Exactly.

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that Joseph fails to galvanize anyone resulting in a collective impatience, rather urgent now, with the PN for being ‘outdated’.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.

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.

Red Bull****

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.]

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.

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.

“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.