It is tragic (and comedic) how we have lost sight of the fact that these are Malta’s REAL problems: the risk of losing 45% of our EU budget funds
By allowing Joseph Muscat and his Labour Party to get people to think that we live and die by electricity tariffs, and by letting individuals like Jeffrey Pullicino and Franco Debono hijack the national, parliamentary and political agenda with their nasty, egocentric, head-in-the-sand behaviour and thinking, we have completely lost sight of the REAL problems the country we share now faces.
The EU’s budget allocation for Malta was set to be slashed by around EUR300 million (the original suggestion), the new proposal is still highly unacceptable (Malta said so last night), and now Angela Merkel says that a conclusion is unlikely any time soon.
And meanwhile, here our pathetic Labour Party is, fretting about issues like the price of electricity, when if our EU funds are slashed to that extent, it will make all our so-called worries seem as trivial as they really are.
We’ve had it so good with EU funds that we have taken them for granted.
Shouldn’t Labour be especially concerned instead of breezing about like the price of eggs (that’s a figure of speech) is the big issue here?
Its first few months of government will see the tail-end of the current EU budget allocation, which ends with 2013. After that, if things don’t work out for Malta and no satisfactory compromise is reached between those EU member states that are objecting to giving out more money, and we (among others) who are objecting to budget cuts, then Joseph Muscat is going to have to run the country with far less money than he would have liked.
So perhaps he should start taking an interest in what is going on, and get his hamster-brained supporters – yes, even the new ‘posh’ ones – to begin thinking outside the confines of their narrow boxes.
I think it is absolutely shameful that certain MPs are still going on about their petty personal issues with this kind of worry hanging over Malta’s head.
Are they off their rocker, so far up themselves that they can’t see daylight?
Franco Debono, who is now recording home-made Taliban-kidnapper-style videos and posting them on his blog, should get a good grip on himself and reorganise his sense of perspective. Imagine voting against the national budget because you have it in for Austin Gatt, and bringing down the government in the thick of Malta’s hassles with the EU budget, leaving negotiations in the capable hands of a former Super One reporter.
It just beggars belief.
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Now this is the price we have to pay for delaying our entry to the EU. Thank you, Dr Sant. Thank you, Dr Muscat.
Daphne: You keep repeating that Dr. Joseph Muscat when he was stil in his teens, was a journalist.
[Daphne – I have to reply to this. He wasn’t in his teens. And he was Sant’s sidekick, not just some ordinary elf.]
But you do not say what Dr.Muscat became later on in life. And the academic successes he obtained. As well as his excellent track-record as an MEP which later catapulted him to leader of the PL and Opposition leader. As well as prime minister -in-waiting !
Come on show us your academic qualifications !
[Daphne – Please don’t be ridiculous. There are 24-year-olds who have better doctorates from much better universities, and there are roughly 700 MEPs at any one time. Get a bit of perspective, Mr Privitera.]
And as a ‘journalist’ he was responsible for the pits of journalism such as Maltastar who bases its stories on fantasy and character assassination rather than fact.
I am afraid of Muscat because I read what he wrote and I remember clearly what he stands for. You know them by their actions indeed.
I asked you for your academic qualifications. Have you any ? If yes, let’s have them !
[Daphne – What are you going to do with them, Mr Privitera? Check to see whether I’m qualified to write a newspaper column about politics and similar? Idiot.]
Dr. Joseph Muscat was a journalist with Super 1 Radio when it started in 1992, that is 20 years ago. If Dr. Muscat is 39 he was then 19, in his teens.
Correction: Super 1 Radio went on the air in August 1991. That is over 21 years ago. So Dr. Muscat must have been 18 years old – IN HIS TEENS !
[Daphne – I started writing a newspaper column at 25, Mr Privitera. I’m still doing it today. Does that make me in my 20s?]
Daphne: If you had taken EU funds “for granted”, then you confirm how little you know about the EU ! CNI had warned about this years back. But then the PN , including you, derided CNI. The chickens have a habit of coming back to roost !
Eddy, let’s imagine the unimaginable (at this stage) that as far as Malta is concerned, no funds would be forthcoming from the EU. I say this because Sant’s Lm1.6 million would by now have been long exhausted, so, what will our 39 year old PM do?
Still reduce electricity tariffs? Taxpayer pays for Health and Education? Students borrow to pay for courses? Go to N Korea for used guns, ‘just in case’ some will dare protest in the streets? Most other Communist dictators are mercifully gone and cannot be relied on any longer. Gaddafi is somewhere beneath the sands of Libya’s vast desert, funds gone and his ‘brotherly’ love for Malta permanently extinguished.
Does Joseph have a ‘Plan B’? Probably not since ‘Plan A’ is nowhere to be seen. Maybe this is yet another excuse for Karmenu Vella to start all over again? How many times is he going to rewrite the blessed electoral programme?
Of course CNI had warned of the possibility that one day EU funds will no longer be available. Simple Eddy, because CNI took stock of all the gdur among them, kept thinking of knocking on the familiar doors for handouts and had no idea how to shake up good jobs and attract foreign investments. That is how the MLP operated in Mintoff and KMB’s time.
Hiring 8000 on the eve of an election was their one and only solution to reducing unemployment and which taxpayers were saddled with for decades and this not to mention bank shareholders who were forced to surrender their shares at no value and who are still fighting for ‘justice’ thirty years later.
Kif damdmuk, Ed, dawk it-tliet nisa fuq TVHEMM. X’fettillek tohodha maghhom.
@ Eddy who never replies to my comments: Who are CNI exactly?
Does the Labour Party embrace what CNI says? Is CNI the “hanut tal-inbid” where the Labour Party supporters vent their anger against the EU?
In my opinion CNI is a party within a party.
Joseph’s Renewed New (Malta) Labour Party should take a stand on CNI, like the PN did with its Front Freedom Fighters led by Josie Muscat.
Mr Privitera, is what CNI states in conformity with the PL’s policies on the EU? Do you agree with Joseph’s PL on its acceptance of the EU.
It is crystal clear that PL conveniently likes the EU but CNI does not.
I prefer your sincerity Mr Privitera , at least you show what hard line Labour supporters feel about the EU.
Eddy, we saw your academic qualifications yesterday on Norman Vella’s programme.Those two ladies gave you a good spin.
I fail to see a connection between Malta’s delayed EU entry and the current EU budget battle.
Any one watched Eddy getting a beating yesterday evening on TVM by his fellow pensioners. Well I enjoyed it lanqas kien kapaci jirrispondi. Keep it up Eddy.
Giovanni: Tghidx kemm qaluli pensjonanti llum dwar kemm qalu hmerijiet dawk li lilek impressjonawk. Aktar ma bdew jinsulentaw l-intelligenza tal-pensjonanti, aktar hallejthom jiftahru li l-pensjonanti llum MA JONQOSHOM XEJN, specjalment meta semmejtilhom il-medicini out-of-stock, aktar haffru l-hofra ta’ GonziPN !!!! Kieku taf min kienet dik li qalet kemm hi “sexy u sabieha”, ggib ghajnejk wara widnejk !
If you cannot see a connection between Malta’s delayed EU entry and the money our country is going to forfeit as a result of this delay then you cannot see anything at all.
I think you got all wrong. Malta risks losing the 300 million euros because both Merkel and Cameron want to cut the EU budget.
I could not quite figure out what was wrong and creepy with Franco’s video. Then I read this: “Franco Debono, who is now recording home-made Taliban-kidnapper-style videos…” EXCELLENT description.
Made my day.
You mention ‘price of eggs’, I was listening to the deputy leader of the PL a few days ago and his ‘big issue’ was the price of flour. I do not think they know what the ‘big issues’ really are.
Hotelier: For tyhose who live on the poverty line, the price of flour and hence another possible increase in the price of bread etc.. IS A BIG ISSUE !
I can see another ‘Sette Gugnio’ in the making.
What an idiot you are, Eddy.
If the funds don’t come, all those who are on the poverty line will sink right under it, joined by thousands of others who are NOT currently anywhere near it.
And with the incompetent fools you are so eager to foist on us all, this will happen sooner rather than later.
Eddy, you don’t seem to be living on the poverty line as you said that you are supporting both your ex wife and your partner.
Those who live on the poverty line! In Malta? You must be joking. It is clear that you do not know what real poverty is. Poverty in Malta does not exist – only egoistic mismanagement of personal finances.
The latest report:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121123/local/Malta-risks-losing-45-EU-funding.446525
Perhaps we should also be concerned with the price of corned beef, canned tuna, mackerel in tomato sauce, and pasta.
These are the important things for the familji Maltin, mela 45% budget slash.
Dawk mhux importanti ghax igawdihom il-gvern.
Land of ostriches.
Add the bumper-sized bottles of useless detergents, maxi-sized bags of ready-to-boil chips, crates of full-sugar soft drinks, and the inevitable health-care bill which none of the guzzlers will pay.
Insejt il-prezz tal-iskalora.
Pajjiz imnejjek.
EU funds invested on projects are funds injected into the economy. They are funds which create jobs. Any one who doubts this should ask those employed with contractors working on an EU funded projects.
How much does 480,000 million euros work out per household?
How many jobs could are potentially generated with 480,000 million euros ?
Tkun taf xi jkollok meta titilfu. Dan hu kliem ix-xiħ li, bi sfortuna, ħadd m’għadu jzomm fih.
Has anyone heard Dr. Joseph Muscat utter a word about these budget cuts?
As usual, he is waiting on the side, until he sees the PN government come up with a clear vision.
Yes, you’ve said it.
We’ve taken E.U. funds for granted. They were, and still are, too good to be true, albeit officially and multi form-filling wise deservedly.
Perhaps what we should all be scared about is how a country that is apparently doing so well is still (8 years after joning in the EU) quite far off from meeting its targets of convergence in so many areas of society.
As Daphne said, we’ve had it so good with EU funds that there does not seem to be too much realisation that one day the bulk of EU funding was going to run out, sooner rather than later (given the state of the later Eastern European entrants).
Has anyone given a thought to how we intend replacing these infrastructures and the expense of maintaining them properly to make them last longer once the EU tap is eventually turned off?
No, probably because we are educated not to plan so far ahead as beyond the horizon of the next election.
I find it startling that the contributors squealing about a possible cut did not see fit to object to Turkey’s entry to the EU (if they are so concerned) about the money that our government actively supports.
Turkey’s entry will skew the financials downwards so badly and so quickly that Malta may automatically not qualify for Objective One funds (which are the real prize).
Finally, the real reason Malta did not benefit earlier from funds was the total absence of Maltese government structures designed to familiarise Malta with, apply for and tap into funding for weak sectors like agriculture, fisheries, construction and governance (efficiency). Plenty of non-EU member countries like Tunisia, Turkey, Croatia have utilised such funds even before applying.
The PN entered government in 1987, submitted its application in 1992 [Daphne – actually it was 1990] and the application was frozen in 1996. Since I don’t assume that the EU application was a spur-of-the-moment decision, there was ample time to do this before 1996 and I don’t think we missed much in 22 months on the premise we were simply receiving very little in the way of funds before that.
So a more balanced view of this news report would be that all sides have their responsibilities (some lesser and some greater) and hysterics should be left out of it. Invariably, politicians – and their fixation with winning elections over the nation’s long-term future – are easy targets.
How will Joe Muscat keep his promises of not raising the energy bills and of more money in one’s pocket if the EU budget funds for Malta for these next few years get slashed?
Raise the withholding tax and vat and scare off foreign investment by levying new taxes on profits?
I don’t know if we should thank all those who voted to get rid of Richard Cachia Caruana (and that’s sarcasm).
Just exactly what I was going to write about.
We – no, our representatives in parliament – threw out an experienced and efficient person at a time we needed him most.
Thank you, Franco, Jesmond and Jeffrey for co-operating with Joseph.
The people who take things for granted will soon be wondering what hit them.
Becoming addicted to EU money as a nation is no different than the lazy and generational welfare bums that scam the system of social services and are always crying the blues that they have so little while wasting tax payer’s money on bar tabs and cigarettes during their full time job of lollygagging their life away.
Malta like everywhere else gets the government it deserves.
The good cop bad cop routine never becomes stale in Maltese politics.
Some good news:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121123/local/summit.446592
“Dr Gonzi thanked his “incredible” delegation, namely the Permanent Representative Marlene Bonnici and her team of number-crunchers. Dr Gonzi also thanked Ms Bonnici’s predecessor Richard Cachia Caruana whose technical expertise were also utilised during the summit in bilateral meetings.”
Il-bravu akkademiku Eddy qed jitkaza ghaliex xi kultant tonqos xi medicina.
Possibbli dan hu l-istess Eddy Privitera li kien ifahhar lill-gvernijiet socjalisti li fi zmienhom mhux biss konna skarsi mill-medicina imma anqas semplici cikkulata u pepsodent ma konna nsibu nixtru.
Ahseb u ara l-medicina. Hallina u mur saqqi l-hass tal-Marsa sur Privitera. Ic-cuc fost ic-cwiec jista’ jispikka u mkien iktar.
I am still wondering how on earth Cachia Caruana was removed. In my view, the motion for such removal should have never been accepted by the Speaker; and, to top it all, during the debate, I expected the Foreign Minister to stand up and say “Hey, you, I am the person responsible, not Cachia Caruana” – but then of course, I am not in a position to know what currents were flowing underneath this dirty business.
If heads of government were served with wine cheaper than bottles of 1992 Chateau Angelus grand cru, each costing £121, at their EU summits, they might be able to reduce the budget withput cutting essential programmes.