When Scrooge ran the country
George Borg Olivier, then Nationalist Party leader, to the US ambassador to Malta in 1974, on the subject of Dom Mintoff, then prime minister:
“He’s a miser. He’s a miser at home, and he runs the country just like he runs his home.”
This was revealed in a US embassy cable published on Wikileaks.
Well, we knew that, didn’t we. Too bad so many of those who worshipped him didn’t know how awful he was in this department, or maybe they thought it was normal because that’s how they lived themselves through force of necessity rather than through miserliness, and imagined that Mintoff, too, was ‘thrifty’ rather than a miserable scrooge.
Of course, they had no way of knowing how he made his wife’s life such a misery that she left him and ran away to England at one point. They barely knew he had a wife, or daughters – the daughters having been sent away to England round about the time Malta became independent from Britain.
Well, he took none of it with him, did he – and he put the country through hell with his stinginess.
Borg Olivier’s remark was perfectly observed: he ran the country like he ran his home. That wasn’t only in terms of the acute and unbelievable stinginess – his wife was at one time living off the charity of her friends, who gave her money so that she could buy proper food and clothes – but in his general attitude.
And that was one of his major mistakes. Countries have very different imperatives to homes. One of them is investing money to make money.
13 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Borg Olivier couldn’t have described Dom Mintoff better.
He could have described him as a fascist
Ironically, Edward Heath referred to Margaret Thatcher’s policies as ‘kitchen sink economics’.
As much as we had always had that description of Mintoff at home (from family members having interacted with the Mintoff household), it’s nice to see that Mintoff is also described as a ‘miser’ by someone like Borg Olivier as well.
My grandfather’s ‘bocci’ mates sometimes had Mintoff brought over for a game, and what he did there was a reflection of most of his ploicies and odious personality. He would go in kicking the ‘bocci’ around when he was losing and end the game there, never buy tea from the place (instead bringing his own thermos), and be ‘sick’ whenever it was his turn to buy the pastizzi and tea. Meanwhile, his poor wife was reduced to selling what few oranges grew in her garden just so that she could live. Miser doesn’t begin to cover it.
Regarding your remark about countries and homes, whereas the former should not be run like the latter in the first place, in this case it was worse because Mintoff ran his home so abysmally.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-04-11/news/coleiro-preca-says-some-housing-authority-dwellings-lack-basic-needs-1372585984/
Excuse me,
http://unionsource1.en.made-in-china.com/productimage/feZxRhMVASpN-2f0j00ueftGmNylOpJ/China-Plastic-Soap-Box-Usy2000559.html
Given that Mrs.Knight will refuse to commit to where to place the darned thing. No drilling required.
The good news is that now he’s a dead miser.
While working as a salesman in the 80s I remember Mrs Mintoff going around shops in Paola and saying “Good morning. Dom says hello. One bottle of milk, 100g of cheddar, 100g of ham, please – how much do I owe you?” And the shop keeper answers, “No, nothing, Mrs Mintoff. Say thanks to Dom”. And this kept going on shop after shop until her basket was full.
Nofs kwart. Grammes didn’t exist in those days of kupuni taz-zokkor, which could buy you a nofs nofs kwart, if you were thrifty.
Does anyone remember the car he was chauffeured in? An old 1958 Austin Vanden Plas, which he kept till the late 70s, with dents all over its body, rear bumper tied with a piece of steel thread, billowing out blue smoke from the exhaust pipe.
And being about 12 years old at the time I asked my dad while we’re following behind his car, “Why does Mintoff have such an old car?” And my dad said “GHAX MINTOFF QAMMIEL IMGIDDEM”.
What you say may be true, though many in previous generations were thrifty and today would be considered misers, especially if they were low class or had a low class or deprived background as Mr Mintoff had.
[Daphne – Thrift and miserliness are two entirely different things, David. A thrifty person cleans out the jam-jar. A miserly person doesn’t buy jam. Mintoff did not come from a deprived background. How on earth did you assume that? If he were from a deprived background, he would never have become an architect. You had to pay to go to university in those days. His mother was a money-lender, didn’t you know? She sent her son to a church school, asking the priests to take him on for free because she couldn’t afford the fees. The priests then found out that she had a small fortune. They rightly demanded fees. She made a scene. Do you know any of Mintoff’s nephews and nieces who live in the gutter or social housing, or sweep streets for a living? No. They’re all solidly middle class and thriving in the professions or similar. Well, then. Don’t believe what you’re told about Mintoff. He was never poor, not even as a child.]
As fas as I know he was brought up in a slummish area in Cospicua.
[Daphne – So what, David? That means nothing. The man continued to live in a slum of his own making despite acquiring millions. Some people are like that, and his mother was another one. Also, you forget that Mintoff was born and brought up at a time when Cospicua was a perfectly respectable place to live, with lots of nice middle class people living a bourgeois life there.]
Equally bad is overspending as in the case of the millions of euros spent for an unecessary new Parliament and a botch transport reform.
[Daphne – The money isn’t being spent on a new parliament, David, but on a new parliament BUILDING. I would very much like a new parliament, but unfortunately I shall have to wait another five years for that. How can a new parliament building be unnecessary when we have never had one? I think spending millions on a new parliament building designed by Renzo Piano is a jolly good thing. It’s certainly greater value for money, and the results more useful and better to look at, than the hundreds of millions poured down the gullet of Malta Drydocks, to no end and purpose.]
How does EUR 80 million for the new Valletta project designed by Renzo Piano compare to EUR 2,450 million (Lm1 billion) flushed down the dry docks and other millions wasted on the 8,000 public workers employed by the government on the eve of the 1987 election, Sea Malta, Malta Shipbuilding, and other white elephants?