What the much-touted National Development Fund really is: money that will be spent on social housing
I couldn’t believe my ears. Literally, I couldn’t – and I’m the kind of person who expects the worst from Labour because that’s the kind of animal Labour is, I wasn’t born stupid and I am no longer wide-eyed and naive.
But this beggared belief. Right at the outset, the government spoke of selling passports as being a way of raising money for a ‘national development fund’. It kept right on mentioning this ‘national development fund’ every time it was criticised for not making investment in Malta a requirement for those who acquire Maltese citizenship by these unusual means.
They will be investing in Malta, the government sought to reassure us, because they will be paying Eur650,000 (plus Eur25,000 for random wives) into a National Development Fund and this fund will be ring-fenced.
So obviously, we were led to believe that this National Development Fund would be used to develop the economy and for job-creating measures in lieu of direct investment in job-creating businesses by those who acquire citizenship.
But we learned from the budget speech yesterday – and I’ll bet many of you missed it because the newspapers didn’t pick it up as a headline – that money from the sale of passports will be spent on SOCIAL HOUSING. That’s right: we are going to sell Maltese passports to make the money we need to build the government flats we shouldn’t need but which a bunch of bazuzli have obviously been promised by this government of bums brought to power by even bigger bums.
Oh, and so that we wouldn’t freak out completely at this wonderful news, Grand Vizier Scicluna reassured us that some of that sale-of-passports money will also be spent on “health and education”.
So…let’s see, now. His mate Jabba the Hutt sells one passport for Eur650,000 and Grand Vizier Scicluna takes Eur250,000 of that and gives it to that poisonous nun in mufti, Evarist Bartolo, to ‘raise students’ stipends’ by Eur16 a year.
And what do they do with the other Eur400,000? Well, after Henley & Partners have taken their cut, what’s left will be used to built flats for bums who think that everyone else owes them a living.
Expenditure on social housing and health isn’t investment; it is just plain spending. Investment implies a return (on investment). The same could be said of education, but the difference is that education gives a return of sorts in that spending on education means a better workforce which will in turn help the economy to grow.
29 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
And it will then sell them to the bums at a reduced price, which incidentally was also mentioned in the budget, so that the bums can sell them on, make a profit and move to a ‘mittikless’ suburb.
A government with the I.Q of an amoeba who can’t see past the tip of their noses.
Why does Muscat always look so uncomfortable in a suit? http://www.maltastar.com/dart/20131021-mr-antonis-samaras-signs-the-visitors-book-at-auberge-de-castille
Because he is UNSUITABLE as a prime minister.
Well, things are already turning difficult for poor Labour. So many chickens coming home to roost after all they had been promised before the election.
Poor Desmond Marmara is moaning about bumping into many supporters vowing they will not be voting Labour again in future EP and general elections. People are expecting jobs ‘for which they did not even have the minimal qualifications required’, and this is a common occurrence he assures us. Now people need to be educated and have their expectations managed.
I wonder where the numerous unreasonable people Desmond Marmara is brushing against got their expectations from!
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131105/opinion/Let-s-blame-the-government-.493343
They won’t be building any new flats. They’ll just buy up existing stock from friendly developers who have been reincarnated as government advisors.
I really don’t think that’s legal in the EU. Subsidising business with public money like that. The poison creeping in is that the cash from those passports somehow isn’t ours.
And if it’s for Mallia to keep, I doubt any of it will be spent.
Is there one thing in this budget that compares to good business practice?
All I see are ramifications, consequences, reactions and plain polemic. Nsomma, s-soltu Labour. Kemm rahas bott tonn taz-zejt?
When did illegality ever get in Labour’s way?
Well, he said that but in reality it’s a lie.
The budget for housing development was cut from €1,115,000 in 2012 to just €375,000 in yesterday’s budget.
Scicluna thought he could justify the passport scheme and win the sympathy of Labour’s traditional voters by saying that he was going to increase spending in an area they would be naturally inclined to support.
They certainly won’t go through the bother of visiting the MFIN website, downloading the budget estimates and looking for the relative line item.
The link is below should they be bothered to check for themselves:
http://mfin.gov.mt/en/The-Budget/Documents/The_Budget_2014/Budgetary_Estimates_2014.zip
Mhux hekk. Then, after living in these social housing apartments for ten years, they sell them at a huge profit.
Are there any details about the project of compiling a list of what property the government owns in Valletta? Somehow I feel there is something behind this as well.
Observing the progress made on the Piano project at Valletta recently, this thought crossed my mind.
Before the elections, Joseph Muscat had dubbed the Eur80 million project a “kapricc” – an unnecessary expense.
He had argued that there were other priorities on which that money could be spent. He implied that he would have spent that money on social services instead.
But if he planned to finance social housing by selling passports, then he could have sold even more passports and financed the Piano project too.
Also known as buying votes with the state’s money. A chip off the old block.
I noticed in the budget summary that the government intends taking out a small €4.5m facility from EFSF each year from this one to the end of the projections (2016). I hope I’m missing something but isn’t the EFSF the bailout fund set up for Greece, Ireland and Portugal? Perhaps someone with an economics background can help here.
Actually, if the government is going to engage in building flats for bums, as you put it, it is going to need land. Will it resort to land acquisition without compensation as in the Golden Years?
Or is it just going to buy, from Sandro Chetcuti and the likes of him at the Malta Developers’ Association, flats which have been built already and which just aren’t moving in the market?
I would rather think that the promise to spend those funds on social housing is the latest trick to turn public opinion in favour of the prostitution of the Maltese passport and citizenship, knowing that the gullible audience of Super One is likely to believe such tripe.
The moral of this disgraceful story is now clear.
Malta’s reputation is being sacrificed so that the proceeds can be distributed amongst the hbieb tal-hbieb who have been promised government flats.
Investment my arse.
This passport/citizenship sale charade is becoming more and more obscene by the hour.
They just don’t get it.
Is this the type of investment advice Muscat used to dispense when he was at Crystal? No wonder he didn’t last in that job.
Spending the money on social housing is no investment at all but simply nurtures that culture of dependency and thievery that is ingrained in a large part of our population – which runs across all sections of society (yes even the tal-pepe lot if it is true that Kenneth Zammit Tabona is after that Valletta apartment).
In the meantime, the rest of us try hard to earn a buck, pay tax on that buck and with the rest of it pay off our loan.
And don’t give me that bollocks about poverty. There are of course some truly genuine cases, but there are many who are experts at scrounging the system. They benefit from social housing, free health care, free education, unemployment benefits, enjoy a boathouse at Armier and probably don’t get married (whilst still living with their partner) so as to get single-mother benefits. And all the while they are earning good money, using iPhones and iPads, running cars and wearing expensive clothes.
Ask those who work at social security offices how many of those people who collect unemployment benefits are genuine. I’ve had conversations with a few as they fume about the situation, knowing they are just handing over money from their hard-earned taxes to these bums, who are no better than common thieves.
Give me an undocumented immigrant who is trying to improve his lot while working all the hours God sends for a pittance, any day, than these parasites.
If the government really wants to fill its coffers, rather than sell passports, it should clean up the abuse of the social security system. Instead, what does it do? It encourages it.
What a pitiful state was the PN in before the election if these bunch of liars, bums, wannabees won by 36,000 votes!
I am sure the ones responsible for the mess left or were made to leave the party…and I am not including Dr.Gonzi!
Now we can just watch them do whatever they like and hope that the damage inflicted is somewhat reversible…
[Daphne – It wasn’t the Nationalist Party that was in a pitiful state, diamond1, but the electorate. I know it’s not politically correct to say so, but still, it’s the truth. It was the electorate, not the Nationalist Party, that made its pitiful choice, the result of very poor powers of analysis and the inability to read people and situations. I’ll give you a down-to-earth comparison which might help put this into perspective: if your father leaves your mother, a fine woman, for a shallow slut who’s just after his money, but who he believes sees the ‘real him’, really understands him, and is deeply in love with him, do you blame your mother, do you blame the slut, or do you blame your father? ]
Prosit Daphne a very well placed analogy.
I’m setting my brains (The little left} in top gear, trying to answer your question.
Before answering, can you define what you mean by Fine Woman?
Is it something similar to Fine China?, very nice to look at but must not to be used except to impress guests.
[Daphne It’s an idiomatic expression, Mr Loporto: “she’s a fine woman”. It means a decent, good-looking, companionable and talented woman.]
A) Maybe the father got fed up of fine women and wanted a change to trashy – it does happen.
B) The fine woman was not satisfying the father’s needs – and here I am not only referring to physical needs – and was busy satisfying perceived needs and not actual needs.
C) The fine woman changed and was not the fine woman father married
D) The fine woman was actually not a fine woman at all but a slut who bedded father’s best friend.
E) The shallow slut is actually not a slut at all but a fine woman who heresy has labelled her otherwise.
F) The fine woman influences her children so much that the father’s new partner is perceived otherwise.
This does complicate the comparison, doesn’t it? Personally I will go with option B and partly C. In my opinion, many a time the PN govt. ignored the electorate and concentrated on what they (PN) deemed important and not what the electorate deemed important. Also, I believe that the PN would have done better if certain members had stepped aside.
[Daphne – Completely illogical, because you have moved away from the original premiss. Mushy thinking, I’m afraid.]
Unfortunately, after many years of marriage, the fine mother started to take the father for granted. The father protested. The mother ignored him. The signs were there. After 25 years of marriage, the father and mother separated. There’s still time for a reconciliation though.
[Daphne – You know, it fascinates me the way people (read, mainly men) assume that a man taken for granted will invariably seek pastures new and that he is entitled to do so, whereas a woman who is taken for granted will not and is not. Perhaps it’s because we women tend to be the grown-ups in the equation? The whole point of marriage IS taking somebody for granted. Too many people don’t understand that.]
“Mara ta’ hila min isibha? Tiswa hafna aktar mill-gawhar; fuqha tistrieh qalb zewgha u dan zgur ikunlu ta’ gid …” (Prov 31:10-31
This is what the bible says of a fine woman.
Geez, were you born stupid or did you have to go to school to get there?
No wonder you’re finding it difficult to understand Daphne’s quite simple analogy, if you can’t understand what ‘a fine woman’ is.
You created the original premiss and I simply gave it a different point of view: The abandoned wife is the wife, the father is still the father and the new partner is the new partner. I just gave them a bit more character and different aspects. I didn’t move away from the premiss but simply built on the premiss to show that there may be different views of the same situation :)
[Daphne – I am afraid you are incorrect. The original premiss was NOT linked to an argument about the REASONS FOR switching.]
I understand your comparison but I still believe the electorate was pushed away from the PN by certain individuals and/or lack of measures.
Most of the measures announced last Monday had been in the pipeline for years but never introduced.
PN should only say mea culpa, mea culpa…and move on!
I want these 5 years to flyby as much as you…
This one also put everything on construction to ‘kickstart’ the economy. All he did was to inflate internal supply, no FDI and no measurable increase in employment figures.
Here he is in 2010.
http://www.spanishpropertyinsight.com/2010/09/24/prime-minister-zapatero-says-property-market-has-bottomed-out/
And here’s Spain two years later.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2254208/Spains-property-prices-slump-50-cent-British-holiday-homes-worst-hit.html
Guess Muscat has enough sense to keep this in mind when playing monopoly with the islands. The size of this place makes its dynamics extremely nervous and quick.
Bit like the early 911 turbo, once it’s wagged its tail, the nearest hedge was the best one could hope for.
We did notice the reference to social housing at our home and that’s what we said, it’s time to give out some more apartments to Lejburisti tal-qalba.
After all, people who received a plot/ a house/ an apartment in the eighties are still grateful for their property and vote Labour to this very day.
They’re the sort who’d vote Labour if Labour starved them.
This is nothing less then selling the national identity in order to provide cheap housing to the usual Laburisti Mintoffjani social services scroungers. In all probability even Dom Mintoff would have been against this if he was still alive.
Un-bloody-believable!