The price of silence, or thanks for unknown services rendered?
The Sunday Times has finally succeeded in obtaining a copy of the government’s contract with Lou Bondi, after filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act and pursuing it in the face of delays and obstacles.
And it reports that Bondi is being paid fees of Eur4,500 a month (that’s Eur54,000 a year) plus Eur8,240 (God knows how they reached that strange figure) to cover his ‘operational expenditure’.
He has to work 40 hours a week (but does so at home and not in any office) and his job description is “strategic communications consultant with the Foundation for National Festivities”. His terms of reference are “to supervise the creation, organisation, direction and execution of the national celebrations”.
Those ‘national celebrations’ will be over this year, but – get this – The Sunday Times reports that “the government has decided to give Mr Bondi the option to renew his contract when it expires”.
Isn’t it supposed to be the other way round? The person or entity who commissions the work and pays for it decides whether to renew the contract or not, and not the person who has been engaged to provide the work against payment.
To paraphrase Labour’s billboard woman Ramona Frendo, Eur54,000 a year plus Eur8,240 in ‘operating expenses’ are ahjar minn daqqa ta’ ponn and there is no reason on earth why Bondi will not choose to renew his contract and keep receiving the money, possibly until the end of this government’s term of office, by which time he will have pulled in Eur270,000 in fees from the man he spent years pretending to mock, dislike and mistrust – and Eur41,200 in operating expenses, of course.
Given that the man who for the last 20 years has covered, debated and discussed (out of genuine interest) every conceivable current affairs issue has for the last year been plastering his Facebook profile with nothing but pictures of guitars, his late-life baby, music CDs, concert information and links to obscure tracks, we can conclude that Eur54,000 a year in fees and Eur8,240 in operational expenses is the price of silence.
“I no longer do journalism,” he said once when challenged – I can’t remember whether it was on Facebook. When the EP election result had just been announced and everybody was talking about nothing else that Sunday afternoon, he uploaded a link to a music video with the suggestion that we enjoy it with a glass of wine. It was a message from a parallel universe but he probably wondered why he only got two Likes.
Well, most people don’t ‘do’ journalism either, but it doesn’t stop them discussing on Facebook current affairs, politics, policies and anything that happens to be in the news, and posting links to news stories or commentary that their Facebook friends might find interesting.
If this is what ordinary people do – housewives and office clerks and store managers – then how hard it is to believe that somebody who worked in television journalism for more than two decades suddenly presses an ‘off’ switch in his brain and reprogrammes it to be interested only in guitars and his latest child.
Am I shocked or disgusted at how a once-dear friend has accepted to dance at the end of Joseph Muscat’s leash for Eur54,000 a year plus Eur8,240 in operational expenses? No, but I am mortally disappointed.
The loss of a long-time friend through disillusionment and lack of trust is difficult, made more difficult still by the incipient feeling that lines of communication with Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri must have been open well beforehand for this offer to have been made so quickly and with such confidence just a few weeks after the general election.
How very sad.
It strikes me as sadder still that Lou Bondi himself must know that the government does not in fact require a circus ringmaster for the price of Eur54,000 a year and that he is in the same category as Labour campaign stars Willie Mangion, given a salary to hunt for garages for bands to perform in, and Frederick Testa, given a salary to ‘choose drama’ for TVM. And yet he does it. How humiliating is that.
Or maybe he is blinded to the fact that his services are quite unnecessary and that it is his silence and not his services which has been bought, caught up as he is in the excitement of being paid money to live out his alter ego of rock impresario and meet Brian May, all at the taxpayers’ expense.
As Juvenal wrote of the cyclical change in Roman society two thousand years ago: “…People…now restrain themselves and anxiously hope for just two things: bread and circuses.”
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What a w**ker this guy is.
A cheap one to boot.
It is more expensive than cheap in this case – for the taxpayer that is.
But Mr Bondi spent the previous 5 years on inquisition mode for everything that could be attributable to GonziPN, and now? Guitars, concerts, etc. How convenient! How telling!
Prime Minister Gonzi was running the government while Joseph Muscat was busy running the country through these type of arrangements within PBS, MEPA, newspapers, radio stations, government entities, etc. anything that could create discontent and shed bad light on the PN government.
Coupled with a daunting marketing and media machine, it worked, and it worked big time.
Everybody has a price and this government saw right through Bondi’s veneer of self-righteousness and pomp and threw all the silver his grubby little hands could clutch. Always thought he was full of it.
His lame TV red trouser braces were the tip-off that he was “full of it”.
The man drives a Mini, enough said.
Sorry to say this, Daphne, but you were once friends with a well-tanned weasel.
Gakbin bil-pedigree.
Robert Musumeci’s den has done wonders for the Labour Party. Bondi was the last skittle in that den to go down. He is Bondi’s architect in the redesign of his Gharghur home.
This kind of behaviour points to some secret brotherhood.
Musumeci’s blog written months ago – I thought it strange at the time! Now it makes a lot of sense.
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20130620-bondi
At the same time the new gurnalisti fuq kollox of TVM give a helping hand to Norman Lowell’s coming hate campaign: http://www.tvm.com.mt/news/terroristi-tal-al-qaeda-fost-l-immigranti-irregolari/
Episode 54, shall we say? Read this Bondi post for an irony packed piece.
Who’s the elusive Big(?) Foot now?
http://loubondi.blogspot.com/2011/08/dynasty-of-pn-defectors-episode-five.html
This whole scenario of Lou Bondi has still not convinced me. I am still uncertain who is controlling who in this equation. Is it Lou bondi who is being held at ransom, to keep his mouth shut (journalism) or does Joseph Muscat have something to hide that Lou Bondi is aware of?
Or does Joseph Muscat know something about Lou Bondi and is controlling him in this manner. I believe the truth will emerge eventually.
You have to compare the Lou Bondi with Norman Vella. The PL government tackled them differently. PL wanted to shut up both of them. They could have tackled them both the Norman Vella way.
Failure to treat Bondi like Vella must be linked to something Bondi did or did not do. Avoiding certain questions during his programmes prior to election 2013, maybe ? I personally always had the feeling that during Bondi+, Lou always tended to help his guests from getting out of embarrassing situations they put themselves into.
Case in point ? Any journalist, let alone someone with Lou Bondi’s experience, would have literally cruxified Karmenu Vella during this interview.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PTf7Jj2-fNY
In this particular interview, it was more like an pre-agreed set of question and answer exercise.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dOReiUUrS8g
With hindsight, one can even suspect that the thanks for services rendered was already promised at that point.
I don’t think it’s anything to do with Bondi or Vella’s editorial line. They were both quite harmless to the then Labour opposition.
The real reason for Bondì’s five-star treatment is that he is a major nodal point in the cognitive space. He is an opinion-maker, and would have carried a lot of weight even with the core voters, let alone the switchers.
Norman Vella, in this respect, was rather a latecomer to the game and a lightweight, and his editorial slant was of not much consequence.
Exactly, and now they have not only rendered him silent but most importantly they have subdued him to a point where he no longer carries any credibility.
Were the MLP even to discharge him even today he has been rendered a non-entity journalistically speaking.
Personally I feel this is a very high price to pay for a mere 60,000 odd euro for as long as it may last.
Surely one’s pride, even Lou’s, should come at a much higher cost than that.
He is not as lightweight as all that.
Norman Vella speaks their language. He is the one they would like to silence but can’t. He actually speaks out.
I think he deserves a level of respect that can and should grow in relation to the effort he now puts in.
I think there is much more that Norman Vella could be doing, but he would be stronger if he gave up his current job, and that is not an easy decision to make.
It is not easy to be in his shoes where every movement forward is criticised and not appreciative of the effort it entailed and the very real dangers encountered.
Norman needs to create for himself the right media space to flourish. The next step for him would be to become more autonomous in his approach and not depend on others to pave the way.
It is no use speaking double-Dutch to people who won’t listen to it, but speaking their language is sure to hit home with a large percentage.
Norman’s revival would be another Achilles heel moment for the LP.
Structure, insight, preparation and focus is where he should go.
Norman Vella doesn’t speak the sophisticated switchers’ language.
He couldn’t even dent Labour’s majority.
Tell me Baxxter, do you think what you call “sophisticated switchers” – I would just drop the sophisticated bit – would listen to anything other than the sound of 2 euro cent bits dropping into their accounts?
There is a process of transfer that needs to take place and Norman Vella is part of that process. It is not all or nothing: there is the flint, the spark, the fire, the cinders etc.
He would form part and not all of that process.
An important part. I am convinced of it. But first he needs to bare his teeth and sound his jungle call.
Less PC temperance.
I think the best option for Norman Vella would be to take up an MEP assistant’s post in Brussels, while moonlighting as a columnist for one of the Nationalist Party papers.
I cannot understand why he’s been made out to be some kind of anti-Labour hero. He spent the best part of five years doing cabaret TV alongside that idiotic Joe Azzopardi. That is not to say that Norman Vella is an idiot, but he followed the general editorial line and the lowest-common-denominator approach. When he got his own programme, he let the Xarabank stunts mar what might have been a fairly decent talk show.
In the end, Norman Vella’s credibility as a hard-hitting journalist was ruined by his Malteseness, which puts smiles and congeniality before everything else. Perhaps he’ll change, but it’s rather too late now.
It’s not too late if his grinta hardens and shapes.
A case of who dares wins.
He would be lost in Brussels. That is the only reason I didn’t vote for him to go there.
I think he is of more value here.
I am waiting for his hard-hitting documentary type series asking all sorts of intelligent questions. I think he has what it takes.
This wallowing in self pity image that has been allowed to happen doesn’t suit him though. The sooner he sheds himself of it, the better.
Attack. Plan. Attack. PUBLISH.
He has no need to defend any of his actions.
I’m sure you have been in situations where before you could shed a crust you had to allow it to dry, instead of picking it whilst the new skin was still raw?
What can I say about Lou Bondi.
While we were in Malta fighting for democracy and suffering for it, Lou was tucked safely elsewhere only to surface well after the last ‘raiders past’ warning was sounded but that’s not on his bio, naturally.
Apart from that ‘Hitler’ advert stupidity he produced for the PN he was a good journalist while he lasted but what he has done now has washed that all away in my opinion.
‘Easy come, easy go’ is probably the least offensive yet sufficiently appropriate expression I can think of in the circumstances although I could say more.
Lou was a consul here in Toronto at that time.
So?
Shall we laugh or cry at Malta Today? Nothing about Lou Bondi, but they are carrying this news item about Gonzi’s aide. Somehow Malta Today still hasn’t realised that Gonzi is no longer prime minister or even Opposition leader.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/39752/salary_details_of_gonzi_aide_tabled_in_parliament#.U5R469oaySM
When you are under attack on one front (Bondi’), open another front and attack (Camilleri). Diversion of attention fully successful. It is similar to the tu quoque retorts.
Saviour Balzan can’t stand Alan Camilleri. And with Balzan, these things tend to be personal.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/39786/when_the_price_is_right#.U5WBqssaySM
“The loss of a long-time friend …still by the incipient feeling that lines of communication with Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri must have been open well beforehand for this offer to have been made so quickly and with such confidence just a few weeks after the general election.”
He helped Joe Muscat with the (1) ‘blokka silg’ heresy and (2) Louis Grech’s declaration that the utility prices could not be lowered.
He never challenged either of them on his programme. Who does not remember Joe Muscat casually throwing the phrase ‘blokka silg’ and not challenged there and then.
He also never played the recording or challenged Louis Grech about his declaration that prices can not be lowered.
These are instances that can be checked.
Yes the silence started somewhere there, before the general elections.
I for one am not surprised. In the end people put their hands in their pockets and check what’s good for them. I always admired his clever questions, but sadly admit that money talks.
What clever questions?
Bondi could hardly ever see beyond the answer to his questions. He asked the questions with the enthusiasm of “I’ll surely nail him with this” and then immediately run out of steam when the answer was not what he expected.
If he were a chess player his king would be very badly bruised. He was often so lost for words and intelligent arguments that he would end up squabbling with his guest and even threatened with libel action.
He was full of bull, especially at the time when he thought he was the Larry King of Maltese journalism and donned those silly straps.
Lou Bondi and Joseph Muscat have exactly the same attitude towards money.
On the contrary, money silences
Mintoff used to force people into silence by intimidating them, physically and morally. Muscat offers them money (other people’s money, as it happens).
Mintoff chose intimidation because he himself was a notorious physical coward and highly susceptible to coercion. It was a weak spot of his.
Muscat, on the other hand, buys people with money. So, what does this tell us about him?
Muscat flirts with them, too.
Nothing, he has the power to do so, the balls are in his hands so to speak. It’s the recipients’ lack of dignity that is worrying.
These people have no backbone and lick anybody’s ass for money. Sad indeed.
Lou Bondi is one person I never quite trusted, with his small stature, out of proportion self-esteem, and loud mouth. Another attention-seeking little man.
‘Mintoff chose intimidation because he himself was a notorious physical coward.’
He chose intimidation over buying people because he was an absolute miser and lived under the impression that the ‘kaxxa ta’ Malta’ was Malta’s dowry and his by right.
http://www.independent.com.mt/mobile/2004-09-05/news/of-fools-and-idiots-68339/
How times do change
OK, well I expect some flak for saying this but I think you should give Bondi a break. In the end, he is quite simply a man who got used to living a certain lifestyle with a certain income from his shares in Where’s Everybody, from which he was effectively made redundant.
There are no other outlets for him in the media so he has found employment in another field.
[Daphne – You appear to be unaware that Lou Bondi did not only ‘do journalism’ but also public relations and other consultancy for a number of private and commercial clients and the occasional state entity, and that Where’s Everybody did not only produce television shows but also organised conferences, events, media activities and more in related sectors. Bondi did not need his television show to live off. Nor does he now need a salary from the prime minister. He still has a string of private clients for whom he consults, among them Silvio Debono of Hard Rock Cafe/Seabank, a major ‘switcher’ in the last general election who has for years hung about with the Robert Musumeci/Consuelo Herrera Super One crowd. Bondi can live off their retainers alone. The point here is that without his links to the political parties he is of little or no use to them because what his clients need is not so much his advice but what they imagine is his network of influential contacts. By working for the prime minister and making it clear to the nation that he is a hot favourite of the PM (the PM helps him in this by mentioning him repeatedly), he becomes an ace contact for people like Debono and others who pay him consultancy fees or retainers. Up until his links to the prime minister became obvious, Bondi also played up his closeness to Simon Busuttil, to impress the fact on his clients. At this stage, he must have worked out that burning bridges with the Nationalist Party will not lose him any clients because those clients are thinking in terms of a 10-year Labour hegemony, by the end of which Bondi will be almost 70 and out of the game anyway.]
I personally don’t think a deal was done to silence Bondi per se. I think it is obvious that Joseph Muscat has a rapport and possibly something of a friendship with Bondi but is unable to resist the clamour within his own party to have him taken off TV.
To be honest, I sort of understand that clamour as Bondi’s journalism has always been more sympathetic to the PN which, given the fact that they were in government while he was engaged by PBS, is pretty inexcusable.
To say that he is selling out his principles by working for a Labour government is an admission that his journalism was slanted towards the PN government. If he had really been an impartial journalist (as befitting his position on state media) then there would be nothing to sell out.
[Daphne – Your argument is irrational. Lou Bondi never worked for any Nationalist government and he lost his job at the Nationalist Party in 1996, almost two decades ago. He produced a television show for PBS, which at the time didn’t bother about the way people voted, which is why diehard Laburisti-from-childhood like Moira Delia featured prominently. NOW he is working for the government. In other words, he has gone from a non-political role to a highly politicised one as a direct employee of the Office of the Prime Minister, working for the PM himself, after having spent the last few years mocking him and tearing him to shreds in private while – it now so obvious – sucking up to him in private and going easy on him on television. His political choices are his own, as are those of all of us – but this is not about politics. This is about somebody who cannot be trusted. Watching him take a job from the man he bitched about, many people are now wondering whether he is doing the same in reverse, and bitching and ratting on them with the PM.]
Buying Bondi’s silence is neither here nor there – he doesn’t have a national TV programme to be silent or otherwise on. Sure, he has a Facebook page (don’t we all?) but when you are employed by the government it is a bit impolitic to criticise the government.
[Daphne – Yes. That is exactly the point. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why it’s ‘buying silence’.]
We all have to bite our tongues about our employers in public, except for those of us lucky enough not to have employers. Has he sold out his principles? Yes, but in the real world principles don’t put food on the table (or guitars on the wall, in his case).
[Daphne – As I have explained in another comment elsewhere on this thread, Bondi has a sizeable income from consultancy work which he has always kept very quiet about lest it affect the general perception he liked to cultivate that he was purely a journalist. He does not need a state salary on top of that. He has nobody to support beyond himself and half a baby. The mother of his latest baby works full-time and supports herself and the other half of the baby, and his other three daughters are adults who don’t even live in Malta.]
Of course I don’t admire him for the compromise he has made but I am not in his position and, if I am honest, I have had to make compromises in my life too. He is one of the survivors in the alligator swamp of Maltese politics. I guess for that you have to give him a little credit.
[Daphne – That’s corrupt thinking. The people to whom I give credit are those who survive under their own steam, whatever it takes. And by ‘their own steam’ I don’t mean hitching their bandwagon to an easy ride on the gravy-train provided by the very person who has spent the previous five years viciously stabbing and trying to destroy (at times with success) your supposed closest friends, colleagues and allies. That’s the decision of a knave. The stupidest thing about his behaviour is that he has given Muscat, who has insight into human nature and a firm grasp on the Achilles’s heels of individuals, his price. And Muscat will proceed to use that accordingly.]
Daphne, I don’t think you should give up on your friendship with Bondi because he has had to take difficult real life decisions which go against your politics. He has done nothing personal against you so why take his choice of job personally?
[Daphne – Being friends with somebody you can’t trust in conversation or other ways is suicide. This may be difficult for you to understand if you have a normal life and think friendship is just meeting for a chat to talk about the news and the weather with no concern as to whether the other person is using an iPhone to record or logging what you are saying for future use in another context. For people in my position (and for that matter, in his), lack of trust is a major, key issue. That’s why people in certain positions/roles have lots of acquaintances but almost no friends. At this point, I think it is safe to say that neither of us wants the other as a friend and he has the intelligence to understand that friendship isn’t possible. I am not the sort to sit around with people who are supposed to be friends, watching what I say lest it be used against me or against my real friends, though I am well aware that some of his other friends have no problem doing just that.]
You are lucky enough not to have an employer as such. You will never understand how much! Have some empathy for the rest of us.
[Daphne – The last time Lou Bondi had an employer, it was 1996. Ever since then, he has run his own business with partners, living off the profit from shares with his income for consultancy work and television show-host fees over and above that. He is still self-employed today. That contract The Sunday Times published yesterday is not a contract of employment but a contract of engagement for 40 hours of consultancy work every week. He is still doing other consultancy work for other clients. As for your other comment, how little you know. People who don’t ‘have an employer’ generally have several ’employers’ and what’s worse, they have no restrictions on working hours either.]
Before anyone asks, I am not Lou Bondi and nor do I know him. I am just trying to look at this objectively.
Dear Ms. You Know Who,
Would you like a high-paying job proof reading government/governing-party correspondence? Of course, it is expected that such a commitment wouldn’t leave any time for blogging.
Sincerely,
A Friend
Again I am confused about all this.
Lou Bondi was offered a job and he accepted it.
Is he capable of doing the job, I believe he is.
So what’s the problem?
We seem to always put a political spin to everything and anything in Malta.
Here in Toronto when I need to recruit people for the business I look at their qualifications not their political affiliation.
Grow up Malta and get with it.
[Daphne – Rrecruiting people in the normal course of events for your business, Dennis, is not the same thing as creating a job which your business does not need, for a crony or your mistress. At least with your business you’re paying for it yourself, so would probably think twice about doing that and even so, it’s your money and you can do what you like with it. If you have shareholders, however, they might ask you some difficult questions about why you have given a salary to somebody to sit at home organising ‘entertainment for the troops’. That, and not Bondi’s competence, is the issue here. The job is completely unnecessary and very much akin to something you might have found in a royal court 300 years ago – a grace and favour position with a retainer. And it has been created specifically as a reason to give Bondi a salary, for either one of the two reasons in my blog-post title, or both of them. He was given a job offer immediately by the incoming government, directly by the prime minister. It was a job on Valletta 18. He accepted, but the job couldn’t go through because Jason Micallef blocked it. Another job then had to be found for him, at the same salary offer, but there wasn’t one so they had to invent it. Unlike you, I know the background, apart from the context.]
I have one question for Dennis Cirigottis: Exactly how much wool is there between your ears?
Be specific please Roberta
Get to the point if you can
As much wool as there is between your eyes I guess
It always struck me the way Joseph Muscat looked very confident and completely at ease when he appeared on Bondi+ for ‘grilling’ in the last couple of years before the general election. It was like watching a chat over lunch between two mates ribbing each other.
Well, this is one story The Malta Independent was never going to chase. Who’s in charge of its newsroom? Rachel Attard.
And that’s already an untenable situation. What does she do when her newspaper is investigating a big story about the government or one of its ministers – keep her mouth shut in bed and at the supper-table?
Or tell the man with whom she shares both, who works for the prime minister for 54,000 euros a year?
This is not so much a matter of conflict of interest as a matter of trust issues.
That’s what I thought and still think.
Lou Bondi, and ex-Communist, used to say that he longed to the day when he could vote Labour.
Marisa Micallef used to say that she voted Labour (Tony Blair) when living in the UK and she would have loved to do that again in her lifetime.
Enough said, and yet the PN never saw this coming. They still have some cleaning to do inside their headquarters.
Labour in UK and Malta are no longer socialist. Blair only got elected because he ditched socialism.
‘They still have some cleaning to do inside their headquarters.’
That’s what I’ve been saying all along.
Simon Busuttil has to ensure that the one who pats him on the back is not also holding a knife.
Perhaps The Sunday Circle will now feature Lou and Rachel relaxing with the over-exposed Clara in their stylish new home: refit by Robert Musumeci and furniture and furnishings by Mrs Keith ‘PM chief of staff’ Schembri at Loft.
Bondi will be retiring in Canada when this circus moves out of town.
Unless he joins Norman Lowell.
Putting it in short and simple terms some people were just paid to keep their mouths shut and Lou Bondi is one of them.
Huti Maltin, qed nithajjar nigi lura Malta u niftah club.
Prerequisite ghal membri – preferibiliment qosra u jahxu minn taht (smajt li hemm hafna Malta).
U kif hawn hafna minn dawk – u mhux klabb wiehed tiftah imma eluf – u nasal nghidlek li taqlibha lill-kazini tal-festi, tal-baned, tal-loghob, ecc, ecc, ecc.
On Bondi+, Joseph Muscat told Lou Bondi that he’ll find a way how to get him to vote Labour in the future or something along those lines. Lou’s answer was “Eh mhux hekk tghid”.
I’ve been looking for this clip for a long time. Any help anyone?
I have been searching for that clip too. Not sure it exists anymore because the ‘most recent’ clip on the Bondiplus Youtube channel is dated 12 March 2010.
The very end of this clip says more or less what you are referring to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5ktH17A5d0
Incidentally this interview with Joseph Muscat on Bondiplus was aired 31 March 2008 in the run-up to the MLP Leadership Race
That’s how long the rot had set in.
[Daphne – The only thing I see in this interview is that Joseph Muscat would be unrecognisable now to anyone who hadn’t seen him since then. It’s truly incredible how dramatically he’s aged in just six years.]
I never thought Bondi was worth very much anyway.
But to sell yourself lock, stock and barrel for fifty thousand euros is downright pathetic.
You call it ‘the price of silence’. I’d call it the price of public humiliation.
60k per annum – the wage of a decent middle manager.
What did the prime minister get for that money?
1. He discredited Lou Bondi.
2. He discredited all that Lou Bondi stood for.
3. He discredited the journalism profession and the motivation of those who criticise his policies.
4. He put Lou Bondi at par with Jason Micallef (remember that Xarabank a few weeks ago – Muscat must have enjoyed it with a glass of wine).
There must be more to it. Even from a financial perspective 60k is just too little.
Muscat discredited journalism as a profession when he took it up himself.
Everyone has a price.
This government is a symbol of how corrupt the Maltese have become. Everyone and everything is for sale.
well said Daphne this man is what we call in maltese MEJJET BIL GUH u l iktar gakbin ta Malta
Hekk hu, mejjet bil-guh, u tajjeb jiftikar is-Sur Bondi li kollox warajh se jhalli. Izjed ma jkollok, izjed jiddispjacik li m’inti se tiehu xejn.
They say that money can’t buy you love. But it sure can buy your principles and your values.
How sad.
I started smelling a rat when he took a decision to stop his online blog abruptly, without any clear reason. I think it was then when things started.
I share your disappointment. I thought much better of him.
[Daphne – It was PBS that asked him to stop the blog.]
That’s what he told you. I agree with Mr. Hewitt.
One of the authors that Lou used to discuss as a lecturer in sociology at the university of Malta was Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and social scientist. One of his earliest works, my personal favourite, is called Madness and Civilisation.
In the chapter Stultifera Navis (ship of fools) Foucault discusses how in the 15 th century these ships were not only used to extradite the mad but they were used to repress ideas and literature.
Lou should thank his lucky stars. If we were still living in the Middle Ages that is where muscat would have him.
60k – Muscat’s ship of fools.
A bit of a Richard Rich, this Bondi.
If I had to remove myself from the prevailing sense of disappointment and disgust and look at this from the outside, I would think it’s genius.
Joseph Muscat is not a stupid man (or his advisors are particularly shrewd). He knew that Where’s Everybody would be major critics of his movement and in another world there would be entire programmes focussing on the selling of passports, gas tankers berthed in picturesque bays, and others tip-toeing out of Grand Harbour unnoticed by our national security, which is busy guarding people in flats in Xemxija instead.
They would spend hours discussing oil procurement, undisclosed contracts, party salaries and the harbouring of Libyan big cheeses in need of round-the-clock armed guards. They would have a wealth of material.
So how can he cull these people? He saw that his predecessor’s hysterical screams to gag the Azzopardi/Bondi combo and boycott Where’s Everybody were ineffectual, so he did the next best thing. He couldn’t just take Xarabank off the air because that wouldn’t have been liberal or progressive, so he clipped its wings instead. Now resembles a bad imitation of The Maury Povich Show with a list of sponsors.
And he bought out Lou Bondi.
He offered the Gozitan a plump package to do very little indeed, bought his silence, plus there is the added bonus that Muscat can (and does) wave the Bondi name as an example of how meritocratic the PL is.
And the rabble bought it and cheered their leader on.
“He knew that Where’s Everybody would be major critics of his movement”
Who’s to say that from the original set onwards this show wasn’t put together, by these partners – visible or not – for the final cushioning?
I see one direct line of involvement that isn’t very visible and that leads directly back to Nair.
So many threads leading right back to source.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/comment/blogs/39786/when_the_price_is_right#.U5VnuXKSySp
I feel you’ve been rather kind in your analysis , but then again your friendship was a strong one.
I wonder what Noel Buttigieg Scicluna has to say about all this? I once heard them deep in conversation cutting Joseph Muscat to pieces just a few months before March 2013.
Lou has done his homework: 10 years of Labour rule after which he’ll be pushing 70. So what the ‘hack’ (same as that rat Peppi).
This really makes one understand why deserters were always shot at sunrise, as opposed to the enemy, who was simply imprisoned.
How sad, how very sad indeed.
I actually wonder who he voted for now. What a low-life. Well, another one bits the dust there.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-06-09/news/john-bundy-refused-top-position-at-pbsto-stick-to-word-given-to-muscat-5393514496/
I will never speak to him again for as long as I live.
There is one simple sentence (italian) that describes best Lou Bondi and other people of his ilk: L’apparenza inganna.
I don’t agree with many comments vilifying Lou Bondi.
Let’s put things into perspective: for many years Lou had been a torn in PL’s side. Sometimes he was also a torn in PN’s side but more often then no he was finding fault in PL. the PN might have given him as the maltese say “palata” with prime time on national tv etc but he had to work hard to achieve what he got. The PN did not give him a cushy job… the most they gave him a cushy means.
The 2013 election revealed many traits in Maltese perception and way of thinking but mostly it has shown – and this came clear even before the results were out – that the people do not care about the national economy or our standard of living. No, those are taken for granted. They care if they got a job from the govt., if they got their road tarmacked or some other personal handout. First me and then the country: that’s the mentality.
When the majority of the population reasons that way, why would Lou Bondi reason otherwise? He just did like what the rest of the country did. L-ewwel jien umbaghad jien.
Don’t take me wrong, I am not agreeing with what he did and I condone it but I will not call him traitor or otherwise. He was given a choice: continue his hard work in a hostile environment or take up a good sum of money whilst enjoying parenthood and watching his daughter in her most tender years. After all children always grow up too fast!
Would I do the same if I had the opportunity? No.
[Daphne – Watching his daughters grow up in their tender years was not a priority with his other three daughters, and I don’t imagine it’s a priority with his fourth, unless he’s decided that having a fifth daughter with a fourth woman in his 60s or 70s is not going to be an option so this is his last chance at doing the decent thing. The worst thing you can do is romanticise or justify a situation like this. The fact is that the character traits and personal values which affect and shape a person’s decisions and behaviour in his private life are going to affect that same person’s decisions and behaviour in his public life and work. I thought that he was somehow an exception but that was stupid. Why on earth would he have been an exception?]
I think everyone thought he was different and his post election actions were a shock to most because they were not expected of the pre election Lou Bondi we thought we know.
You cannot know someone just by following that person on TV.
You can start to know someone when you know his/her past but even then it’s assumed judgement because on rare occasions circumstances can make people change for the better or the worse.
Sometimes you judge someone positively, especially during a particularly distressing moment because that person seems to stick up for your cause until you realise that that person was only feeding his ego.
In Lou Bondi’s case I think he was more or less an open book for those who took the trouble not to notice its cover.
I have known Lou for a number of years and his loyalty to his friends was his greatest characteristic. That is why this is so shocking and so disappointing to those us who knew him. So please, do stop trying to justify his actions.
I am not justifying Lou Bondi nor defending his action. What I’m saying is that I will not stoop to call him traitor just because he’s taking money to keep his mouth shut.
I wouldn’t do like him but I will not call him names.
[Daphne – I agree. He hasn’t worked for the Nationalist Party since 1996, so ‘traitor’ hardly comes into it.]
How wrong you are ZZ.
Cousin Austin fit him in heading AZAD upon his return from Canada whilst the then incumbent was unceremoniously removed.
[Daphne – ‘Cousin Austin’ has refused to speak to Lou for the last decade. Now I understand why.]
Maybe, but he didn’t become the public person he is just by getting a cushy job by the govt. Although the PN gave Lou the opportunities, it was he who made the most of them.
What’s that supposed to mean?
Baxxter, what I meant is that he worked hard to become the public person whilst herbie is proposing that he became what he was because the PN fit him there.
With regards to their principles Lou and ‘Cousin Austin’ are chalk and cheese, my friend.
As you always say, some traits remain there, whether in politics or otherwise.
Somehow I’m feeling bad for his lovely partner, Rachel. I wish to think she is different.
She definitely is different – she is loyal and true to herself. She is no mercenary and would rather starve than sell her values.
I once admired Lou Bondi and hardly ever missed one of his programmes but now I have no respect for him.
Guys, I think we should give Lou the benefit of the doubt.
After all, government is another client and there was no reason refuse. Why should he decline his consultancy services, when other people like Anton Attard decided to collaborate with this government?
Are we saying that Nationalists should decline work opportunities?
I see Lou’ s involvement positive for the PN since Labour supporters are furious.
I am sure he won’t go as far as to give a helping hand in Muscat’s 2018 campaign.
“Are we saying that Nationalists should decline work opportunities?”
If you do business with the mob knowing that they are the mob, then yes.
It seems that the current environment has got many entities out of their holes.
Only this week there was another glaring example, heading into the totally above-board, which has roots elsewhere.
No, government is not just another client. And this one certainly is in a class of its own.
Everyone is free to work for government, but that choice has a price.
Don’t be too sure about him not helping in Muscat’s 2018 campaign. The groundwork has already been laid. Why, do you imagine, there was all that palaver on 31st March with Muscat being position among the world’s best known freedom fighters Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela?
As with all else involving Muscat, that was a photo opportunity for the next campaign.
Anton Attard did not choose to collaborate with the government.
If ever you find me a ‘client’ who wants my consultancy services with the same conditions as those of Bondi, please let me know.
“After all, government is another client and there was no reason refuse.”
How wrong you are. There were a million reasons why he should have refused. Personal integrity was one of them.
For some reason I never took a liking to Lou Bondi’, it was just a gut feeling and I couldn’t put my finger on the actual reason. Finally I understand why. This is not about politics : I have several good friends from both parties with whom I speak very openly and many times agree to disagree but whom I still respect and trust through and through.
In Lou’s case its very sad to have someone publicly pretending to be a person of rigour and principle (his famous “gurnalizmu fuq kollox”), but privately being as slimy as they come.
I wouldn’t even have been concerned if he was a genuine Laburist and went Nat-bashing. But now he’s shown his true colours and he is really and truly one fake, self-centred bloke. It was never, “gurnalizmu”, or politics, or anything else. If ever there was any indication of this it’s how many wives he’s left for other women, despite all the children he’s left in his wake. Enough said.
54,000 euros is the price of a muzzle. The two things I find strange about this whole issue are: 1. how could you not see through this guy’s BS, and 2. how you counted him as one of your friends. I imagine you to be polar opposites.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
That erratic performance at your house on election day last year was his kiss of Judas.
First JPO then Lou Bondi. Know your blind spots when passions run high!
[Daphne – No, I’m afraid you’re completely wrong about the house on election eve. Completely wrong. I had two senior police officers at my gate with an arrest warrant, insisting on carting me off to Floriana HQ with full rights to keep me for 48 hours, which they could easily have abused. It came to me that the only way to stop it was to bring the television cameras in, and reporters. I rang everybody I could, including Lou. He immediately picked up on my distress, got hold of one of their cameramen who lived close by, and came over within minutes. There is no way he could have planned anything and no way on earth he could have predicted that I would phone and ask for cameras. I am grateful he did it because it put the police under the full glare of the cameras at a time when they were executing highly contentious and anti-Constitutional orders and I had no redress. It stopped them taking me to Floriana and made it impossible for them to keep me overnight – because by that time, the rest of the television cameras and the press had turned up too, something most people don’t know. As for JPO, there is no comparison. I never knew him at all before the 2008 election and he was never a friend, but only somebody who continuous telephone calls and hassles I put up with. Lou I’ve known since 1990, and he was certainly a friend, so much so that we never discussed anything to do with work.]
Actually Daphne I am disgusted. Lou always had a sanctimonious air about him. To realise that he was in actual fact ‘double dealing’ makes me sick in the pit of my stomach.
To those who may think that the ‘poor’ man has a baby to support and was out on a limb when the Labour government seized power – know that Lou had been guzzling at the trough for years. Where’s Everybody, used to get 60-70% of PBS’s entire budget on an annual basis and then it was ‘dwindled’ down to 50-55%. Bondi + alone, the cheapest form of TV, would earn about Eur100,000.
And as Daphne points out he was also raking it in from his own private consultancy work, and took a revenue share of all the advertising, filming, production and other commercial work that Where’s Everybody did for its clients.
So did he have to sell out because he was on the breadline? Most definitely not. Some of us wouldn’t sell out even then. I’d rather starve than do something like that.
He certainly didn’t lose any time in accepting a position from the Labour government, implying that the deal had been struck even before the elections.
With hindsight that explains Lou’s weak performance when questioning Joseph Muscat. Who can forget the friendly banter between the two when Muscat flirted with him. It was actually uncomfortable to watch, as though we shouldn’t have been in the room listening to a private exchange between two people. I couldn’t believe it as I watched. It was like watching someone throw biscuits to a puppy and making him roll over for the next one.
No wonder certain of his friends, like Daphne, feel betrayed. Those who don’t feel betrayed out of misplaced loyalty to the man, should.
Lou has proven that he is nothing but a mercenary. He had a price and Joseph Muscat knew exactly what that is. He now belongs to Joseph – make no mistake about that.
Quite frankly The Malta Independent should be careful about Rachel Attard in their newsroom. As much as I like/d her, she is compromised by her companion. The Malta Independent is by far becoming the newspaper to read, surpassing Times of Malta as far as I am concerned. However, it may lose its edge and the credibility it has earned recently because of this.
Rachel has far more integrity than Lou ever had. She may be naive but she’s a really good woman and I would never doubt her character. It’s her other half that’s the problem.
Opportunismu sfrenat.
Donnu li dan gens ta’ laqgha biss. Ommi Ma, jaqq xi dwejjaq ta’ pajjiz – jekk tista’ ssejjahlu hekk.
Joseph: “Lou, meta nitilghu ahna fil-Gvern il Where’s Everybody ser tispicca. L-anqas kwarta air-time ma naghtukom. U ghalfejn tmur taghmel programm fuq in-Net? Dawk l-anqas flus ma ghandhom biex ihallsuk. Jekk ikolli insaqsik ‘kemm taghmel profitt (fil-but) mill programmi tal WE – xi tghidli?'”
Lou: “Jien mal-hamsin elf netti indahhalhom”
Joseph: “Halli f’idi. Kif nitilghu naghtik kuntratt annwali ta dak l-ammont bil-patt u kundizzjoni li ma tersaqx lejn it-television u li ma taghtninix ‘hard time’ fuq il-programm qabel l-elezzjoni ta xahrejn ohra. X’tasheb?”
Lou: “Deal!”