I’m listening to the budget speech…
Published:
November 4, 2013 at 8:06pm
…while making supper. Now we know one of the reasons why they’re so ruddy desperate to sell hundreds of passports immediately.
I suppose it’s like printing money without the fear of inflation. The government can issue as many passports as it likes for this is not a finite resource but an intangible thing, and nobody will know how many it has sold, not even all the members of the cabinet of government.
When I was little I loved reading Aesop’s fables. They fascinated me. And this passport-selling strategy recalls for me the fable about the goose that laid the golden eggs, for some reason.
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Edward Scicluna is talking about how he’s going to spend the money but about not how he is going to make it.
Did he say that the Nationalists did not leave a strong economy?
Right now he is suggesting that health services will be taxed. He is putting it on JDalliBA.
Correction: In my first sentence above, “the money but not about how he is going to make it.”
The Minister confused me with his numbers.
My sentiments exactly. If Malta’s finances were mismanaged during the PN administration, why then is this budget so liberal in the reductions in taxation and so on.
Government revenue has been decreased significantly. Where are the alternative sources of income? I cannot find any real and tangible strategies that promote investment and widespread employment
Unless, they already promised passports to a sizeable amount of people with considerable amounts of cash in hand, and who are running away from their own country. Wouldn’ t that risk making us enemies of that country?
I am afraid SImon will stay in the OPPOSITION for a lot of years. Labour is keeping his electoral promises unlike PN.
[Daphne – I hope Labour keeps its electoral promises on education, forsi titghallem li l-gvern huwa IT jew THEY u mhux HE.]
Dak ghax il-gvern prezenti inhossu vicin u mhux bhal dak tal-passat. Dan il-gvern uman imma int mhux ha tifhimni..
Joseph mhux uman. Joseph sovrauman. Ubermensch.
Issa apparti c-cajt, illejla hallew elve wiehed biss l-ufficju? L-ohrajn x’ghamlu, hargu jiccelebraw?
Johan, very little of any of this is actually going to happen. The Maltese will finally wake up and realize they have been blinded by their greed and will pay the price.
The only reason why Muscat thinks he can promise all this is because he thinks he will get all the money from his citizenship scheme, the bottom of which is about to fall out and not only lead to no money, but major problems for you and me and everyone else when it comes to travel.
Nixteq inkun naf min jista jifmhek?
Veru Johann – ghax mal-gvern Nazzjonalista mhux kulhadd gawda. Ara l-istandard of living kif ghola imma qatt ma tammettu li minkejja certi zbalji il-PN gabu Malta pajjiz suret in-nies.
Nispera li ikompli hekk.
Tabilhaqq, gvern uman u vicin ma min jaqbel mieghu biss, Johan – l-ohrajn jista imorru jixxejrju, basta tista tahdem maghna anke jekk ma taqbilx maghna.
Where was the promise to sell passports in the MLP electoral manifesto?
Nowhere – this is one of the ‘secret’ promises of the PL before the elections. What more secret promises are in store for us? I shudder to think about this.
It would be interesting to see how they will keep their promises as soon as money starts running out.
Yes, Johan. Sadly about three quarters of the Maltese population are troglodytes and have minds smaller than that of a chicken.
There are none so blind as those who will not see, Johan. Think about that.
Johan, I was one of those who thought, and I still think I was right, that we needed a change, I must confess if this matter of selling citizenship had been mentioned, or even hinted, before the election, I might have had second thoughts.
I have this feeling that we are actually prostituting ourselves.
[Daphne – Finally we agree on something, Mr Loporto.]
It is scary, We are just going to sell Malta. Ara Mintoff kemm qedt jitqalleb.
Who gives a damn about Mintoff. He would have done the same. He didn’t actually have principles. He pretended to have principles whenever it suited him.
That’s Muscat all over.
I am sorry Edward, I disagree.
Mintoff was an abhorrent swine.
However he would never ever have stooped so low.
He would never have sold Malta in this obnoxious manner.
Never.
I knew him well. He would never have even countenanced this blatant prostitution of the motherland.
In his own eccentric, miserly and strange way he loved his country.
He played various political powers against each other, many times to Malta’s detriment, that is true.
But he never sold Malta outright like this.
He was a monster but never a traitor.
Anthony, Mintoff almost made Malta part of Libya for money. He would have done anything.
Because selling Malta’s geopolitical and economic independence to China, North Korea and Libya was patriotic?
Either we haven’t read the same history book or we were born on different planets.
It seems that Labour had struck a deal with the Malta Football Association prior to the election. Here’s their iced bun – http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131104/budget-2014/income-tax-cuts-for-top-earners-parents-and-part-timers.493282#.UnfytBRwbIU
Now one of the reasons why they want to get this citizenship going as fast as possible is out in the open. They need this income to finance their budget tad-deheb.
Did the Minister mention the number of passports the government needs to sell next year to pay for the budget measures?
Must be more than a thousand…
The Minister mentioned so many numbers… It seems that he forgot to mention the most important one.
And €30 million is a drop compared to their intended annual target.
Had they announced the intended figures here there’d have been a right furore.
They are acting like they’ve struck oil and are spending every last drop.
The sad thing is that they will act like the PN didn’t do this in the last 25 years because, according to them, when the PN were elected in 87 they found a country as strong as it is now with no problems at all.
Well, when the people realize that they are being ruled by a bunch of Russian oligarchs and Azerbaijani criminals they might finally see how stupid they have been all this time.
Gozo General, though got the best deal. It gets a new kitchen and repairs to some roofs, but in the meantime the Blood Donor clinic goes from a daily service to two half days a month.
Ditto for MRI facilities which I believe have been transferred to Mater Dei and Gozitans will have to travel back and forth to receive that service and if a patient arrives two minutes late at Cirkewwa and the Hon Minister is not also at the pier with his mobile against his ear…. the boat keeps on going.
Persons who think that grammar is not important, take note:
Why do you think Minister Scicluna is stumbling so much? Surely it’s not because he is semi-literate. It also can’t be explained away as tiredness, it’s occurring too often.
Most probably his speech is poorly written, littered with spelling mistakes and devoid of punctuation.
He did not write it, and whoever wrote it speaks pidgin Maltese.
Lino Spiteri labelled yesterday’s Budget speech as “verbose” in this morning’s Times.
Lino Spiteri is quite tight-lipped on his own interests within the Tumas Group portfolio.
He had a frog in his throat and every time he mentioned millions and accused the former government of not doing much, the frog acted up. And he stumbled so often, it became terribly irritating (his throat too, I suspect).
The fact that they are now in Government hasn’t sunk in yet it seems. They are still going on with the pre-election bull.
Raising expenditure and reducing the deficit do not go hand in hand… it is an either or.
It sounds like the last Greek budget before default.
I have the feeling that the Minister has put a number of measures as buffers in the budget so that later next year he will have enough scope to “trim” the expenditure to get in line with the EU targets.
‘Qed nallokaw is-somma ta’……u dan bil-fondi mil-Unjoni Ewropea.’ This is what minister Scicluna is reading, yes, ad nauseam.
So should not the Minister of Finance conclude his Budget speech by saying ‘thank you EU, for making it possible for my Eurosceptic labour government, that voted against membership,to make full use of EU funds; this have given my Labour government the possibility of presenting my first budget’?
Jiddandnu b’rix haddiehor.
And by the way, Labour will make Malta the best country in EU, with EU funding of course.
He said that to reduce electricity bills, his government will be spending 21 million euro (more subsidies on the already subsidized unit price) presumably from the 50 million in new taxes?
Whatever happened to the 30 million gift promised by Shanhai Electric ‘so that subsidies can start a year earlier’? Did I miss that part or is the 30 million gift going some place else, or nowhere at all?
They’re obviously thinking of the upcoming EP elections. They can’t afford a good PN showing.
One should not forget the one-off sale of Enemalta to China…and who knows what other silverware will be shed to finance this budget.
Do you really think that the ‘sale’ will actually stop at 35%?
China has got the thin edge of the wedge in Enemalta and will continue to hammer it in until it gets a majority share.
The Minister has announced many measures and has mentioned many numbers. Of course, he has a budget of billions of euro.
However, there was no vision, no underlying structure and no coherent statement of what the economic priorities of the government are for Malta. It’s a budget that pushes, but it does not lead, the economy.
In many ways, the budget continues with measures of PN governments, such as a number of schemes, like the one for the replacement of old cars, and the reductions in income tax.
Isn’t that the nicest sounding budget in the history of ginger-bread men, geese that lay golden eggs, Little red riding hoods etc etc. But Rumpelstiltskin is asking who is going to pay for this?
For the record: Who is going to pay for this?
It is clear that the budget is just a continuation of the PN ones. This also clearly means that they found the economy in a good shape otherwise they would not have presented the budget they presented.
A tighter budget next year will only mean that they failed to reach their objectives.
A number of points however were glaring in their absence:
1. What incentives are they giving for further investment?
2. Where are the jobs going to come from?
3. Just how much are they going to make from the sale of the citizenship?
4. Why are they going to carry out a means test? Is this the first step towards public healthcare no longer being free?
5. Unemployment is increasing steadily, however interestingly enough employment in the public sector has increased. Are we going back to the great Lorry Sant days/Freeport days?
Dan huwa budget ta’ nofs sajran. Qeghdin jigu proposti skemi li ghad iridu jibdew jigi diskussi, jigifieri ghad m’hemm xejn lest. Anka z-zidiet staha jghid kemm se jkunu. Kemm se jizdiedu l-licenzji, sigaretti? Budget ta’ kliem sabih li strah bil-bosta fuq it-tajjeb li sar qabel.
The first statement the prime minister made under his expensive tent is that he does not wait for the election to be near to start giving benefits. Well actually he conveniently forgot that 2014 is an election year of sorts – the EP elections, which parties use as a sounding-board.