Marie Louise Coleiro’s last act as she leaves party politics: state-paid cash allowances for “children” until the age of TWENTY-THREE
Do we laugh, or do we cry?
Childhood dependency now ends at 23, and there are 22,000 children living in poverty in Malta, according to the queen of the Loony Red Left – whose leftist principles will not stop her living in luxury with a retinue of servants at the palace once used by the British governor, with weekends spent at Verdala Castle with another small army of forelock-tuggers.
I quote from a report in the Times of Malta:
Taxpayers will be forking out €9 million a year for supplementary allowances for 22,000 children living in poverty with a grant of €400 per year per child for the first three children. €200 will be granted for the fourth and other children.
(…)
An innovative aspect of this new allowance, Ms Colerio Preca explained, was that it would be linked to school attendance, regular health check-ups for the children and the child’s participation in sport, cultural or social activities.
“This will be addressing poverty in a long-term manner and will ensure children’s psycho-social well-being. This is not simply a cash hand-out,” she said. The allowance would be given to children until they turned 23.
If parents did not adhere to the conditions, the children would not lose the allowance but this would be deposited in their name in an account or a trust and would be made available to them when they grew up.
Children up until the age of twenty-three? This is madness. If at 18 you are the child of a poor family, you have a solution: work. The alternative is vocational training, technical college or university, which is why there are no fees for any of those and why people are paid a stipend to go there.
Nobody over the age of 18 is a child. To call people in their 20s ‘children’ and talk about their parents being accountable for them and their actions, failing which the Marie Louise Coleiro Cash Allowance will be withdrawn, is farcical and insulting to all concerned, including those who have to cough up the money in the first place.
When you are over 18, you are an adult at law, and no parent can be made responsible for you or tell you what to do with Marie Louise’s cash allowance. Nor are you a child and eligible for any kind of children’s allowance in the normal world.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140305/local/marie-louise.509323
Daphne, I finally got around to reading your analysis of the new choice of president. I’m intrigued by it but I find the idea of John Dalli being co-opted to parliament too far-fetched. I think even Muscat the ultimate schemer wouldn’t go that far.
My personal take on the situation is much simpler.
Everyone in Labour has a lot of baggage. Nominating any single person was going to create huge controversy, so Muscat decided to, so to speak, nominate half the population.
As soon as Coleiro Preca’s name was revealed, people started talking about the merits of a woman president. Who the person is doesn’t really seem to matter, especially to people who don’t know or remember Marie Louise Coleiro Preca in previous guises.
In many people’s minds, she has a vagina and so she represents all Maltese women. According to the press, Muscat ‘favours a woman president’. Replace the words ‘vagina’ and ‘woman’ with ‘penis’ and ‘man’ and you’ll realise how absurd those statements sound.
It’s as if women are not individuals with different thoughts and personalities but they’re carbon copies of each other. What one woman does reflects well or badly on all women. This explains Ira Losco’s misguided and naïve comment about the greatness of having a woman president (I really think Ms Losco was genuinely excited about the prospect of having Coleiro Preca as president and wasn’t just being obsequious to the government).
Marie Louise Coleiro also has a lot of baggage (the Golden Years and all that) and should never have been chosen as president but being a woman, it’s easy to sweep it all under a rug. Criticising a woman is harder than criticising a man. People feel comfortable throwing all they’ve got at a man but feel flummoxed when they have to do the same to a woman.
[Daphne – Oh, rubbish. People feel perfectly comfortably throwing all they’ve got and more at me, and I’m a woman. People in Malta actually feel more comfortable tearing women to shreds than they do men. Misogyny is rife here. The only way to avoid it is by sticking to ‘women’s business’, like charities and poor people and fund-raising and ‘issues of care and concern’. The moment a woman steps out of line and begins talking about ‘men’s business’, she’s in trouble. Marie Louise Coleiro – a tough old bitch who broke up at least three marriages and who was secretary-general of the Corrupt Thug Party in the 1980s – has cunningly turned the traditional preserve of women, charity work, into her political personality and latterday political career, dispensing funds, jobs and favours in a manner that would be the envy of one of Hugo Chavez’s henchmen. The net result is that her public image if that of a charity worker rather than the tough-nosed, hard-bitten politician she really is. And quite frankly, it is not only because of her political past that she shouldn’t be made president, but because of her factual present. She is gruff, graceless, has no conversation, terrible elocution, is poorly educated, ill informed, cuts a poor figure at table, in discussions and generally, is terribly unprepossessing in terms of physical appearance and comportment, and is a disastrous representative for Malta as head of state. Well, actually she is a very accurate representative, but we don’t really want others to know that, do we. That’s why a head of state should be the highest form of expression of his people and not an accurate reflection of them: a short, dumpy, gruff, graceless, inarticulate, ill-educated nonentity. Apart from this, I agree with everything else you said. A woman for the sake of a woman is retrograde, patronising and chauvinistic, not progressive, liberal or even remotely contemporary.]
Women presidents are liberal and progressive just by being women. Those who do criticise feel they’re risking being called sexist. Women are presumed not to be capable of being deliberately evil or dangerous.
Interestingly, Lino Spiteri, who when Muscat was elected threw all lack of bias out of the window and has constantly bent over backwards ever since to justify all the government’s awful decisions has called this particular decision a mistake. All that sycophancy got him nothing, but I guess a feminist government has to do what it must.
Regarding the number of votes, I don’t think Labour are going to lose any. Marie Louise Coleiro Preca is going to practically keep the ministry. In her new position, she’s probably going to be able to draw more votes to Labour.
Without losing Coleiro Preca, Joseph Muscat has snagged an opportunity for a Cabinet reshuffle. I think it’s all worked out rather nicely for him. The only question left to ask is whether Ms Coleiro Preca will still be receiving a minister’s salary when president.
[Daphne – The president cannot maintain a hold on a cabinet post and certainly not take a minister’s salary. The only favours this new president will still be able to dispense are via the Community Chest Fund, and expect L-Istrina to become the raison d’etre of the head of state, with all other duties – representing Malta overseas, for instance – seen as incidental.]
This is the not the solution. The solution is the one being implemented in many countries: encourage these young people to work and reduce their taxes and/or waiver all taxes until they reach the age of 30 if they set up their own business.
And she is supposedly the best of the lot…
A perfect strategy to create further social problems and poverty.
Next in the government’s socialist bonanza “to get people out of the risk of poverty”: social housing for children aged 23 upwards.
In the western world, apart from the Italian mammoni, young people leave home at the age of 18, at which point they have to fend for themselves. They study, work and share apartments with their peers. That is how they grow up.
A considerable number of Maltese young people who try to work abroad return after a few months/years. Is it because they cannot cope with real life outside the cosy shores of Malta?
In very civilised European cultures located at its very heart, where education is taken seriously and where technical or professional specialisation is determined as a more gradual exploratory process beginning at 14, youth effectively begin leaving home to board in considerable numbers at this age.
The main difference in Educational structure being a three-year “sixth form” not a two-year one, and where all main subjects continue till the end of that three-year period that includes two foreign languages and a culture-based option no matter the direction opted for in the main tracks.
14 is also the age that coincides with when that youth is able to obtain a permit to drive a certain range of vehicles with a motor,
13 would be the age that political concepts, legal fundamentals, rights, duties and obligations as a citizen are explained, analysed and discussed. Testing is rigorous and based on knowledge, application, grammar and expression equally.
No swank attached to the boarding affordable by all, just a healthy measure of focus and effectiveness.
Field trips to other countries are organised with planning and budgeting planned well in advance at an affordable pace of 10 euro per month. Many children are motivated to find ways of presenting and developing their own little earnings to fund this.
Children prepared for adulthood, not the eternal child whose vote Labour in Malta is determined to buy using State funds.
This is real madness and really shameful – besides, how can the government department concerned control attendance/participation in ‘sports activities’? This will without any doubt whatsoever lead to abuse and corruption.
Marie Louise Coleiro Preca probably managed to negotiate this with the prime minister by arguing that if one claims to be “young” at 40, then one can surely claim to be still a child at 23.
I am “morally convinced” that this “sowxjil benefin” was part of the negotation she had with the prime minister about the presidency. My moral conviction tells me that she forced the “40-year young” prime minister to commit Eur 9 million to children aged up to of 23, before he forced her to either become the next President of the Republic or loose her Ministry.
My moral conviction tells me also that if the prime minister fills the vacancy caused by Coleiro Preca’s departure from the cabinet and Parliament by co-opting John Dalli to the Finance Ministry, this benefit will be the first to go in Dalli’s first budget. If I’m not mistaken, Dalli had already means-tested the childrens’ allowances. All he needs to do now is to introduce a definition of “children.”
What is sauce for the goose (children) is sauce for the gander (pensioners). What about the pensioners – given the miserable pension they receive surely the majority can be considered as living in poverty.
Not if you are Labour, my friend. Their pension stretches for miles and spreads margarine over Maltese loaf slices.
Labour must be very confused: stretching the definition of children to 23 for the purpose of allowance but reducing it to 16 for council voting?
Don’t they grasp that there’s a slight gap in the logic?
Convenience over sense.
Great way of tackling unemployment.
That’s it, they’ve given up. On our way to the Scandinavian model, where people never work, preferring to call themselves environmentalists pedalling bicycles instead.
This issue about supporting “children” till they are 23 will only lead to immature, young adults who believe the world owes them a living. Rather than stimulating and supporting young people’s initiative, Ms. Coleiro Preca encourages learned helplessness…as has already been said, this is a short-sighted (and vote-winning) solution but will result in more problems in the long run.
It reminds me of this news report I happened to read yesterday: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/04/justice/student-sues-parents-new-jersey/
“…and the child’s participation in … cultural or social activities” take that to read “participating in carnival, taken on a school outing to watch Gensna, be present and smiling at school visits by the Lady of Castille and other government MPs…”
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” WC
“[…]leftist principles will not stop her living in luxury with a retinue of servants at the palace once used by the British governor, with weekends spent at Verdala Castle with another small army of forelock-tuggers.”
All policies intending to even out diversity are only borne out of jealousy for those “who have it better than I”
Heterogeneity is a natural law – as shown by evolution (=read biological diversity) and (perhaps surprisingly for a few) in the parable of the talents.
I have two children aged 11 and 13- both go to school regularly, have regular health and dental check ups and attend football nursery, tennis coaching and art lessons – all paid for by myself and my wife.
Will Ms Coleiro Preca consider depositing the €400 in their bank account, which by the way they already have in where they deposit any cash they receive as presents etc.
At least this way I might get 8K of my taxes back over the next 10 years
And if the parents misbehave they’re are going to keep the money in an account in the children’s names until they grow up. When will that be, at 45 years of age?
What’s quite astonishing too is how lejber claimed poverty was a problem in Malta during the election campaign. This was never a problem before they claimed it to be. They made it sound as though children were begging in the streets and sleeping in drainage pipes south of Marsa.
Yet now they’ve measured it. With 400euros per child, the family is out of poverty. That’s it? This mass poverty was 7euros per week too poor?
They probably could have come to the same financial solution for the families without costing the tax payer anything by simply banning super 5 & lotto for those families in that income bracket.
I never knew what my father earned but, despite his holding down two jobs, I’m sure that our family would have qualified as ‘at risk of poverty.’
Yet, our parents made sure we lacked none of the essentials – without any of the ‘luxuries.’
However, they certainly instilled in us the need for education and to make our own way in life.
At 23, I had a professional degree, and was married, with a child on the way, and never had to depend on anyone’s charity.
To provide allowances (meant for children) to 23 year-old adults because of their being ‘at risk of poverty’ does nothing except increase the sense of entitlement that many Maltese already have: that they are owed a decent living by Government. This is just a shameful waste of hard-earned taxpayer-money.
Socialism is disgusting and I hate it with a passion. Why should my money go towards bums still claiming to be children at 23 ?
I have never and will never make use of state schools. Why am I paying for it ?
If it were up to me I would stop ALL stipends, I would get rid of free schooling and ALL social benefits such as unemployment benefits.
Why should my money go towards people who don’t or can’t work. I do not care about their plight.
At 23 I’d been married for two years, had a 1yr old and was working 70hrs a week, every single week for around 8yrs, to pay our way and scrape together a deposit on our own home. A minimum of 20% with Lohombus in those days was no joke, when you’re starting from scratch.
That’s nothing incredible – no praise or admiration, please – it’s just what you DO to take care of your own affairs! But now I’m expected to subsidize, from my taxes; cars, cigarettes, tattoos, nights out in PV and definitely a number of kids with an ‘unknown father’ for this lot?
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/blogsdetails/blogs/A-left-wing-presidency-for-Malta-20140306
Dunno, but this whole emphasis on social justice, and the president as one who’ll work with government on laws to implement some ‘egalitarian’ utopia should set some alarms ringing.
Coleiro Preca will have the power to override all court cases where expropriation, rent laws and any other manifestation of social justice prevailed over the rights of owners.
If she’s willing to sponsor children until the age I was in my third year at university, what holds her from issuing mass presidential decrees in favour of the ‘working’ class?
As always PL is once again promoting laziness. So Coleiro Preca will be dishing out handouts. They have not even had the temerity to tie handouts with attainment.
So now we will be having state financed parasites up to the age of 23. Labour always exalted and encouraged dependency in order to keep people under control.
Hafna jahsbu li c-childrens’ allowance isolvu l-problemi tad-dinja.
This policy exposes what is wrong with Labour. Labour through its policies promotes ignorance by rewarding people who break the law when they fail to send their children to school.
If parents do not want their chidren to be better than what they are, and that’s only possible through education, then they are not fit to be parents. Social services should remove these children from such an environment.
Yet, this governemnt chooses to “pay” these type of people, thus making it acceptable, even profitable to not sending children to school in the first place!
There were the days when a Labour Government gave allowances to schoolchildren who had to travel and use buses to go to school. I did personally find out that children living next door to and in the vicinity of the school were also receiving allowances to enable them to travel to school. So rife could corruption and abuse be. This is how votes are bought should anyone care to take note.
Damn, missed the new allowance by that much.