Taghna Lkoll hamallagni: Take out your fuel-guzzling yachts and burn money for charity

Should you be interested in showing off with the rest of the hamalli tal-flus and Taghna Lkoll laghqin in this spectacle of braggadocio and poor taste – taking out your money-guzzling yacht and burning fuel to show solidarity with the destitute and socially emarginated – there are “six places up for grabs on the luxury yacht Aria”.

A circular from the Royal Malta Yacht Club – which has set up a limited liability company with the government, called Yachting Malta – urges you to snap up one of these places against a donation of 50 euros.

The yacht, which is owned by an Italian coffee importer, will be taking 20 people paying 50 euros each and hoping to raise a thousand euros thereby, the circular says.

Doesn’t this completely illustrate the absurdity of the situation? Why didn’t the coffee importer just write out a cheque for a thousand euros? Why don’t the sort of people who are likely to have received that circular just pull some bank-notes out of their wallets and donate the cash?

Imbasta bil-luxury yacht u l-Yacht Club, u imbaghad il-qamel tas-soltu ma jonqosx. Imma l-aqwa li niehdu good deal u ikun wertit hi, which is why the Royal Malta Yacht Club circular makes a point of telling recipients that the Aria is usually chartered at 3,000 euros a day, which means that il-vera bargin li tiehdu ghal elf ewro biss ta.

And while you are burning up fuel on the President’s Cruise for Charity, you can show your solidarity with all those poor people living on the edge of subsistence in this welfare state by being “treated to this luxury experience” and “enjoying prosecco and finger food throughout the cruise”.

This kind of frog-in-a-well obliviousness is enough to make me a Red Socialist, I can tell you (and that comes from somebody from a so-called privileged background), but then I remember that hey, these ARE the Red Socialists.

Il-Maltin il-vera razza ta’ nies injoranti, my God – and this includes all the suck-ups who should know better but who are participating in this offensive charade mainly because they have the brain of a chicken and an overwhelming need to see and be seen.

There’s a dress-code, too: ‘smart casual’. Because you know how it is, if you don’t tell people what to wear they might turn up in a lounge suit for an afternoon on a boat, or in their bathing-suit when the head of state is around. It’s the heels they have to issue a warning about, given the sort of event this is, but they haven’t done that.