It should go without saying that this was a Nationalist government
It should go without saying that this was a Nationalist government, but this is the Brainwashed Isle of Low IQ and No Information, so we’re going to have to be very specific.
This was a Nationalist government, not that scum Mintoff’s, who went to Muammar Gaddafi for short-termist crumbs instead of to the World Bank for long-term infrastructural projects designed to build a civilised, Western European economy (you can’t just say ‘European’ in reference to those days, because half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain).
There’s a salutory reminder of the long-time difference between the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party in The Sunday Times today:
Fifty years ago – September 8, 1963
New power station
The World Bank said it had made a loan equivalent to seven-and-a-half million dollars to Malta for a combined thermal electric town and sea water distillation project. The project consists of the construction of a 25,000-kilowatt power station which will double the generating capacity of Malta’s public electricity system, and a water distillation plant with a capacity of one million imperial gallons a day. Fundamental changes are now taking place in Malta as it builds a diversified, civilian economy based on new industries and expanded tourism.
Then Mintoff came along eight years later, thanks to the ignorant masses who can be forgiven their inability to understand such things but thanks also to to those members of the upper middle class who can never be forgiven their irresponsible, train-wreck stupidity, and derailed that entire course, sending Malta into a slow spin to corrupt hell and backwardness instead.
In 1976 the upper middle classes didn’t vote for him again, as they did in 1971 and as they did with ‘Joseph’ in 2013, but by then it was too late. He had bought the votes of even more working-class people by riding on the back of their ignorance and with that ‘cittrin ullawin’ which Muammar Gaddafi bankrolled in return for Malta becoming a satellite of Tripoli.
Yes, members of the upper middle class can be stupid and ignorant too, university and all the advantages notwithstanding. By the time they’ve worked out what they’ve done, the mess is out of their hands.
My thanks to the reader who highlighted this.
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Fortunatament, l-istorja ta Malta min meta kellha s-self government, kienet iddominata minn gvernijiet Nazzjonalisti w ghalhekk baqghet mixja fit-triq it-tajba, allavolja kenna l-isventura Mintoff li ittardja l-isvillup taghha.
Sa certu punt, illum in-nazzjonalisti jistaw jiftahhru li kienu dejjem fit-triq it-tajba. Qatt ma bidlu l-principji bazici jew l-ideologija ekonomika ghax il-vizjoni kienet dejjem ewlenija. U Malta rat progress tangibli hafna liema bhalu.
Minn-nahha l-ohra, l-Socjalisti Maltin fl-ahhar qed icedu l-idejologija taghhom u waslu biex jissirqu l-politika nazzjonalista. Diskutibli hafna jekk humiex kapaci jhaddmuha.
Pero jibqa zvilupp politiku mportanti ghal Malta.
Mintoff actually shut down that desalination plant on the grounds that Malta (read tal-pepe areas) should be left without water rather than be provided with water “that cost as much as whisky”.
Mintoff did not actually shut down the desalination plant. The plant broke down and parts were available only in the US. The story goes that the anti-Western Mintoff was refused the parts, thus the plant had to be shut down. Apparently some repairs were attempted unsuccessfully at the Dockyard.
“My thanks to the reader who highlighted this.” Thank you Daphne.
May I bring to the reader’s attention that 25,000 KW is 25 Mega Watts.
If I’m not mistaken, that was the capacity of five generating sets (General Electric) of which it was planned that for the next SIX years.
Three would be running, one would be on standby and one on preventive maintenance.
So the spare capacity was two generating sets. The scarcity of water was addressed by using the “waste” energy produced by the boilers plus some fuel to produce (by distillation) potable water from sea water.
Up to the late 1970s the Labour government did not lift a finger to install new generating sets. The now old ones were past beyond their end of service date and all of them were running at full capacity, with the Marsa chimneys spewing thick black smoke for which our Leo would immediately evacuate the whole area around the power station, at least judging by his order to close the Marsascala Family Park.
The distillers at Marsa and Hondoq ir-Rummien were left to rot, because water was expensive “as whisky” Mintoff said.
In the meantime we had voltage stabilisers installed because TVs would not turn on and our salty water supply was coming (if it reached the purposely installed roof top tanks) from the over extraction of the water table from boreholes.
Ah, the Golden Years.
The above does not record that when the power station of 50 years ago proved to be inadequate for the needs of 25 years later, Mintoff augmented its production by accepting an Italian offer to dismantle a power station in Sicily which was being replaced by a new one, shipping it in bits and pieces to Malta, and reassembling it here.
That was investment for him.
He tried the same thing with telephone equipment that was being discarded by others.
With telephone equipment, Mintoff intended to go further than the reinstallation of outdated Strowger phone exchanges.
His economic plan was to take up as any such phone exchanges as possible, doll them up a bit and sell them onwards to ‘suwed’ – that is, to the tinpot dictators who were progressively taking over as their personal fiefdoms the former British and French colonies.
Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, aka KMB, Mintoff’s anointed successor, was never short of brilliant money-making plans either.
On one occasion he dispatched Foreign Minister Alex Sceberas Trigona, aka AST, to the oil-rich ‘idle Eastern states’ to try and con what KMB perceived as financially sub-literate oil sheiks into lending Malta millions in pounds sterling at 2%.
The idea was that Malta would then reinvest at far higher interest rates (and so at far greater financial risk) and keep the difference.
Imagine that.
One of the last great financial wheezes by the KMB regime was to convert all of Malta’s foreign currency reserves into US dollars when dollar value was rocketing up, only Malta bought in when the dollar was at an unsustainable all-time high and with predicable results, e.e. a loss in value of several million in as many days.
Tassew ma hawnx bhal-Labour – ghal-grazzja t’Alla.
Horrible reminders of the ‘gvern tat-tqancic’ that we were burdened with at that time.
Another fact about the Marsa Power Station is its conversion to a coal burning one, again in the seventies, as yet another Mintoffian penny pinching (at-the-expense-of-the-Maltese-people’s-health-and-well-being) scheme. Does anybody now still remember the mountain of coal at the Marsa Menqa, and its boundary retaining wall (guarded by armed soldiers) bulging outwards on to the road, close to collapsing on to any passing traffic? Ahhh glory days indeed.
And that’s the mentality the present government seems to be adopting.