Tonio Fenech’s press conference
Published:
January 10, 2013 at 12:54pm
Live on NET TV now.
….Just got back from watching. He was fantastic. He picked Labour’s proposal apart, gave the facts and figures, the political financial and economic arguments, and also spoke about the elephant in the room: has Labour already struck a deal with somebody, and is that somebody now bankrolling the Labour Party?
All you have to do is bear in mind that Labour has a history of this. The party was bankrolled by Gaddafi for years, and in return the Labour government of the 1970s ad 1980s allowed Gaddafi to dictate and shape Malta’s foreign policy.
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On Super One radio just now, Konrad Mizzi’s implication that they plan to by-pass established procedures re permits, impact assessments was repeated again.
Not very reassuring for the smalL vulnerable fry who may end up having to face the full force of the cowboy tactics of unscruplous well-connected contractors involved in some mega project next to your front door.
WHAT HAS ASTRID VELLA AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS TO SAY ABOUT THIS?
Hear hear.
It’s much closer than we think, the strategy here is to distract us from all other issues which will arise as a consequence of this pseudo new deal.
What will she say when Joseph outlines the proposal for homse for the community around the island, mainly village cores?
Or is Astrid not aware of a particular mp whose portfolio includes over a dozen properties strategically placed in town centers and earmarked for conversion/development into amenitiesm dovetailing with Joseph’s other main teaser.
Is Astrid aware of a number of these being medium sized grade one buildings with extensive gardens?
The same mp whose finger in the energy pie isn’t justified, until her connections to the Count of Hal-Farrug are placed in perspective.
The spillover effects and ramifications of their ideology for Delimara cannot be ignored. Not when the same mp does her bit to get the mentality endorsed by the public.
What we have is an assault on whatever has been achieved in legality over these years.
Is the FAA comofortable with the knowledge that, as Leo Brincat put it, ‘politicians shouldn’t rely on authorities to shirk their responsibilities towards progress’.
Instead of messing with the ‘original plans’ and contradicting MEPA, throwing discredit at case officers then adjusting her target when demolished on a technical level, why doesn’t she just take up her now defunct rallying cry?
Legality now, Astrid.
Or is this beyond your loudhailer bunch? Scared of their mob coming round to Sliema with their photoshopped placards perhaps?
Tonio Fenech was brilliant.
The Nationalist Party should understand that we need more of this.
What legality? Anything can be made legal; just pass an Act through Parliament where you enjoy a majority and two hoots to the rest and the rights of consultation and of any other.
This is the PL strategy. They have done it before (even to absurdity as for the use of such words as nation, national, Malta and Maltese).
They are already indicated that that’s the way they will be going. Anything else, according to Joseph is mediocre.
Don’t worry, Astrid Vella is very busy at the moment considering which of Joseph’s cheeks she will be kissing next. So don’t expect any comments.
She might need to call the mayors of the surrounding villages to explain to them that through this project their citizens will be sitting on a time bomb.
Hurry up Astrid, do something about it. Make sure you will mobilize more than 200 people this time to Valletta. This matter deserves more consideration than the open air theatre.
Where are the mayors and councils from the area, Marsaxlokk in particular. Where is the future Ministru tas-Sawt. Why aren’t they all up in arms and banging on the front door of the Pink Palace.
Oh hang on – they’re all probably INSIDE the pink palace with their tongues all tangled up down the back of The Great Leader’s pants (excuse the mental imagery).
Nothing, obviously.
Live stream:
http://live.mychoice.pn/
Super One radio has been taken over by rabid Mintoffians like Maria Camilleri who are running the regular shows in good, old -fashioned Mintoffian Golden-Era style.
I lost count of how many SMSes and phone-ins have been made this morning, hailing Joseph Muscat as the ‘new Mintoff’.
Is this the long-awaited road map that the PL has been promising the electorate?
Encouraging people, by setting an official example, on how to bypass MEPA regulations and directives re valid objections to mega projects and the safe-guarding of the environment?
The project may look very reassuring on paper in some avant guarde presentation at a board meeting, but in real life, it is impractical, irrational, surreal and totally unworkable.
Joseph Muscat should be more discerning where his choice of advisors and consultants on certain issues is concerned.
God preserve Malta from the half-baked, hare-brained proposals for national mega-projects compiled by Joe Muscat’s equally hare-brained consultants and advisors.
Brilliant presentation. Simple, easy to understand, but at the same time backed with technical detail.
I’m absolutely furious at the fact that the whole strategy hadn’t been rammed down Labour’s throats as soon as Joseph started his cantilena 5 years ago.
I mean, for heaven’s sake, here they are now trying to claw back Joseph’s claim that he’s managed to change the PN’s position that prices cannot go down.
Some elvish posted on this blog shows exactly their miserable knowledge of what the strategy was. First they accuse government of opting out of gas, then they damn same for choosing a plant which can be converted to gas, then return to the original claim.
Whatever it is, Joseph has to seize any syllogical space. The problem the PN has is to assume he’ll take up a fact and build on it. He callously won’t.
It’s utter spin taking over any sense of decency in what’s worth talking about for this place.
So is this the best that PL can come up with, after five years of searching?
Tonio Fenech has had less than two days to study Labour’s presentation and he has already torn it to shreds – with Konrad Mizzi desperately trying to patch up the pieces bejn Inglizata u ohra.
Two and a half years, actually, not five. Once Muscat’s sponsor met an untimely end, he had to cast around elsewhere. With vegetables for brains (and advisers) it wasn’t long before someone else stepped into the breach.
Now all we need to know is the name of Gaddafi’s successor.
Why didn’t i see this kind of reaction with regards to the Zaren Vassallo hasty approval?
A bunch of nationalist clique bastards thats what you are.
No one is stopping anyone from shredding any proposal – so please go ahead and proceed with a factual dissection of Zaren Vassallo’s proposal. I realise it may be difficult for most Laburisti who are totally shallow and incapable of detailed analysis – like their party and their leader!
Comments like the above make me rush to vote PN.
If according to you we are are a bunch of ‘nationalist clique bastards’ you must be a first class moron.
So 4 years for approval is hasty? What’s 5 months, Labour?
A brilliant well prepared presentation by Tonio Borg. Konrad Mizzi must be shitting in his pants.
Err Fenech or different press conference ?
Watching Tonio Fenech now, the stark difference between PN and PL is spine-chilling.
PN had to make difficult choices, why? In order to safeguard the good of this country and not to benefit the few.
The switchers and the disgruntled voters who cry foul talk about the clique to justify voting Labour. The bitter irony is that’s what we’ll have with PL in government: a real clique, and it has formed already.
Transfers galore to set the clique in motion, to bypass required procedures, to put pressure to make certain decisions.
Although the reduction of utility taariffs as an electoral topic is actually insignificant, the repercussions of such a development will have a disastrous impact. So much for the social impact assessments.
Sometimes I wonder if Labour’s policy-makers can even READ, let alone analyse complex information and draw up sensible plans. Let’s get technical here.
More guesswork: Given Labour’s penchant for North African and Gulf State business deals, and given their total incompetence in Euro-Russian geopolitics, which is where it all plays out, they’re thinking of sourcing their gas from some North African or Gulf State player.
But they claim that it will all be cheaper than oil.
False.
Current gas prices are indexed on oil prices. This is an essential but simple fact which seems to escape Joseph Muscat. It’s been that way for ages. Until Europe, starting in the 1990s, created a spot gas market. And gas prices and indeed cheaper here, by about 50% in oil barrel equivalent.
But you’d need to buy your gas from a European supplier (Norway, or Poland’s shale gas). As for Russia, the game is pretty much lost. They’ve just completed a huge pipeline to China and Japan, giving us a huge reverse salute, which, truth be told, we deserve.
Someone, however, has never opened an atlas. Poland and Norway are pretty much at the antipodes in Maltese terms.
If Labour plans to source its gas from Algeria, they’ll be paying more or less the same price as oil. And they won’t get a penny in EU funding.
I would have expected our genius “ekonomisti” in their stilletto heels and miniskirts, and the smug “senior executives in the oil and gas industry” (“people I may know”, says Linkedin) to at least write in.
Labour is WAY out of its depth on this one.
Labour doesn’t have policy-makers, Baxxter. Surely even you know that.
Tonio Borg, you were simply brilliant
Fenech.
ghandek ragun, Tonio Fenech ridt nikteb
After Tonio Fenech’s press conference , Joseph Muscat & Co have to go back to the drawing board.
…. if not back to the opposition benches.
All those plans and promises up in smoke.
It took a press presentation of two hours to destroy five years of vain promises. Pity the Labour Party will still win the election with its Alice in Wonderland pipedream.
If the Socialist Labour Party (which it actually is, despite their trying to hide it) is elected to govern this country, it will make a great leap backwards straight to the despicable ’80s.
It has already been implied that Muscat has no intention of seeking any MEPA permits, carrying out Environment Impact Assessments or even adopting the EU tendering process.
These studies, with all good intentions, will take 3 to 4 years.
The pressure on Muscat from his supporters who remember with nostalgia those days when you could just grab land and property and turn it into a gold mine overnight by bribing the Minister, will be hard for him to resist, and such statements as are being mentioned that normal procedures could be easily by-passed, can only whet their appetite.
I only hope that the European Commissioner for the Environment is taking note of all this, as we shall expect our membership in the EU to protect us from these cowboys this time around.
It’s what Lino Spiteri said.
If he doesn’t get those prices down by April, people will simply refuse to pay the bills.
Prosit, Hon Tonio Fenech, urejt kemm l-Labour ma jafux x’inhuma jghidu u iridu jeqirdu l-ambjent ta’ Delimara.
Thanks Daphne, talli innotifikajtna b’din l-konferenza stampa.
Tonio was brilliant. Excellent, clear, factual and intelligent presentation. But the best to me was that swipe at Louis Grech. Chapeau.
Indeed.
So Louis Grech can’t even remember what it is he was doing at Airmalta eh?
There is no doubt about it as you said: “Labour has already struck a deal with somebody, and is that somebody now bankrolling the Labour Party?”
The Labour Party’s electoral spend so far has been huge. They seem to have a bottomless war-chest.
It would be interesting if someone in the business would tell us what a heavy duty billboard used by Labour would cost and all the streamers stuck on our flyovers.
The money collected in December DEFINITELY would not cover all the electoral campaign expenses not mentioning balloons and streamers.
And campaign still has 57 days to go. The PL campaign will peak too early and/or run out of funds unless the godfather digs deep in his pocket. Insomma, end with a fizzle not a bang.
Clue: Montekristo estates.
This is serious, he’s not the one for the job, let alone that position of strategic power, if it has to be done.
Technically, companywise or, and this is a well known fact in the field, when it comes to coherent decision making.
There’s an element of brinkmanship in his style set off by the explosive character.
Who are you talking about? Montekristo estates is the starting point:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151254645389901&set=pb.623684900.-2207520000.1357829692&type=3&theater
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151254650159901&set=a.440630449900.219120.623684900&type=1&theater
Not him!
There is somebody bigger who is on a mission to make sure that Labour are elected.
Pero, this is unbelievable, there was a proposal which could have benefitted us all and now that it is being proven that it is not possible we seem to be rejoicing this fact that we are still in the bad situation we were before. Can barely believe the fact that everyone of you are seeking your parties political interest rather than the national and to a large extent personal interest, but I’d rather not try to understand politics.
[Daphne – Pero, please try to remember that this isn’t a Facebook wall.]
You probably didn’t watch the presentation and press conference.
Tonio Fenech showed how the choices made to date will benefit Malta from a sustainable lower cost of energy.
Using the MLP’s own presentation the lowest production cost will be from a conversion of the BWSC plant and a gas pipeline funded by the EU.
The MLP proposal is poorly costed and full of glaring errors. Ultimately it will be you and I that pay for the gross incompetence of the MLP – we have been there before – no thanks!
The NATIONAL interest is served by voting in a party that knows what it is doing not one that is devoid of ideas and who’s every shot at a policy shows it up for what it is – a marketing machine without substance.
No, I didn’t watch the press conference. I won’t go into the technicalities, I’m not that much into this issue.
Maybe it’s true that PL’s policy is as you described it, however the inconsistency within the PN is shining brighter I guess. On a merrier note, I’m trying to understand how you are planning to vote in a party.
Newcomer, there’s no inconsistency.
Just get involved if you expect to make a sound judgement.
@Newcomer – you vote in a party by voting for it – if you have a poor grasp of English don’t blame me.
You’re not too bright if you cannot understand that the PN position has not changed one iota….and is totally consistent.
The national interest requires an honest dissection of rubbish ideas to expose them for what they are.
What makes it a facebook post? I’m open for criticism, I’m far from being perfect as you clearly identified.
SIgh. You were ‘clearly identified’ as an eejit, not as someone who is ‘perfect’. An assessment you kindly confirmed with your next post, where you glibly declare that the massive flaws in Labour’s energy proposals are mere ‘technicalities’.
Tonio Fenech was concise and to the point.
A brilliant presentation.
I think that the Nationalists are very guilty of keeping this EUREKA new style of cheap energy hidden from the world. Shame.
Sargas
Check out the comments board under the story about the PM’s visit to the Muslim school on timesofmalta.com.
Some of the comments are unbelievable, talking about “ahna u l-barrani” like it’s 1979. And they say they are progressive.
I’m starting to suspect that the delivery time was calculated along the possibility of working in ideal conditions, ie a virgin site.
Or better if the consultant was asked how long it would take to build the new plant, no consideration was required of when and how to dismantle the old. Where everything was considered in isolation and not along a complex site such as Delimara.
That place looks onto the sea and lies below a cliff edge. Access will require one proceed from the deepest point out.
That means the tanks.
The question is, how is their project manager going to be able to keep the existing plants running as works proceed?
Is there a works schedule with the required, realistic timeframes?
Even if the plant were to be prefabricated and installed, where do they start if it has to be done in, what seems highly likely a conjunctive manner given the gung-ho style envisaged?
Joseph Muscat now thinks that Tonio Fenech’s formidable performance today was the result of an apparition by the Virgin Mary.
I am rather suspicious of the whole project not only because of the craziness of it all (as if anybody would invest 500 million plus without expecting a massive return) but also because I’m sure, dead sure, that Muscat has somebody in mind and that somebody is bankrolling the PL.
And this is my greatest fear because if this is indeed the case, the project could very well blow up the country for all they care.
timesofmalta.com’s comments-board has now become REALLY unbearable.
All I can think of now when I skim through, Daphne, is that room full of kids with laptops at the PL HQ, shown on the Labour video ‘Joseph Meets the Volunteers.’
Some of those firing off comments have clearly not bothered to follow today’s press conference, and don’t know that the inter-connector is ACTUALLY HAPPENING and is a PN project.
They have no clue about the proposed (this government) pipeline, think that the dreaded ‘heavy fuel oil’ (elve buzzword #6325) is with us till kingdom come, and the list goes on.
Tonio is always fantastic. He’s smart and knows what he’s saying and is not afraid to say it. He’s clear and to the point.
I am really impressed by the eloquence and brilliance of this politician Tonio Fenech. Very few of his calibre on both sides of the divide.
Labour’s energy plan has found a stumbling block in the persuasive but technical and accurate analysis and criticism of Tonio.
Let’s hope he doesn’t do a Jellicoe.
Two years ago, the Israeli ambassador said that the Labour Party have very good relations with Bateman.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101201/local/pn-asks-muscat-to-explain-bateman-links.338816
If I were a PN journalist I would contact Bateman and see what they think of the PL’s proposal.
Jekk Louis Grech irid iboss ghandu jboss b’sormu u mhux b’sorm haddiehor.
rude
Initially I had thought that explaining why the LP’s energy plan was truly a change of direction (off the right road and straight into a brick wall) would be too technical for the common voter to understand.
Tonio Fenech proved me wrong. A well thought-out presentation, devoid of the flashy graphics, and grounded in solid arguments, facts and figures, and conveyed in clear-to-understand language for anyone with a brain.
Mr Fenech does tend to either grasp or repeatedly mispronounce certain words, such as reclassification (instead of regasification) terminal (on another occasion, it was table water instead of water table), but even with these minor slipups, he was clear and a joy to listen to.
Of course, none of this matters to the Labour voter. But I’m sure that Mr Fenech has got the attention of the others who were thinking of doing the unthinkable this time round.
Well done, Mr Fenech. You deserve our respect.
May I suggest that subjects such as this are never left to the regular exponents of the party to discuss on tv/radio programmes without at least a lengthy and detailed briefing by those in the know, who in this case is obviously Tonio Fenech. Adlibing on technical matters by those not knowledgeable enough on the subject only does great harm to otherwise solid arguments.
Where is Astrid, the defender of our environment, the guardian or our rural and urbane inheritance, where is she? Has her courage waned or is she afraid of something?
We, who have borne her with due patience, deserve an answer.
You can watch the press conference here:
http://mychoice.pn/EmailCampaign/EN/2013/01/10/MLPs-energy-plans-a-dangerous-mess