Is this a general election or a referendum on a power station, LNG terminal and gas storage tanks?

Published: January 23, 2013 at 7:20pm

So they’re going to give us free childcare. Wow.

Ah-may-zing.

Next?

But meanwhile, do please explain how the free childcare is going to work, how this is meant to persuade women out into the workforce when they patently don’t want to work (otherwise they’d be working already), and what sort of jobs you think they might do, or what sort of training you could give them if they, say, stopped making jeans in a Bulebel factory in 1984 and haven’t worked since.

Ah, the golden years. Dak iz-zmien ma kellniex dal-hafna nejk ta’ childcare. In-nisa support joqghodu d-dar ilestu l-borma, u mhux bhall-mara tat-tifel tieghi, dejjem taghti fuq is-Super One.




38 Comments Comment

  1. Jozef says:

    I think they expect them to work IN those childcare centres.

    Cunning plans, Daphne.

    • Mercury Rising says:

      My thoughts exactly. We create jobs in the childcare centres by increasing their numbers and all the Maltese unwilling-to-work women will get a quick, free diploma in childcare, get paid to look after their own kids and hey presto, problem solved a la Labour.

  2. joseph says:

    Free childcare to encourage women over fifty to seek employment?

    [Daphne – JosephMuscat.com is also going to enter into deals on freely available IVF, remember…]

  3. Adrian says:

    Watching TVHEMM – it’s just frustrating how AD over these last five years and specifically during the initial phase of this electoral campaign, have become so much pro PL.

    • Mercury Rising says:

      Why are you so surprised? Has Graffiti ever produced anything else of substance.

    • Jozef says:

      I’d love to see them wriggling out of his other proposal, extending building permits indefinitely.

      Will they ask for the specifics they know we won’t get, before taking a stand.

      Joseph won’t specify any period of time, nor, and this is where it gets sticky, will he differentiate between demoltion and refurbishment.

      All he did, was to link the proposal to local plans. Whether this means he’ll adapt these to his proposal or the other way round is anyone’s guess.

      Poor AD.

      The FAA must be looking forward to it, lobbying on behalf of residents will become big business.

  4. Neil Dent says:

    Toni Abela, jigri lejn id-dar wara l-iskola, u isib lil-ommu, lesta bil “borma tfuh”.

    Where is Toni-Tubi anyway?

  5. Paul Agius says:

    BREAKING NEWS: The expert Konrad Mizzi is so busy trying to find a gas deal spanning 10 years that he is to remain into hiding until he finds one, if ever.

    He can’t find a way around if Norman Vella asks him again for the n-th time to forward him a copy.

  6. Toni says:

    Exactly my thoughts! I never stopped working with two kids. The only time I stopped working was during the 12 weeks maternity leave.

    Women who don’t work don’t work because they don’t want to. Because marriage to them is an insurance policy. Their target is get married, get pregnant and stop working. And not because there is no childcare.

    • Mercury Rising says:

      Amen to that. Childcare has been around for a while and is not a phenomenon of the last legislature either.

  7. ciccio says:

    Labour’s “Jew b’xejn jew xejn” is back. From 9 March.

  8. Jozef says:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130123/elections-news/more-police-needed-in-swieqi-muscat.454397

    They couldn’t record him speaking, not when they chose to stay on the pavement.

  9. Gahan says:

    As far as I know the women-out-of-work largest bracket is from thirty-five to fifty-something. This is not the age bracket which fits women who need childcare for their children.

    What will happen to the child care centres which are already providing their services for a fee to working mothers?

  10. Tumas-Muscat says:

    How will the centres be free? The money will have to come from the government’s own pockets, of course.

    How will the government fill its pockets to pay? The money will have to come from taxes, of course.

    So why provide free childcare in the first place if we’re all still going to pay for them indirectly?

  11. C Falzon says:

    “Iktar nisa jahdmu”

    I don’t think that will go down well with many nisa Laburisti (and not).

    Perhaps they should drop the ‘iktar nisa jahdmu’ and just keep the ‘child care bla hlas’. Then people will just think it’s a free babysitting service for when they want to go shopping or get their nails done, and they’ll relax again.

    Actually b’xejn would be even more attractive than bla hlas, because it brings back memories of the Golden Years.

    • Mercury Rising says:

      Jekk tiga m’ghandomx ghalfejn jahdmu, ma tantx jippurtahom, ghalihom kull ma tfisser “iktar nisa ta’ haddiehor jahdmu” biex jien ikolli iktar flus fil-but.

  12. Josef Greco says:

    Kar-mazing and joe-mazing we should start referring to them. Halluna kwieti tridu.

  13. The Shadow says:

    When Joseph launched the child care centre project he said that it would be a public-private partnership and that it would make a profit in three years’ time. How can a free service make a profit?

    • RosanneB says:

      Good one.

    • Ghoxrin Punt says:

      Off the government of course, or off us of course.

      You know, either those that have no children, or those that already pay for their child’s care because they happen to be ambitious enough to want to work and not make excuses as to why they cannot work.

    • Redneck Rabti says:

      My interpretation is that the government will pay the private sector to run the centres.

      Within three years, government income from taxes and NI collected from new mummy workers who would have otherwise stayed at home will exceed expenditure on childcare.

      I’d like to see the calculations and the assumptions underlying them.

    • Mercury Rising says:

      Joseph will be privatising air very soon and making a profit because “Malta taghna lkoll, imma l-iktar tieghi u tas-settur privat”

  14. Charles Darwin says:

    Once again, the wrong end of the stick. They have to get job creation sorted before they find the actual need of all these child care centres.

    Or are the childcare centres there to babysit toddlers while mummy goes off to Silvio Parnis’s coffee mornings?

    • Min Jaf says:

      Charles, Joseph Muscat stated that the free childcare services will generate 500 jobs for women.

      These women will simply be looking after one another’s children, dumping their own in one centre and going off to look after their childcarers’ children in a childcare centre elsewhere and all at the taxpayer’s expense.

      It is a 21st-century version of Izra w Rabbi, Dirghajn il-Maltin, Bahhar u Sewwi employment initiatives of the MLP Golden Years, but this time round tailored specifically for women.

      Ib-brejnwoxxjatu tajjeb lil-Joseph in-nanna Mintoffjana li kellu.

  15. Paul says:

    The PM’s words exactly. He said the 40+ bracket for women not in employment represents the ex-students under the PL with horrible education opportunities (20 punt, no Mcast, etc) in what il-Guy would call “the golden years”.

  16. T Zammit says:

    The sad thing is that they do not even realize that we are so well off in this bloody country (and by well off I mean in quality of life not necessarily filthy rich which we are not), that we have people opting out of a job for a year or a couple of them just to stay home and focus on their children in the first years.

    We who choose to do just that may miss our weekend steak and have a pizza instead, or perhaps go out once in place of twice, but we live by standards which allow us to choose – and the choice does not preclude us from switching on the air-conditioning in summer either…

    Am I saying that all can afford this? Of course not, and any government should strive to assist those who have to or want to work with any possible means.

    But Labour should realize that the middle class it is striving so hard to establish, already exists in Malta and is alive and kicking.

  17. H.P. Baxxter says:

    Is that why Kevin has disappeared? Busy cutting deals for a private-public partnership with Labour, for his and Sharon’s childcare centre business?

    Ja qabda haxxejja kongeniti.

  18. Aunt Hetty says:

    During the Mintoff regime, I had to give up on my good government job when I had my baby.

    When I asked if it was possible to get a year’s unpaid leave as I had no one to help me bring up my child at the time, I was told that I should not have got pregnant in the first place, if I had planned on a career in government service.

    Women who worked in government service a decade earlier were told to leave their jobs in public service on marriage, because now they had a husband to earn money for them.

    That was life for a working woman during Mintoff’s Golden Era.

    No wonder so many Maltese women over the age of forty or fifty ended up unable to fend for themselves and a burden on society instead of contributing significantly to society whilst bettering themselves.

    • Catherine says:

      I was married in 1984, and was employed as a clerk in a government department.

      I was under a pensionable contract and had to choose between leaving and taking “is-somma” or staying and renouncing my right to be pensionable.

      I stayed at home bringing up my three children up to 2004.

      When my third child entered secondary school, I started feeling depressed and useless, got myself a job, entered university under the maturity clause and after two years of hard work, I got myself a diploma, which increased my salary equal to my husband’s.

      I don’t need this clown Joseph to run MY country.

      And 25% of my electricity CONSUMPTION works out to be some €200 a year; that’s equivalent to two nights out for a pizza with my ‘kids’ and their future spouses.

      • H.P. Baxxter says:

        Fuckin’ A.

      • observer says:

        The saying goes “God helps those who help themselves.”

        This is also applicable to PN’s stimulus to those who wish to better their prospects and situation in life either through further education or through investment in business and home improvement.

        It is definitely not to those who, as we say in Maltese, “jistennew il-bajtra taqa’ f’halqhom.” It seems, however, that labour offers these latter high hopes of improvement at the tax-payer’s expense,

      • Catherine says:

        H.P.Baxxter: Sorry, but I didn’t understand your comment. Did I say anything wrong?

  19. Mister says:

    And now its free tablets to all children in Year IV?

    Excuse me? What does a tablet have to do with education?

    If the tablet is only going to be used for Facebook and for taking photos, it’s money down the drain.

    Has the MLP found a diamond mine or what? Not even finding oil will pay for this spending.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130124/elections-news/labour.454521

  20. Pecksniff says:

    Tablet? Who is the “beneficiary”?

    Now if it had been a laptop, now you are talking sense.

  21. Gladio says:

    Kieku il-borma ta’ omm Toni Abela kienet tkun tfuh, tahseb li Toni kien sejjer imur iffittex refugju fi kcina ta’ kunvent ir-Rabat.

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