GUEST POST – Caveat emptor: the buyer beware
With brains like these on board, how can Labour possibly go wrong?
Caveat emptor, the buyer beware, was a principle of Roman law that until fairly recently underpinned the rules of exchange between seller and buyer throughout Europe and European-origin settlements in the New World.
It was the buyer who assumed full responsibility for what he bought, and not the seller who assumed full responsibility for what he sold.
And then came consumer rights and consumer laws which changed this around. Now, it is the seller who is fully responsible for what he sells, and legally responsible for inherent defects, and when something goes wrong, the buyer can claim a replacement, his money back, or even damages.
But in politics and the vote, it is Roman law which still applies, and EU consumer law which does not: caveat emptor, the buyer beware.
Once you’ve bought, you can’t take it back to the shop, claim a replacement or your money back, sue for damages, or write to the consumer complaints bureau. When you ‘buy’ a political party with your vote, you are 100% responsible for your purchase and have nobody to blame but yourself if you haven’t made a proper assessment.
This is especially true today when the traditional media and the internet are saturated with information and with politicians giving interviews. There is no excuse for not knowing.
Even with full consumer legislation placing the burden of responsibility on the seller, still we ask plenty of questions when making a significant purchase. We don’t simply take the salesman at his word.
How to evaluate Joseph Muscat’s electoral promise about water and electricity prices? We can only look at his track record, and at the merits of the promise he is making.
Does it seem reasonable or far-fetched?
There’s not much to go on in terms of track record. Muscat’s not been tested in power yet. He was a Super One reporter the last time Labour were in power in 1998.
The one big judgement call we know he has made since then was that ‘partnerxipp’ was better than EU membership.Not hugely reassuring – but anyway, let’s suspend judgement for a moment and look at the merits of the promise itself.
Joseph Muscat is promising that he will find private investors who will sink EUR376 million of their own money into a new gas power station and other infrastructure that will be tendered for, given the necessary permits and become operational by 2015.
And he is promising that these investors will bind themselves to sell electricity to government at a price that will reduce our bills by 25%. And this whatever is happening in the wider world in the meantime.
Moreover, although he plans this shiny new plant to become operational in 2015, our 25% electricity bill cuts will begin in 2014. Lovely. Not sure how this will happen, but with luck we’ll be told at some point where the money for that kind of subsidy is going to come from.
It will have to be funded through extra taxation or through extra borrowing – both of them pretty dangerous for our economy at this particular time.
Everybody knows that a move to gas might make sense at some point. The new power station was built in such a way as to keep this possibility open for a later stage.
But it is a difficult, complex move, and one that is fraught with all sorts of obstacles along the way. To airily make these kinds of promises about timeframes and specific savings to the consumer when so many external factors will come into play is either extremely ingenuous or very cynical.
Muscat is either being completely naive about the complexities of a project like this – in which case we simply cannot afford to let him learn on the job, or he is the worst kind of door-to-door salesman spouting any figures that he feels will help him clinch the deal.
We need to make sure that we look beyond his weird fixed smile and new blue tie.
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What do you make of this endorsement? It is worrying? Is Tony Zahra a Muscat supporter who puts partisan politics over the good of the country?
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20130109-jilqg-mod-po-ittiv-il-proposti-tal-pl
‘LECCA CULI’ all of them – seeing the bottom line without bothering to look deeper at the vague proposal fed to them by Labour.
My second question was meant as a statement
Since only 400MW are really required and the PL is planning for 800MW, the plan must be to export electric power via the interconnector link.
Since massive amounts of gas will be required, it is probably going to come from North Africa, via a ‘Maltese company’: it will mean an energy stranglehold, probably by a non-EU country, on most Maltese consumers, and it will determine our foreign policy too.
Spot on.
I say they intend handing over rights to the interconnector as well, noticed how Mizzi tried to downplay any strategic possibilities it could open up to the local market?
Tonio Fenech observed how the interconnector’s wasted, well not if they look at it as a supply line out of Malta.
They’ll consider booking the continental grid lines, make that overbooking, hogging lines where the excess is then brokered, read speculation, to those zones in the grid.
Joseph mentioned futures yesterday.
Has ANYONE even noticed that we’ve been reduced to GUESSING Labour’s electoral programme?
I mean my god, WHERE is our intellectual class?
We’re out of the arena of political opinion and into sheer immorality here. Vote for the unkown. Give us a chance and you’ll see. Go on take a leap in the dark. And they call it European progressive politics?
I am not a technical person but from what I’ve been hearing these last few days, Sicily has a surplus of electricity generation so they won’t need to buy energy from anyone and, in fact, want to sell.
There is a major flaw in your export theory, E Muscat.
How can we export ‘surplus electricity’ when our cost is definitely higher than that produced in Europe?
We can only export via the inter-connector to the European grid. Now we know that energy is generated there by a mix of oil, gas and nuclear power stations.
The average cost of the end product is higher than nuclear but cheaper than oil or gas. We also know that importing gas, by any means (shipped in, piped in) is more expensive due to shipping or piping charges, whereas fuels are available on the spot in Europe, hence lower delivery charges.
And what about the cost of building the necessary infrastructure, be it tanks or pipeline? do they come for free?
So by necessity our unit price per kW will definitely be higher than the average price of the European product and it will have to be an idiotic buyer who will pay more for something he has on his doorstep at a lower cost.
Moreover, was the investment in the inter-connector not for the sole purpose of importing energy at a lower price than we can generate here?
Two years from now, the opposition will be telling the government that he did not keep his promise about the lowered electricity rates.
The government will answer, but don’t you remember how you never lowered the taxes you had promised to lower in your last legislature?
The Opposition will say “but there was a recession, the proportions of which hadn’t been around for many, many years.”
The Government will say “Ah, but the recession is still with us! So nobody can blame us” to the thunder of banging and applause on the parliament benches.
To entertain your masochistic fantasy, the ‘opposition’ would simply reply – ‘Ah, but you knew about it before you started’.
I believe I read somewhere that the corporation chosen to build the new power station will be paying an unspecified amount one year in advance. Whom it will be advancing the money to and how it will be accounted for is shrouded in mystery.
I read it too – the Times.
Who in his right senses would advance money taking on the additional burden of having this kind of liability on the balance sheet for at least a year?
It is not even a debt.
It is a provision against projected future earnings. And my emphasis is on ‘projected’ and ‘future’.
If the business goes belly up, who will make good for that payment to the investors?
It makes no business sense. Unless, there is something that we’re not being told.
With Labour you can rest assured that there are MANY things you are not being told.
I recall there were a number of posts about the land that the Mintoffs sold to Polidano, and what happened before.
The last thing I remember was ex-Minister Michael falzon had to ‘recheck’ some matters to explain, at least, what happened under his watch.
Why am I not surprised that nothing was forthcoming?
It is obvious more than ever, that rather than a change in government (of the alternating absolute PN or PL type) we need a political scenario with more than two opposing bloated parties cancelling each other out, to a multi party parliament and possibly coalition government, where objective decisions are honestly discussed, evaluated and explained (and at time admitting mistakes and identify how they were readdressed not to reoccur) with the nation’s real long term interest, rather than the party’s or worse still a gang within it.