Give me strength
Published:
September 14, 2011 at 10:06am
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Yes. I remember Danny Cremona at the main entrance cutting the ribbon.
I wondered when they were going to wheel out the old has-been Mary Spiteri.
In that clip, they spelt “Junior” as in junior college wrong.
They forgot to mention the power station was built right in the middle of a highly populated region of Malta to the detriment of the health of people in that area.
They forgot to mention that Bank of Valletta was stolen, not set up.
They mention nothing of Dirghajn il-Maltin, Izra u Rabbi, il-Korp tal Pijunieri etc, the workers’ aristocracy marching on the law courts and Curia and burning down The Times building, the donation of prime properties owned by the people of Malta for free for the needs of the Gaddafi-funded Islamic Call Centre (that is up to this day being run by Mintoffians of that era), the setting up of Enemalta when households spent summer months on end without a single drop of water in their roof tanks and roads left in pitch darkness, the points system at university that discriminated negatively against pupils coming from private schools, Xandir Malta for the building of a socialist generation, the Tal-Barrani incidents…
Thanks again for reminding people why they should not be voting for the brand-new Labour Party run by Mintoff fan Muscat.
I need a straitjacket to control my rage at such “socialist” arrogance.
They can’t spell in any language, it seems. ‘Min’ is ‘who’ and ‘minn’ is ‘from’. U mhux xorta!
And I hadn’t even started to watch the video. Now that I have, I could list several other mistakes (e.g. ‘lis-sptar’???). And as far as I can remember, no social benefits were ever paid out in dollars. Again, u mhux xorta, l-aqwa li hemm stampa ta’ flus.
Lis skejjel “tal kindergarten” and lis sptar (no hyphens of course). The text was written by a Labour elve so these errors are par for the course.
I’m stunned!
Stalin would have been proud to have Gianni on his revisionist team.
I’m not a fan of the past, but this clip shows a plethora of infrastructural projects carried out in the 70s for which we should be grateful. Actually I could come up with other initiatives carried out in that decade which are not referred to here.
You just have to imagine Malta pre-1971 to fully understand the socio-economic changes that took place.
Grateful is for serfs. We are enlightened citizens (or so we’re told) and so we’re vigilant and critical.
Just like work, Baxxter. That’s for serfs and slaves. Free men hang around the agora discussing philosophy and politics.
No. Free men are soldiers and scholars. At the same time.
Soldiering is not work. It’s doing your bit for God and country. Just like the ancient Greeks – and as the Libyan ‘rebels’ are doing now.
I don’t ‘have to imagine’ Andre, I remember it well. That was when the National Bank belonged to its rightful owners. Then along came the Labour thugs. ‘We should be grateful’ my arse.
Andre B most of what is mentioned was a damn savage nationalisation process of private enterprise. The rest are offensively ridiculous like Enemalta. Telemalta kien jonqos!
We were shown Bulebel Industrial Estate, which was built before 1971.
Power station: the only “power station” the MLP in government built was the second hand Marshal Aid boiler and turbine which were going to be scrapped, and which Mintoff got ‘for free’ from somewhere in Sicily.
It is easy to introduce the bonus, children’s allowance, maternity leave (I have my doubts) and other social services before an election, the difficulty is to maintain those social services.
It is easy to finance social services when you sell out to a bloody dictator who goes on to dictate your foreign policy.
Gratitude has no place in our assessment of those years, save for the time we were finally rid of the monster.
Much more could have been achieved much sooner were Mintoff the sort to create enabling circumstances rather than destroying any sort of private initiative.
Your sort of mentality is ridiculous.
It is the reason the rest of us had to put up with Mintoff’s excesses – including his successor – for so long. This might be the 21st century, but you are still in medieval China.
Those where the days that we had the police force at the door.
Come on …Labour objected to the power station in Delimara just like now.
As the Cheshire cat said “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there”.
As Seneca said “if man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”
John,
I also remember Danny Cremona, on a subsequent occasion, with bared tooth at the gate of St Luke Hospital, backed by a posse of policemen at his back, barring the access of the entire medical staff to the hospital preventing them from giving urgent treatment to Malta’s sick and injured during the lock up!
Can someone please publish The Times photo taken at the time, just in case someone denies the facts?
You can find it in The Times’ archive.
That’s the occasion I’m referring to, Francis. And I do wish you’d drop the MD nonsense.
Jinfetah lis-Sptar San Luqa u Karin Grech!
Please stop playing about with the facts.
They forgot to mention:
L-industrija tal-Kappar
Il-Fabbrika tat-Twapet
Xita ta’ Korpi Parastatali
Il-Qerda ta’ l-Universita
It-Tnehhija tal-MCAST
L-Gheluq tal-Blue Sisters
Is-Sospensjoni tal-Qorti Kostituzzjonali
It-Tkjissir tal-Kurja
Il-Hruq ta’ l-Istamperija tat-Times
Il-Ligi ta’ l-Indhil Barrani
Il-Falliment tat-Tarzna
L-Istrike tat-Tobba
L-Ghelua ta’ l-Iskejjel Privati
And more.
Insejt li uza il worker-students ta’ zmienu bhala strike breakers kull darba li il-haddiema hadu azzjoni legittima biex jissalvagwardjaw id-drittijiet taghhom?
Insejt kif is-sidien tal-hwienet li baqu maghluqin fl-Imnarja biex igawdu festa TRADIZZJONALMENT Maltija mal-familja spiccaw ittehdulhom il-licenzji bi tpattijja?
This is so 80s.
Any government holding on to power for more than 10 years is bound to err. By way of comparison, the PN may have had a good run between 1998-2008, joining the EU in the process. Post 2008 has been a sheer disgrace.
[Daphne – A sheer disgrace, honestly. If the last three years have been a sheer disgrace, what words would you use to describe the years 1971 to 1987?]
Ah I see, Andre B.
So you want to pay less tax, pay less for utilities, pay less for a new car your and pay less for fuel whilst keeping all the rest intact.
One question – who will you be voting for next election?
The closure or shutting down of these factories:
Toko (Japanese Electronics Colour TV Screens) – 150 employees
Shirazuna (same as above) – 600 employees
Plessey British Electronics – 150 employees
GIE Electronics – 500 employees
Phoenix Textiles – 800 employees
The PN government of the 60s was forward-looking when it brought to Malta electronics companies which produced radios, colour TV’s and electronic components. Unlike Gonzi, Mintoff kicked out these companies by not supporting them during times of crisis, by creating crises like setting up the semi-state company Spinning and Weaving to compete with Phoenix, or by imposing trade sanctions against Japan which scared away Shirazuna and Toko.
Mintoff’s new Marsa Shipbuilding dock in the picture was the biggest white elephant he made.
. The takeover of the National Bank using illegal and immoral means, including threatening shareholders with the takeover of all personal assets beyond their shareholding
. l-ghoxrin punt
. id-Dejma
. Bahhar u Sewwi
. student-worker scheme (which systematically destroyed any sort of work ethic)
. import substitution, which led to a shortage of goods and an even more uneven distribution of income
. the systematic violation of civil rights and liberties
. the perversion of the justice system
. the erosion of business confidence
Il-Qtil ta Raymond Craruana
Il-frame up ta Pietru Pawl Busuttil
It-turtura ta Nazzjonalisti fid-Depot tal Puluzija
It-transfers politici u vendickttivi
L-import substitution and restriction – cikkulata, telephones, TVs, motor vehicles (Skoda bil-fors)
Pjacir politiku biex ikkollok telephone line gewwa darek
It-tkissir tal-kazini Nazzjonalist – Floriana 19 il-darba
Ir-restrizzjoni fuq is-safar – LM250 kull vjagg
L-exchange control
It-taxxa qawwija fuq is-successjoni
In-nuqqas ta’ dawl fit-toroq
Il-qtugh tal-ilma potabli
Il-wage freeze
L-esproprijazzjoni ta’ propjeta privata
L-import licences lil- bazzuzli laburisti
Id-Desserta
Ic-Choco
It- Toothpaste
Il-kupuni taz-zokkor
Il-licenzji tal-Bulk Buying
Studenti fil kors ta’ gwidi li kienu Nazzjonalist jew hadu sehem f’xi azzjoni industrijali organizzata mill-“free trade unions” kollha jehlu mill-ezami ta’ l-ahhar. Jghaddu biss il-Mintoffjani. Dik demokrazzija!
Andre B,
It’s the style that was erroneous. He built extensive manufacturing estates to house sweat shops and even more extensive housing estates to create ghettoes.
Mintoff wasn’t interested in what the Maltese were capable of, convinced his design was the only viable one.
Being an architect, he gave particular weight to the physical footprint a project could have, ignoring the other factors which inclusion render real function.
We’re still trying to get to terms with it to this day, half the population still intoxicated with such poisoned axiom.
I remember going around households to collect signatures asking the nNationalist government to urgently take in hand the lack of housing. It was then that the first housing estate was built in Zurrieq, back in 1970.
In the meantime there was a change of government and Mintoff also used the housing scheme to favour his supporters.
Min bena il-grownd nazzjonali f’Ta’ Qali?
To be fair, it’s very possible that had there been a Nationalist Government, women would have never been allowed to vote, even in this day and age. Well done LABOURSALMEWT for pointing the MLP as the champions of democracy.
Also, I might as well thank the MLP for increasing the amount of abandoned houses, and increasing our sense of national identity through an…identity card.
The Labour party did not remove “it-tallaba mit-toroq.” It made it illegal to beg. Just as Mussolini never made the trains run on time: he merely ordered newspapers to stop publishing news of their delays.
And wasn’t Air Malta a private company (Malta Airlines), just like Bank of Valletta was (the National Bank of Malta) and Mid-Med (Barclays)?
The Labour Party did not build “the dock yard.” It managed to bankrupt Bailey’s Shipyard, and nationalised it.
And then invested millions in a shipbuilding company that never worked at all.
And many of the housing estates it is so proud of were based on designs by the Royal Engineer Corps, and built on land sequestered without compensation from private landowners.
The Labour Party’s amendments to those designs removed open spaces to squeeze in as many blocks and houses they could fit in. How else are you going to give free houses to the likes of your henchmen and their extended families?
Loved the references to 1979, yet again, the Apri’s Fool day debacle against the mishut barrani.
Will landlords start celebrating multiple Freedom Days whenever the lease on their own property expires?
And after trying to squeeze as much out of their increasingly aggravated tenants, might I add.
I was a bit confused by them mentioning the power station. Labour was intimately involved with a power station, but that was the one at Marsa.
That was the one built in Italy in 1956 withUS Marshall Aid money, shipped over from Sicily between 1982 and 1984, and recommissioned. Not to mention Mintoff’s lover affair with cheap coal.
Labour was dead set against the Delimara power station from its start. Their argument was that it was yet another punishment to an admittedly degraded area.
They failed to mention that all the studies indicated that, with the prevailing north-westerly winds, it was impossible to put the powerstat n anywhere else.
Otherwise the winds would have covered the whole island in smog, much like London once was.
In addition, the new power station had to have proper water cooling, and that was only possible at Delimara.
I may be angry that subsequent PN governments have, to put it mildly, underinvested in that part of the island’s transport infrastructure, but let the real facts on the power station project be known.
He had the foot soldiers of the party itself, id-delegati, go around the island choosing any property they fancied.
They would then get the expropriation orders from the ministry and ‘sell’ the vacancies. Sometimes they kept the more elegant ones for themselves.
The same delegati who voted Joseph and oversee the commission for internal discipline within the party, if you please.
Some of the rightful owners wouldn’t give in, punching holes into the roofs of these houses with a sledgehammer to render them inhabitable.
A whole class of entrepreneurs was wiped out, having their import licenses revoked, these handed to his lackeys.
Of course they won’t tell us what they plan to do. They’ve still to decide who’s getting what. And this time they mean it, following Sant’s reluctance to put them in control indiscriminately.
Ask Silvio Parnis.
Building ‘new power station’? I presume they are referring to the ‘new’ Marsa station.
I stand to be corrected, but was the Marsa station not a second hand (used) plant?
Even the Marsa station was misinterpreted as ‘new’ when in fact it was used – a la the frugality of Mintoff. This frugality must have transcended successive leaders whose frugaility with truth nauseates us all.
Labour seems to celebrate the most trivial of events occurring under Labour governments, yet, going back to the Marsa power station, they did not celebrate its conversion from oil to coal (heqq kellna nissikkaw ic-cinturin) which not only doubled the pollution but emitted far more toxins into the air.
But then, who protested the ‘black dust’?
Remember the coal stored out in the open on the wharf at Marsa?
They attack dissenters and their families with the words “xi trid tgerger, Mintoff takhom x’tieklu”
Id-disprezz johnoqhom.
Not only did he feed ‘them’ but also put a roof over their heads, like at the old bastions (Cospicua) to keep their mouth shut once he occupied the Macina, and also gave away accommodation to hundreds of his supporters at Tigne, St Andrews and other places and to the chagrin of many, those squatters ended up having to be ‘bought out’ to make way for proper developments.
On top of that Mintoff built (to his plans, of course) blocks and blocks of flats given at preferential rents to hundreds of MLP supporters who were screened by local MLP clubs before released to the ‘renters’.
When the (M)LP mention ‘corruption’, they should revisit their own brand of corruption first, which was successfully eradicated from 1987 on.
Too bad these type of blogs are visited by the already converted or by those who have first hand experiences of those dark years under Labour.
The ‘undecided’ and the Labour elves should have enough of an open mind to read all this and at least question the accuracy. Then they should hang their heads in shame.
Give me strength indeed! This is a clear example of the basic difference between the two parties: the PL looks through the future in the rear mirror, the PN through binoculars.
@ Dee
A selection of highly relevant photographs appears (courtesy of the Independence Print) after page 100 of Lino. J. German’s book “Landmarks in Medical Trade Unionism 1937-1987”
They would convince any ostrich that the doctors were locked out and prevented from treating their patients by the MLP government.
This superklikka video is better…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4mmfps3KjM&feature=related
This one’s good too, but probably it’s the other way round – when Obama copied Joseph:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8f_bBw48pw&feature=related
I love the first photo of the swimming pool. That pool is not in Malta and certainly not at Marsascala. The pool at Marsascala was of sea water and just a concrete box – no tiles. Certainly no umbrellas and trees and lawn. Jittenjku bin-nies.
Mellieha Holiday Complex – 50% GWU?
But, I ask, why oh why these very painful reminders?
Because:
It is now official PL policy to re-write the socio-political period of 1971-87 as Labours ‘Golden Age’ with the re-instatement of those friendly dinosaurs: Anglu Farraugia, Karmenu Vella, Lino Spiteri, Joe Sammut, Alex Scibberas Trigona…. The good old days …….
The purpose:
To falsely influence an electorate that has a large number of voters below 35 years of age and too young to have experienced the the dark age of modern Malta.
Any who remembers must speak.
You left out Joe Grima.
I could be wrong, it’s been a while, but that REALLY does not look like the Marsascala pool.
Nitqalla
Please please PLEASE, an article on Alamango’s latest disquisition:
“A couple of months ago, as my friends and I were on one of our long nights out which always seems to provoke interesting topics, we started to discuss gender, gender equality and so on.
As the evening came to an end we all had one question on our mind: in this day and age does gender merit a discussion?”
Alamango who?
Nakita ?
Yes.
The myth about Reagan killing Gaddafi’s adopted child exposed:
Muammar Gaddafi once claimed that Hana had died in the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli. In fact, she finished medical school in Tripoli some years ago and recently started her second year as a general surgeon at the central hospital in Tripoli.
“In the period before the uprising, Hana was doing a good job and she didn’t bother anyone. But when the revolution started she showed the ugly face of the Gaddafi family. She started telling colleagues not to treat patients who were anti-Gaddafi, whom she called ‘rats’,
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/09/201191564045846547.html
We in Malta knew about that from Xarabank (was it last March?), where an ex-Gaddafi bodyguard spoke about her existence.
Xarabank? You could have run an online search and found the various references to her – including the list of bank deposits frozen in Switzerland.
Was she ever called in by her brother Hannibal to treat “accidental” injuries suffered by his servants or nannies?
Apart from all the plethora of infrastructural, social and economic projects, included in the video in caption, which
consecutive Labour Administrations introduced and maintained
from 1971 to 1987, 1972 was the year when all the financial earnings of the whole nation were not charged income tax. Following all this plethora and well-being, the reserves in the Central Bank of Malta exceeded Lm 400,000,000 amounting
to around 1000,000,000 euro.
Singapore was granted independence at roughly the same time as Malta.
Perhaps Gianni might like to draw some comparisons between the progress achieved by Singapore between 1971 and 1987 and that of Malta under Labour for the same period.
“That’s the occasion I’m referring to, Francis. And I do wish you’d drop the MD nonsense.” (john)
Sorry! Can’t oblige. I know that my MD rankles in some quarters but it identifies me clearly. I hate to hide behind a mysterious first name, nom de plume..
Remember the second-hand, telephone system Mintoff bought for us? When the incoming government tried to donate it to a third world country, the offer was refused.
Strowger exchanges; you did not need phone tapping in those “glorious” days as crossed lines were de rigeur.