Why was Konrad Mizzi in Beijing, when Shanghai Electric is in Shanghai?

Published: October 14, 2014 at 11:23am

Those who are unaware of the vastness of China might see nothing wrong in that, but they’re a two-hour flight apart.

Posted this morning by La Redoute:

Konrad Mizzi spoke to the papers from Beijing, which is where Malta’s overpaid and totally unnecessary trade envoy, Sai Mizzi, lives with her and Konrad Mizzi’s children.

Shanghai Electric is based in Shanghai, which is where most of its business is – there, and in Jiangsu province, and in Marsaxlokk, literally half a world away.

Shanghai Electric is two hours away from Beijing by air, about the same distance between Malta and Milan. When business people in Milan wish to meet government representatives in Rome, they go to Rome.

Shanghai Electric is a corporation but it is owned by the People’s Republic of China.

If Konrad Mizzi was on business in Beijing, then it was government-to-government business, and we should know what that is.

We should also be told how often he flies to China to visit his family and at what expense to the tax payer. Ministers don’t take holiday leave, like ordinary employees do.

When Minister Mizzi travels to China, he does so in the taxpayer’s time and at the taxpayer’s expense.




43 Comments Comment

  1. canon says:

    Why is it that nowadays what the prime minister and his ministers say, we have to take it with a pinch of salt.

    • pablo says:

      This has to be shown on TV everyday for a week. Konman says here that every year of delay costs Enemalta (the people) Euro 178,000,000.

      So if, and I mean if, this plant is delayed by twelve months only (its going to be more) we have already lost more than we got for selling the most modern of our power plants, the BWSC, to Communist China. What a pack of chicken-brained liars.

      • pablo says:

        Again some rough figures. The domestic reduction 2013/14 is costing us 30 million (for 12 months), and no Minister has confirmed that this amount has been received from a private source.

        The BWSC power station, which is now part Chinese, saved us 50 million over the same period. The Prime Minister brags about Enemalta making an efficiency saving of 20 million over last year. Quick add and take away on one hand.

        Remember how everything was “costed”. Now industry is going to get a 25% subsidy from Enemalta without any reduction in the actual cost per unit.

        That is why the boy Prime Minister, without being asked, said yesterday that this will be done “without new taxes” – because he knows that people, even stupid people, slowly can come to realise that they are being duped into paying for his lies and false promises with present taxes.

    • Melissa says:

      “The whole thing will be ready by 2015. That is a fact.”

    • Ta'Sapienza says:

      What a breath of fresh air Mark Anthony Sammut is. Wasted on the Maltese electorate that elects the likes of Luciano Busuttil, Silvio Parnis, Clyde Puli and Robert Cutajar.

    • observer says:

      “Lil min sejrin jemmnu il-familji? Ghandhom risposta facli. Jemmnu liz-zewg ditti ta’ konsultenti”

      How utterly true to say. How horribly tragic to ignore – which our ‘familji’ did, and still do, in their thousands.

  2. Joe pace says:

    Isn’t it ironic, that if the power station is not finished by the 31st March next year and the Prime Minister would, as promised,hand his resignation letter on the same day as Freedom Day.

  3. Beingpressed says:

    Any potential leaders in the Labour Party?

    Loaded bases everywhere. There’s no chance anyone half descent defecting. They are all in his pocket.Who would run against him.

    Well calculated Mr Muscat. How to become a dictator in 2 years, prosit.

    Shame

  4. AE says:

    For all his innocent (and rather idiotic) looks Konrad Mizzi has turned out to be the biggest fake of them all. It would be interesting to know how much the Mizzi family are costing the taxpayer. Shame on you Minister.

  5. curious says:

    What is happening to our island? Why are people on the run finding refuge here?

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141014/local/wanted-englishman-arrested-in-gozo.539720

  6. matt says:

    Why don’t the PN media pursue this story?

  7. xifajk says:

    It-taxxi tal-Lejber.

    http://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/2014/10/14/joghlew-il-mizati-ghall-ezamijiet-tal-matsec.23235

    Student japplika ghal 10 O Levels ghandu 70 ewro aktar, altru milli 2c inqas fuq il-petrol!

    • Tabatha White says:

      Matsec territory is far down the Taghna lkoll sights for benefits but up there with the crowd control unit.

  8. spellingtheobvious says:

    Shanghai Electric have offices in Beijing…and Beijing is more reachable by plane.

    [Daphne – Cabinet ministers go to head office, not a sub-office. “Beijing is more reachable by plane”. Tragic. Why, do the planes to Shanghai run on gas and have wheels instead of wings? This is like saying that Paris is “more reachable by plane” than London. When I had to go to Shanghai I flew straight there from Frankfurt – exactly the same way you would fly to Beijing. The flight from Frankfurt to Beijing takes 10 hours and 10 minutes. The flight from Frankfurt to Shanghai takes 10 hours and 20 minutes. So you are telling me that Konrad Mizzi flew to Beijing and not Shanghai to save 10 precious minutes of his (our) time.]

  9. TROY says:

    Why doesn’t Tonio Fenech ask these questions?

    Fenech is the one always criticised by Konrad Mizzi over ‘waste of money’. This same Konrad with his famous attack on the then finance minister and his ‘SHAME ON YOU’ is now spending the taxpayers’ money for his own personal gain and leisure, and that of his absconded wife and children.

    Kif hadd ma jattakhom? Kif taht il-Labour kollox jghaddi?

    Fejn huma l-ex-ministri Nazzjonalisti?

    • xifajk says:

      Troy – my understanding is that the party administration is pushing them aside, so as to appear ‘new’. Pity, I still think Tonio Fenech used to trash Konrad in every debate.

  10. Arnold Layne says:

    I don’t understand why everybody is so blase’ about the PM not resigning. This is very serious.

    Alfred Sant stuck to his word when he lost a vote which he alone considered a vote of confidence.

    Why should Joseph Muscat be allowed to get away with it?

    His resignation would not trigger an election, but simply a leadership change in the MLP.

    The winner of that contest would still be expected to command a parliamentary majority so there would be no need to go to the polls.

    He should be hounded about this every minute of every day until he does the only honourable thing possible. We know he’s not an honourable man, but that should not let him off the hook.

  11. P Shaw says:

    Last week, the Financial Times carried a week-long series of articles about China’s investments in Europe, in particular the cash-stripped Eurozone countries. These ‘investments’ are either strategic, or aimed at profit making and diversification (away for USD investments).

    One needs to put China’s take-over of Malta’s energy supply in this context. This take-over (spinned as investment by the Times and the government) is aimed at maximizing profits for China out of a monopolistic situation, or is a long-term strategic goal of holding an EU member state at ransom by fully controlling its essential energy sector.

  12. chico says:

    Daphne

    Can you please text Konrad and ask him to pick up a few sachets of MSG on his way back from Peking? Thanks, Ducky.

  13. joseph says:

    Why is the Opposition also taking a break at taxpayer’s expense?

  14. Pete Ross says:

    Reading the news that Con-rad was in Beijing for meetings with Shanghai Electric, I got the impression that there must be a (Chinese) bridge connection between the two cities due to their apparent proximity.

  15. ciccio says:

    Warning: Attakk fahxi u moqziez fuq Marlene Farrugia.

    I was watching Marlene Farrugia on Net News Feed this evening which discussed the Prime Minister’s admission that he will not deliver his baby – a gas power station – on time after a pregnancy of two years, even though for one and a half years we were told that everything was on track.

    It was a desperate Marlene Farrugia like I had never seen before, trying to defend the indefensible. She was repeating herself – an admission that even she herself was not convinced of her own arguments. She even made unacceptable remarks towards former TVM interviewer Norman Vella, suggesting he is not serious.

    She tried to shift the blame for the prime minister’s failure from him to his “consultants” or “others”, suggesting that they may have misguided him. She also claimed that “others” have moved the goal posts.

    What consultants? What goal posts?

    Hogwash.

    If the prime minister had appointed any such consultants, even when he was leader of the Opposition, it was he who chose them and he who accepted their advice. The prime minister cannot blame his consultants. The buck stops with him.

    Before the general election, Joseph Muscat gave a blanket guarantee to the Maltese electorate: he assumed full responsibility for his plan. He promised, on camera and before a crowd, that he will resign if his energy plan is not completed within two years of his taking office.

    He reiterated that promise in an interview on TVM last March, when he had been prime minister for a year already.

    Marlene Farrugia clutched at straws in her defence of the prime minister on this matter. Now the question is, why would she want to do that?

    Then I realised that she wasn’t defending the prime minister so much as criticising “the others” who gave him advice. Would those others be Konrad Mizzi, who took over Godfrey Farrugia’s portfolio as Minister of Health when the prime minister fired him?

  16. Josette Camilleri says:

    http://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/2014/10/14/joghlew-il-mizati-ghall-ezamijiet-tal-matsec.23235

    A twofold cost increase where education matters. A ‘very good incentive’ for middle class families

  17. L.gatt says:

    House of Cards – the hamalli version

  18. Giraffa says:

    From Marlene Farrugia’s response it is clear that Con-rad Mizzi will be made the sacrificial lamb to cover Muscat’s ass. Don’t worry, he will be made Ambassador in China where he and Sai can live happily ever after – through our taxes of course.

    • ciccio says:

      Maybe Beijing can put him on the list of approved candidates for the Hong Kong elections of the Chief Executive…

Leave a Comment