penny then dropped for me. I had never thought of wealth as being the monthly handout. For me wealth goes beyond the monthly cheque, the pity-payment, as I call it. I have a right to reach my full potential and it is the government’s duty to ensure that I can grow. However, it is up to me to grow, it is up to me to do my best.
And this is, in my humble opinion, the main clash between the Labour Party and the PN. There is nothing as stark as this difference: the PN creates opportunity. The PL stifles it. The PN creates social mobility. The PL scares its people away from social mobility. The PN gives the tools for more people to join the middle class. The PL says it will create a new one – hence admitting that it is not capable of engendering new opportunities whilst bolstering the present ones – for more people to join the ONLY middle class (and, pray, what will happen to the “old” middle class and how can two middle classes co-exist?). To quote the age-old adage: the PL gives one fish. The PN teaches people to fish.
That is why I can never ever vote Labour. Certainly, not whilst they espouse the view that the State owes us a living. No, the State owes us an education – and the freedom to pursue whatever we want. However, many Labour supporters do not want to improve their lot and hence, unless they receive the pity-cheque at the end of the month, for them, they are not seeing any distribution of wealth.
Labour doesn’t make the distinction between wealth and money.
Il-gid is taken to be the material quantity translated into currency. It’s why they reason in class and the perennial struggle, the social contract transactions to be controlled between these. The dynamics restricted to a closed system, preferably isolated from any external forces.
Karmenu Vella, for example, found himself admitting that a certain amount of inflation cannot be controlled given its foreign origin. What he failed to point out is that inflation is usually a tool employed by big government to generate work, read standardised jobs. No mention of the capabilites of any given population or the measurable strength to withstand a deficit. Labour wouldn’t be able to explain Japan for instance.
Never were aesthetics and the economy so interlinked since Burke wrote his essays, and yet here we are trying to engage a movement, read class, which remains essentially arid.
It has yet to be clarified what the great mystery is, Joseph’s middle class, and what he fancies it to consist of. I suspect he adds ‘new’ to introduce a novelty into what the PN has done for the past twenty five years. Carte blanche to restart uniformity and ease of definition.
Bulk buying was one of his soft spots remember.
These past three years, no doubt due the divorce stance adopted by the PN, those same values which everyone benefited from have been assimilated to confessional politics by Labour.
The insolence lies in the assimilation of abstract with caprice. The left isn’t of the secular, if one may.
Maltatoday being an excellent example of the consequences, angry and disillusioned with everything. Problem is that Joseph fails to galvanize anyone resulting in a collective impatience, rather urgent now, with the PN for being ‘outdated’. Sweet, induce materialistic aspiration to vote against. No one dare criticise the bill for divorce, so there. Even if the numbers say otherwise.
The material aspect, indirectly linked to consumption and its art, the essence of politics, has become the end in itself. That, I think, was the trap. Promising benevolence and giving us compromise as a principle.
It is correct to say that notwithstanding their misguided wording, off the shelf in my opinion, AD has never been closer to the PN in realistic policymaking than today. Although not my favourite, Cassola’s argument, that Joseph’s wish list is common sense turned upside down, is identical to the PM’s. It’s logic to pursue together.
2003 was a turning point, looking forward was glancing out, 2013 closes the decade of tentative commitment to style in thought. Hopefully, the local becomes like everywhere else, real.
I am sure Muscat doesn’t actually believe what he is saying.
It is all a part of his strategy.
If he says that the country is doing well, he would need to spell out what Labour will do to make it even better (ie policies).
It is much easier to say that the country is broken, as all that Labour has to say it will do is that they will fix the country.
If they do not do anything decent once elected, the message will be that the country was too badly broken to fix in one term.
Are there statistics about tombola mornings, coffee mornings, etc. etc? This would surely make interesting reading
I couldn’t agree more, and it hurts big time, especially knowing that it-tifel tal-haddiem made it to University whereas I was brought up in the days of il-parrinu.