Jason Micallef’s Palace Square pansies – check them out
A real infiorata in Noto, Sicily
Don’t bother going to Valletta to see Jason Micallef’s Eur55,000 (conservative estimate) ‘infiorata’. Unless you’re a member of the Kazin Malti and so able to use its balcony, or have access to the roof or upper windows of any of the surrounding buildings, the only proper view you’re going to get is via the webcam link below.
Unless he was misquoted by the press, Micallef had made a really big deal about this, saying that it had long been his dream to carpet the square with flowers. So when he quoted the estimated cost of Eur55,000 for pansies and the work involved, I thought he must be telling whoppers and hiding the true cost. You don’t get enough flowers, not even 50-cent pots of pansies as have been used here, to carpet the square for just that amount of money.
Now it turns out to be just a skimpy little pointless thing dwarfed by the rest of the square. And still it has used up 80,000 pots of pansies (the figure quoted in the press).
At eye level, which is how everybody is going to be seeing it bar the privileged few, it looks like a crowd of pots of pansies waiting to be sold.
And now we have to ask – exactly what is the point of this?
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http://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/malta/malta/valletta/st-george-square.html
EUR 55 000 = the yearly salaries of how many nurses and teachers?
Just 3.
Pansies on Pjazza San Gorg yet again…
THIS was his dream?
According to timesofmalta.com “It took 100 people 12 weeks, 14 trucks, 80,000 pots and a dose of good teamwork to create Malta’s largest carpet of flowers in St George’s Square, Valletta.”
So that’s 100 * 12 * 5 * 40 = 240,000 man hours
Not counting the cost of the trucks, the pots, the plants, the water, the soil, etc, the Eur55,000 estimate makes absolutely no sense!
If you divide Euro55,000 by 100 people = Euro550 each – for 3 months of work?
Or alternatively, divide Euro55,000 by 80,000 pots = 69c per pot (including the pot itself, the plant, the soil, the watering of it for 3 months, transporting it to Valletta, placing it, etc.). And that’s not counting any profit margins…
Nahseb nesa xi zero…
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140509/local/St-George-s-Square-carpeted-with-flowers.518245
Was Manuel Mallia the one who made the estimate? He must have lost a zero in the process.
It’s more like €500,000
240,000 man hours at say a miserable €4 per hour cost for the employer boils down to €960,000. Cost of running the machinery, water, fertiliser, pots and what-not.
That’s surely a €1,000,000 face cloth you’re looking at. I hope they will be planted and watered on our roundabouts and gardens.
[Daphne – Pansies are actually very cheap. They’re around one euro retail and those would have come wholesale. You could buy 80,000 pots of pansies at a bulk wholesale price for Eur55,000. The only labour costs you have to factor in after that are the transport and laying.]
Correction : 100 men * 12 weeks * 40 hours per week = 48,000 man hours
But we were told about the man hours weren’t we?
“It took 100 people 12 weeks” that boils down to 100X 12X 40 hours, that’s 48,000 man hours that’s a ridiculous €1.15 an hour.
A conservative estimate of an employee’s salary at ELC without profits would be somewhere in the range of €5 considering sick leave , uniforms , NI contributions ,machine breakdown and maintenance,insurance, bonuses, fuel and energy costs to mention a few.
48,000 X €5= a quarter of a million
I relied on 240,000 man hours of Sunshine which he probably meant Euros.
[Daphne – Yes, but the man-hours and production costs are included in the unit price of the pansies they routinely sell in their garden centres. The process is no different, and that unit cost is around a euro for much lower volumes produced. For such a high volume, the unit cost would be even lower, not higher.]
It seems that with this government mathematics has become a pleasant subject. It started with the first declaration of assets of the new ministers. It has not stopped since.
Alfred Sant had tried unsuccessfully to give it a boost in his time by his constant use of the calculator and giving percentage points to Local Councils. Now we have Jason Micallef’s infant-school estimates of his Flower dream.
I am rather curious to know:
a. Which Flower Nursery got the contract to plant and grow the pansies?
b. When was this contract signed?
c. Was this contract issued according to regulations?
d. How much was the contractor paid?
[Daphne – “The event will be carried out in collaboration with the Environmental Landscape Consortium. Unlike foreign infioritas, the Valletta one will use potted plants, not petals, ELC chairman Peter Calamatta said.” – http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140429/local/V-18-chief-s-plants-dream-comes-true.516883 ]
Yes Gahan, I meant Euros, apologies
Am I missing something?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140509/local/St-George-s-Square-carpeted-with-flowers.518245
We were told that this whole thing ” took 100 people 12 weeks, 14 trucks, 80,000 pots and a dose of good teamwork to create Malta’s largest carpet of flowers in St George’s Square, Valletta.”
I made my sums at €5 per man hour, the result is nowhere near €55,000.
If you need 100 workmen for that, I despair.
100 men for twelve weeks are expected to finish a block ot ten apartments from shell to the bloody pansies on the front terrace.
Mela tlaqna jew, vera gvern taghhom, imma issa zzejjed, dal-mitt haddiem x’ghamlu, qaghdu mal-fjuri ma jmurx jibzghu mid-dlam?
The point is that it’s Jason’s dream come true. He justified it by saying it’s sustainable. It isn’t. Pansies are not a natural part of Malta’s eco-system and they are seasonal, not perennial. Once they’ve been transferred to public gardens, those pansies will die, but Jason’s dream will live on forever.
Incidentally, one of Jason Micallef’s first actions as chairman of the V18 committee was to shed its artistic director because he wasn’t value for money at Eur50,000 a year. So we’ve shed Wayne Marshall for three days of pansies. You don’t get bargains like that at Lidl.
Ah I think he must be missing his golden days on TV!
Squandering of money is synonymous with this government.
Have the AFM guards been removed?
At least three AFM officers were deployed in full dress uiform at Michelle Muscat’s fashion show held in Villa Francia.
Nice carpet. Can I play with my dogs on it?
Dan il-hela kollha ta’ flus il-poplu biex imbaghad nibqaw minghajr pilloli ghax out-of-stock.
And the design is a bit….white.
I wouldn’t use that hideous thing as a doormat.
As for our hacks’ vocab, I thought “carpeted” meant just that. This is beauty-spotted at best.
Do you remember Wardakanta?
Take the Eurovision; reduce it over il-fjamma tal-helsien until it’s similar in texture to an ghanja tal-poplu, taking care however to maintain happy proletariat fruitiness.
Garnish generously with red carnations, sequined sweat pants and big perm and….voila’.
Serve with either a vintage Hamilton or a young Azzopardi. I find both carry white tasselled slip-ons rather well.
Yummy.
It sounds like a vanity project by a spoilt medieval prince. This story appears just above another that says Malta needs another 400 nurses.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140509/local/St-George-s-Square-carpeted-with-flowers.518245
It took 100 people 12 weeks, 14 trucks, 80,000 pots and a dose of good teamwork to create Malta’s largest carpet of flowers in St George’s Square, Valletta.
Interessanti nkunu nafu minn fejn inxtraw dawk il-pjanti kollha….
What was it he said, the biggest in Europe?
http://www.flowercarpet.be/
That’s not a carpet. That’s a rug.
a face cloth.
What a hullabaloo for nothing. The same thought passed through my mind when I saw the photo, since I had thought the whole square will be covered.
Imagine cabbies going by, ‘Ara dis biggest carpet by Jeysin you know?….’ clip clop clip clop.
As a result of recent events the square now deserves to have its name changed to Misrah il-Panzis.
I wonder where he ‘bought’ them from? Did all the florists have the opportunity to bid?
A direct order, maybe?
“It took 100 people 12 weeks, 14 trucks, 80,000 pots …..”
Is the president jumping around switching off lamps to save money?
What does she think about this cost?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140509/local/St-George-s-Square-carpeted-with-flowers.518245
Should I read anything into that pattern, or should I just wince?
I bet you the whole objective was for the Ms representing Muscat and Micallef to be present together on that mat.
Such would be the mindset. The cost and value (read impact/need) irrelevant.
That’s Kurt Farrugia’s idea of a large carpet. It’s all relative.
We know that Jason Micallef is not good at figures. We became aware of this in 2008, when he didn’t know the number of new voters.
Flower power era is back. As so are the various oldies – Sceberras Trigona, Joe Grima, Ronnie Pellegrini, Karmenu Vella (oh no, he’s always been there)
Thanks, Daphne. That these bloody amateurs learn something.
The Grand Place in Brussels
http://www.raileurope.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Brussels_Flower-carpet_-2-600×416.jpg
Will this unique crop circle be the closest thing to a capital project done by this government?
Which one of his former bosses at ELC did he want to pay back?
Lest we all forget he was a gardener. And one of his former managers at ELC is heading the civil service.