Still the starving children, queuing for oranges
While researching through newspapers published in Malta around 1900, I chanced upon a report of how several children had been injured and one of them crushed to death in the stampede when some do-gooders in Valletta decided to distribute oranges “to poor children”.
That’s how bad it was: children queued for an orange and got killed and maimed doing so.
The extent of that deprivation scarred Maltese society and gave people a ‘let’s take what we can get for free’ mentality. It is not so much that we are a nation of scroungers as that we can’t see something fly by unattended without clutching at it. Majtezwel.
The Malta Independent reported yesterday:
Any resistance by the social partners to the government’s citizenship scheme appears to have dissipated, as they turned out in droves today for a meeting with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in order to discuss how the scheme’s funds will be distributed.
(…)
The amount of interest in the programme is ever growing, he said, and with the correct structures in place the funds attained can leave a lasting legacy for the country.
Dr Muscat said that the funds will be administered by a board of trustees made up of “persons of integrity.” He said that he is looking forward to hearing the social partners’ suggestions for the terms of reference for the fund.
The social partners (and no, I don’t think they were necessarily there because their resistance has dissipated, but because if you are asked to a meeting with the prime minister, you go) will have registered the fact, if they are astute, that they are being used once more.
They will have registered the fact, too, that what these funds are going to be spent on changes according to what the occasion dictates. First it was education, healthcare and social housing, then it was local council projects, and now all the social partners have been called in and had it suggested to them that their projects will get funding too.
The goose, apparently, is going to keep right on laying those golden eggs until it keels over and dies or is slain.
And I imagine that not one of the men at that meeting with the prime minister had the self-assurance to point out to the prime minister that the fund, the trustees, the terms of reference and its objectives should have been sorted out and organised BEFORE the sale of citizenship was voted into law – precisely because it should have been part of that law and parliament should have voted on it too.
What a country. One despairs. The social partners might as well go into meetings with Labour prime ministers wearing T-shirts that say ‘I’m a dog with my tail between my legs’. Amazing how they are actually scared of Labour politicians.
10 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
The fund is going to be administered by persons of integrity, appointed by a Labour government led by Joseph Muscat.
Ahem.
If the government of Joseph Muscat has funds available, first and foremost, it should build a decent gas powered power station that puts the mind at ease.
It’s been done before…
This is a continuation of the MLP of the 80s… an implied threat behind every action.
Jahasra.
What brutes. The lot of them.
When the goose is killed, they have many disappointed people who thought they were entitled to funds, and they’ll have someone to blame.
Forget about the fact that there is no such thing as a goose with golden eggs..
The T-shirt should say “I’m a dog with nothing but my tail between my legs because I lost my balls somewhere along the way.”
They’re scared because they still remember what thuggery and corruption Labour politicians were – and probably still are – capable of. And most of all they’re scared because they are not you, Daphne! Between them all they do not have half the figurative ‘balls’ that we are all grateful you have been adorned with.
Very well said Daphne – and these are supposed to be the cream of the Chamber of Commerce, Employers’ Association and trade unionists, amongst others.
When this is the country’s supposed left leaning union news portal, despair’s superfluous.
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20140203-trid-li-jkollha-taqsam-ma-23-ra-el-hekk-kif-tag-laq-23-sena
Misogyny’s mainstream with these people, just look at the comments.
Things soon come to a head on the comments board, as ‘Bil-qziez l’ghandha’ promptly gets a gallant, ‘mhux ahjar hekk milli tinghalaq soru tbabas’.
‘Ne madonne ne puttane ma solamente donne’, went the feminist battlecry in the early 70’s. Thank goodness for Inews and their social agenda then.
A sickening display of begging, while little Joey dangles the goodies, just out of reach.
In the 1820s there was also about a hundred kids crushed to death in a very similar tragic stampede at the Ta’ Ġieżu church, located on the St John street steps in Valletta.