Joseph Muscat should ring his new boy-crush Cameron and tell him to pay MPs according to attendance, just like HE plans to do
Published:
April 11, 2013 at 10:04pm
Of course, Muscat doesn’t get the inherent contradiction in taking a totalitarian, authoritarian attitude to parliamentary democracy, which is what paying MPs according to attendance really is.
But Cameron might explain it to him in person, giving Muscat all the time in the world to look up at him with goo-goo eyes, hoping that the intended Princess of Wales effect will have the same effect on the British PM that it did on Kenneth Zammit Tabona and Martin Scicluna.
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The whole PN bench should resign en masse. When the Mintoff tributes were pouring in, not a peep was heard out of them.
Now that the election is over, and now that they’ve lost it, can they grow a spine and speak out for those of us who voted for them hoping to end this travesty of history once and for all?
Worse than “not a peep” a couple even made positive remarks.
I can understand not wanting to speak ill of the dead as soon as they die, but if that is the case at least have the decency to say nothing, at least just for a few days. Then say the truth. As ugly as it may be.
I couldn’t stand all the eulogies, the rewriting of history. In one instance I think someone even gave him credit for us joining the EU. The sheer audacity.
There is so little out there that is objective, true to the facts. With the passage of time, people will die and their testimonies with them if they do not speak up or do not write about them.
This is the curse of this small country. People are always worried what others are going to think so they keep quiet and do not speak up. But the truth is that the pain does not go away.
Worse still, by not passing on the truth, these lessons of our history we are condemned as a people to repeat them. We all have a duty to speak up. It does have a cathartic effect.
But we must speak not so much for ourselves but for our children. Before they think it is cool to support Alternattiva or worst still the ‘Moviment’.
Malta’s Laburisti think Daphne is in the employ of the PN.
[Daphne – Yes, including the Marsa Club Laburisti and various assorted pigeon-brains, I’m afraid. “Maaaa, as if, don’t you know! She’s paid by the Nationalists, ayyy! U mela! Mela why does she do it otherwise, come on! U ejja as if, don’t tell me it isn’t true.” Xi dwejjaq ta’ nies. Suffocating.]
In fact she is despised by higher echelons of the Nationalist Party precisely for the reasons you mentioned. In the end, even Nationalist politicians are Maltese, and they too embrace the Maltese code of silence, facades and duplicity in public life.
If the new leader wishes to bring about change, here’s exactly where he should start. No more lies. No more fakery. No more rewriting history. Labour is the majority party because it won the battle of ideas. It wrote Malta’s history books. It wrote the national mythology. Labour doesn’t do politics, it controls ideas. That’s cognitive warfare, my dear naive PN lawyers. Labour is what Nazism would have been, had it been born in Malta.
Hear, hear!
Totally agree with your last sentence. When I commented that the PN should make a PQ regarding salaries of chairmen, public servants, etc. I was told by someone commenting often on this blog that I can go into the link and ask the question myself. Hopefully I misunderstood him.
Can you imagine Dr Angelo Farrugia LL.D., M.Jur. (Magna cum laude), delivering a speech like the Westminster speaker did on this video?
[Daphne – Tsk tsk. ‘This Westminster speaker’ is Glenda Jackson, once a very famous actress http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0413559/bio ]
I think Min Weber is referring to the Speaker of the House, John Bercow.
[Daphne – I see.]
I follow your blog regularly , mainly looking for those contributions on which you chose to make your excellent observations . In this case I feel that pointing out twice in quick succession that Glenda Jackson , a British actress who won two Academy Awards for Best Actress as well as several film critics’ acclaims , was a famous actress is rather patronising. Do you think that your readers are such idiots that they need to be told twice to remember something . This brings to mind comments by a witty British journalist who sarcastically wrote that the footballer Djemba-Djemba was so dull that he had to be given his name twice in order that he would remember it.
[Daphne – Leave your chip at the door, please. I can’t stand it when touchy people with small egos come in here all bristling and hostile and humourless and ready to pick a fight. It’s such appalling manners, other than anything else. Comments do not queue up for moderation in the way you see them beneath the posts, sorted nicely and neatly. They queue up chronologically – all the comments for all the posts – and I have no way of knowing which follows which beneath each post or even, when I am moderating 300 at a single sitting and don’t have time to waste checking, who is replying to whom. Glenda Jackson the actress is a total unknown to people who are younger than I am, and even to many of my contemporaries who never bothered with film culture or read British magazines and newspapers at the time she was famous. Robert Redford was HUGE, but ask anyone under 30 today whether they know who he is, and the name won’t even ring a bell with most. And he’s still alive and still an actor.]
I never thought for a second that my comment would elicit such a long and angry reply.
[Daphne – That’s probably because you didn’t read your comment before you pressed ‘Send’. I’m not angry. I’m slightly irritable. It happens to everyone who has to deal with streams of people and their constant opinions about what they’re doing wrong or right. I’m surprised, quite frankly, that politicians, doctors, lawyers and hairdressers don’t end the day by biting people’s heads right off. It’s amazing how so many don’t understand that 1. they’re being presumptuous and insufferable, and 2. they’ve got the tone all wrong.]
Too bad for those under thirties. Robert Redford IS a superb actor. loved his roles. ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ anyone?
And now, with his Sundance Film Festival, even more renowned.
Glenda Jackson, a classic actress.
If only this speaker were in Malta, in August last year.
[Daphne – Glenda Jackson was one of Britain’s most acclaimed actresses: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0413559/bio ]
Le, iggibiex l’hawn please. Classical champagne socialist, trying to out-left Tony Benn. Wahda bhal din kull ma jonqosna.
Actually I should have written speaker with a capital “S”. Speaker of the house is what I meant. But yes, Glenda Jackson is a terrific person too.
Look at this headline:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130411/local/maltese-schoolchildren-lag-in-reading-skills.465037
Will he say, “harsu lejja, harsu lejja” ?
Thatcher had the guts to face up to the unions in particular that horrible toad Arthur Scargill (Tony Zarb to the power of 10). And the word privatisation which has been adopted the world over was coined by Thatcher. We only heard of nationalisation prior to Thatcher.
I recall one company which had endured a three-month strike because it faced up to the union to stop people on the night shift taking in sleeping bags with them to work. This was extent of the malaise of Great Britain, which Glenda Jackson should have mentioned.
Yes, Britain did undergo some tough times under Thatcher but it was a strong medicine the country needed.
I sincerely wish that the new PN leader will make the conscious decision NOT to be accommodating and compromising.
That a leadership style is identified from what it is, was and should be, and that that the expectation is for that style to be the new standard that many of the inner NP themselves need to arrive at.
Expecting only those within the strict confines of the Party to have a perfect grasp of this, is rather limited.
Here is a great Margaret Thatcher clip which encapsulates much of what was seriously flawed with Mintoffianism and probably the current Labour Government too…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t37Oy8dD-U4
X’hasla dik minghand l-ispeaker.
[Daphne – Glenda Jackson is not the speaker. She is a Labour MP.]
I was referring to the chairman’s reply on Glenda Jackson’s speech being unparliamentary.
[Daphne – Yes, I get it now. Tracking disconnected comments to various posts can get a little confusing. They come in in chronological order, not sorted to stories.]
What an insufferable little twerp Bercow is. I almost prefer Anglu Farrugia.
Well, almost.
[Daphne – Bercow can speak.]
Bercow doesn’t say Erksin Mey.
He can speak, but his body language speaks even louder. He is incredibly pompous, and he does little to hide his disdain for the Tory benches, where he came from.
His wife is a failed Labour candidate and his politics have shifted from the grandee aristocratic right wing of the Tory party to Labour leaning in no time at all. In other words he is Britain’s version of JPO. Fih daqs tapp ukoll.
I completely disagree with her but I have total respect! Good for her for speaking out what she really thought about Maggie.
We so badly needed a speech like that when Mintoff died.
Wow ….. I started watching it and couldn’t stop. Glenda Jackson clearly feels very stongly about this ……. but the speaker was simply brilliant …… pity you cut the clip short! I’d have loved to hear the rest of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8IX8Pw_q94&feature=youtu.be
Joseph Muscat will not be needing any help from David Cameron.
Muscat will be asking Emmanuel Mallia to make surprise visits to the Parliament chamber.
Any MPs missing from the chamber will have their honoraria forfeited and passed to the Havent’s Got a Clue About Economic Growth Fund which will be set up to make new investments to “kick-start the economy.”
Any MPs found asleep in the Chamber will be punished with a shower of cold water from the St George’s Square fountain.
And MPs caught doing other business beneath the benches will be condemned to forced labour on the gas tanks at Delimara.
Wouldn’t it be an idea for a fine to be imposed on MPs who arrive late?
First to get it would be Joseph, ten minutes late for the first debate on the budget last Monday.
[Daphne – Fines, deduction of pay, all undemocratic. You can’t oblige MPs to be in the House unless they’re voting with the whip. It’s not a ‘job’. It’s up to their constituents to vote them up if they’re not happy with their performance.]
Margaret Thatcher is dead, but Glenda Jackson looks like she’s been dug up. This has nothing to do with the subject but I felt I had to say it. However, Glenda Jackson is a fine actress, but so was Margaret Thatcher.