Muscat’s ‘in the coming days we will announce important news’ turns out to be the equivalent of KMB’s ‘centezmu rohs fil-prezz tat-ton taz-zejt’
The prime minister called an urgent press conference on an unspecified subject this morning, and the media rushed to get the story after his days of heavy hinting and declarations that the government will be announcing big news, important for Malta, shortly.
They’ve struck oil before even starting to drill for it.
Our state general hospital problems have been solved by selling it to China.
Air China is buying a controlling stake in Air Malta.
Azerbaijan is building a bridge between Malta and Gozo.
The prime minister entered the room flanked by aides and the health and energy minister, Konrad Mizzi, and tension mounted. So not Air Malta then, but surely the hospital. Or something about the LNG tanker?
Cameras flashed, reporters switched on their recorders, iPads out, pens poised over notebooks, everybody leaning forward, sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for the tremendous announcement, the big and important good news that merited an urgent press conference by the prime minister himself after days of dropping hints and preparing the stage.
And what followed was the equivalent of KMB’s and Wistin Abela’s momentous announcement, in stentorian tones, that the price of tinned tuna/corned beef/tinned mackerel in tomato sauce had been reduced by five mils or one cent.
The price of petrol is going down by two cents, the prime minister announced, and the price of diesel will remain the same until the end of the year. The price of gas cylinders will go down by Eur1.30 and stay that way until the end of September.
At this point, the reporters could barely contain themselves: looks of astonishment, barely suppressed giggles.
It was bad enough that the prime minister and health and energy minister THEMSELVES called an URGENT press conference about something that is usually announced by Enemalta in a dry press release and without a press conference at all.
The prime minister only made things worse by inflating expectations for days ahead and encouraging speculation, then failing to match context and presentation (the prime minister and his energy minister, announcing a two-cent price decrease for petrol in a press conference) and the non-news itself to the hyped-up anticipation.
Ludicrous rubbish. Really unbelievable.
This does not, of course, mean that the government isn’t working to sell Air Malta, because the talk on that has been quite specific.
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-30/news/pm-calls-urgent-press-conference-4803526656/
Could it be that they expected some different news which did not come to pass, and instead had to offer this as it was the only thing they had?
Exactly, the real news is yet to come
I took this as good news, in that it was not bad news but rather pointless news – non-news.
I mean with this unpredictable government you think the worst. I was expecting the headline to be the sale of Air Malta to China Southern Airlines.
So thanks Muscat. Now get back into your cage and emerge in four years, for the good of the country that is.
I thought as much too.
At present the price of diesel in Munich, Germany is €1.309 per litre. It has been under €1.35 for over a month. So infact we are paying for diesel more than in Germany.
http://tanken.t-online.de/search/diesel/muenchen
In some places on the continent it’s even lower at €1.289 as at today’s date.
“The prime minister only made things worse by inflating expectations for days ahead and encouraging speculation, then failing to match context and presentation”
I am too much afraid that such silly tactics work like a charm with the sort of people who thought him magnificent and voted for him.
The anticlimax of the millennium.
If I were a journalist I would have packed up my things and left. This man is a joke and an insult to all.
I think that this is Joseph Muscat’s idea of a joke. He’s lording it over his ex colleagues in the media and showing them precisely what he thinks of them.
It’s his twisted version of British humor
It looks like they’re desperate to divert attention from hunting, but have nothing good to talk about.
I actually think that this was done pointedly to divert the media’s attention away from something bigger, something underhand, which Labour would like to go unnoticed.
They probably want to hide the difference between the deficit and the movement in the national debt during 2013.
It is what Muscat does NOT tell you that really matters.
I would not be surprised if in the coming days we get the “real story” and everyone will be told that they assumed that the decreases announced were not in fact the big story.
I’m smelling something rotten.
It’s a bit more serious than this. The style of handing out crumbs to keep the rowdy rabble quiet is reminiscent of many a narcissistic conqueror whilst he rattles on shifting the boundaries from under their feet.
How many are actually capable of reading between the lines before it is was too late?
I am going fishing.
My thoughts exactly.
Could be one of those ‘carrots’ before an election.
It obviously is.
On the subject of ludicrous journalism (well, OK, the above is more about ludicrous stories for journalists) I couldn’t believe that The Malta Independent chose to reproduce a “letter in full” (wow!) from someone in England (wow, he must be important…and he served in the Merchant Navy!) who doesn’t quite agree with Chris Packham and who obviously has a personal axe to grind. This is serious journalism?
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-30/news/bbcs-packham-not-liked-by-everyone-in-the-uk-4805033984/
Muscat tried to test the water before cracking the partial privatisation of Air Malta. A couple of days ago he was quoted saying “‘We will do for Air Malta what we did for Enemalta”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140429/local/good-news-to-benefit-families-business-to-be-announced-tomorrow-muscat.516971
He soon realised that cracking the news at this point would generate bad press and jeopardise MLP’s MEP campaign.
Totally agree. Something went amiss. All that hype was not for the breadcrumbs in the fuel prices.
Poor feedback, probably, and conflicts. Joe Muscat’s warped explanation to the question regarding the comparison between Enemalta and Air Malta is, to say the least, very unconvincing.
He looked very uncomfortable.
But the subject will be with us again after the 24th May. Rest assured. And by the way, do not hesitate to have a look at the in-flight magazine of Air Malta for feasibility studies and economics.
One of the plausible explanations.
Agree with you 100%
The PM is in a panic mode ahead of the European Parliament elections.
Hallina, Guz.
If I were unemployed I would tell him to shove his two cents up where the sun don’t shine.
For people out of work, this means nothing because they do not consume much petrol anyway. They probably don’t even have a car. What those 8,000 unemployed want is a job and not two cents off petrol.
The average household uses one gas cylinder every four or five months for cooking and won’t be using any for heating for the next seven months. So what we’ve got here is a saving of one cent a day. And Muscat called a press conference about it.
People were expecting the PM to announce a major project which CREATES JOBS. Not this.
Let’s put things in perspective:
1. price of petrol reduced by 2 cents;
2. price of gas reduced by 1.30 euro until end September;
3. price of diesel to stay the same until December.
It is a positive thing to get a break from hikes in the prices of fuel, and that is as good as one can believe it to be, depending on how truthful such news is.
In all probability, we are missing Joey’s trick here.
With this staged big news, given at an urgent press conference, I suspect they are masking from the public the ever declining international oil prices, and are not being transparent about some kind of deal they must have struck, which would in reality have saved the consumers much more than 2c on petrol and nothing on diesel from present prices, if the savings were passed on to the consumer month after month.
A window of opportunity is seized, and a new hidden tax introduced, but only the ‘big’ deceitful news told. That is the most likely scenario which Muscat’s government is hiding from the public.
Since this is a business minded government, which thinks that doing business means being deceitful. Unfortunately this would be another lie, welcomed so gracefully as a no increase in fuel prices until end of year. Some investigative journalism can be spent finding out more about this.
Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be like this and more so as we get nearer to the European Parliament election.
The PL government is failing on all fronts. PN gains over PL candidates in the EP election will edge Muscat further down the slippery slope.
Muscat is in a state of panic. The all-fart, no-shit, urgent media conference called today is clear evidence of that.
Fourteen months after coming into power Muscat still has nothing tangible to offer.
The scraping sound emanating from the bottom of the barrel is deafening.
The only visible change in Muscat’s fourteen months in power is his ever-expanding girth.
… and ever-receding hairline.
KMB’s centezmu on a can of tuna results more than Muscat’s two euro cents on a litre of petlor.
And Muscat’s nowhere near KMB’s panache in dishing out giopps mal-gvern.
Not to worry. I’ll start having petrol and mayo sandwiches now.
Mayo is Amelican impeliaristic ploduct, degenelative foh wohker.
It’s petrol toast at Cordina’s then.
Well, that was anti-climactic.
That being said, Muscat must either:
a) really believe us all to be the peasants in his little fiefdom, awaiting the crumbs from his generous banquet table; or
b) be testing the waters to tell us some really worrying news for us to digest.
Either way, he’s playing us for fools.
I don’t believe this is what he originally intended to announce.
He must have sensed public opinion’s horror at the thought of Air Malta being sold to China and thought he’d quell the rumours by announcing something else instead. The announcement on Air Malta will probably be made after the EP elections.
ahhh, ok so we call a press conference to advise all the world and its neighbours that petrol is down by 2c but when we had a cabinet reshuffle not only did we NOT talk to the press but we practically drove over them….
I agree that the real news is yet to come. Otherwise Malta is in the hands of ‘un gran boffone’
Classic British humour – and you all fell for it.
A red herring if there ever was one.
Does PM Muscat realise that an EU leader worth his/her salt would not even dream of calling an urgent press conference to announce decreases in the price of a number of goods or services, and more so by a few cents? Tal-biki.
What a bonanza! We’ll be saving 3 euros in petrol per month! Hurray!
However, comparing the “PN”-petrol prices with what they were two years ago is grossly unfair. These were the days when petrol was Europe-wide on a record high, we paid around 1.70 per litre in Germany.
And he may be making big business with his fixed price policy, as the oil price is going down everywhere else. In Germany petrol prices can change several times a day, depending on supply and demand.
For Muscat to boast about being the only European country that guarantees a fixed price on petrol is an insult to a free market economy and consumers.
How much will the real poor public transport users be saving?
Obviously a moron of epic proportions . Love it , and extremely effective at releasing pent up anger and frustration
“Obviously a moron of epic proportions ”
An acronym made in heaven for the Labour MEP campaign.
The NP needs to get its cartoonists on the job.
We all had a good laugh at work once the news was revealed, including Labour supporters who couldn’t believe this was the ‘Good News’.
Joseph tweeted that “hard work pays”. His actions tell us that being ‘tal-qalba” pays better.
This is really ‘Yes, Minister’ stuff. What a friggin’ joke!
I cannot Imagen this news and Konrad not around. He fits in perfectly. Bring on the last photo you published showing him in astonishment flattering with those ladies.
All hail the conquering hero. YIPPEE. Two cents? Crikey, that’s nearly as much as Sai Mizzi earns.
April fool jokes are supposed to be on the first of the month not at the end of the month.
Perhaps our Joey wants to start a new trend.
In the meantime, the PM has leased his personal car to himself, his wife has a state-paid car and chauffeur, and neither of them pays for either petrol or diesel.
Didn’t petrol go up 2 cents about 3 weeks ago?
Yes.
Do you remember Oscar Wilde’s The Remarkable Rocket?
http://www.online-literature.com/poe/179/
THIS is hard work? For God’s sake. He really has never worked in his life.
Whoever left, on the prime minister’s desk, that copy of the Economist with the ‘Enter the Clowns’ cover, in March last year, was so prescient.
I believe some Nair deal went wrong at the last minute and had to resort to such an announcement.
I think so too. Daphne and her network of spies, please keep digging!
I’m quite sure that there was something very significant to be announced but at the last minute there were second thoughts. The petrol and gas reduction is just the first thing that must have come to mind to fill the void.
I have a strong feeling that we have just been spared some sort of disaster.
I have a hunch that the anticipation was revved up following the Chinese delegation’s visit on Monday, perhaps to communicate news on Air Malta’s take over/privatisation (call it what you will), but which eventually fell flat for some reason.
The EU has invested money in the restructuring of Air Malta and it was not going to sit down and see its money going down to somebody else’s advantage.
That is why on this issue the PM said that the EU restructuring exercise has to be exhausted before a decision on selling Air Malta can be taken.
If I were a journalist attending this press conference, I would have asked the PM if this was the big news he had been referring to these past days.
Perhaps the big news is still to come. Or maybe it just fell through.
I have a strong feeling that he did mean to announce something else – but it fell through at the eleventh hour and had to announce something else. Surely the Prime Minister does not think that he can buy our vote for 2c less in petrol.
For a government formed by a bunch of deficient amateurs this is BIG IMPORTANT NEWS.
But than, Smart City project was dubbed as a property speculation device.
What probably not many have realised is that the reduction of 2 cents on unleaded petrol is NOT effective immediately but from July – i.e. in two months’ time.
You are so right, Alf. Deceit after deceit after deceit. Just imagine those who went to the pump today and had a bigger disappointment. Ha Ha
I definitely think that this is a last minute cover-up attempt for the real big news: the sale of Air Malta to China, which was blocked by the European Commission.