A parliament of mops and dusters
When I finish cleaning this floor I might get round to turning up in parliament.
I hear through the grapevine that MPs on both sides of the house are being quizzed by various media about whether they ask their cleaning-lady for a VAT receipt and whether they know if she pays national insurance contributions.
Apparently, most of our MPs clean the house themselves, generally in tandem with their wives, and have never felt the need to pay somebody else to do it for them.
Maa, xi dwejjaq ta’ nies, as though washing your own floors is some kind of socialist rhetoric. Issa nibghatulhom a selection of Vileda products ghall-Milied.
Il-Parlament Malti: Sponsored by Vileda.
Like irkotta and rikotta, this is a major class issue, and of course, I’m going to be the one to say so.
People raised in families which traditionally had servants to do all the chores see chores as the job of servants. When these families ceased to be able to afford full-time servants and the chores had to be taken on by the woman of the house (or the man), the woman of the house (and the man) viewed themselves overtly, covertly or even just subconsciously as performing servants’ duties.
As soon as it became financially possible, and sometimes even before that (leading to cutting down on grocery bills to pay the cleaner) the servant’s chores were relegated right back where they belong, with the servants. There are no guilt issues or socialist rhetoric attached to having other people clean your house, in this group, especially not now when those who pay them are no longer a cleaner’s employers but her clients.
Then there are those who have come up in the world and who see A Maid as a sign of having arrived (ah, but where?). They talk about their maids all the time and they call them maids. ‘Halli mmur, ta, ghax gejja l-maid.’ They enjoy ordering their cleaner about and talking to her in a bossy voice, something people who grew up with paid help in the household never do.
And then there are those – the sort, apparently, who make up the bulk of our MPs (and what a bulk) – who think it a grievous dereliction of duty to pay somebody else to wash your floors. “I don’t need to pay somebody else to do the work. I do it myself,” they say proudly, intimating that those who pay others are moral delinquents who can’t iron their own shirts.
What are the odds that the leader of the Opposition is going to come out and tell us that he washes his floors while Michelle dusts the knick-knacks and shakes out the teddy-bears? I think they’re pretty good. I can’t think how he manages with that gammy leg, miskin. Maybe he’s got one of those buckets on wheels.
I’m really not impressed at the thought of a politician with a duster. I don’t want to think of the people who are supposed to be running the country going home to polish the silver instead of reading up on policy or taking time to regroup.
And none of them seem to understand opportunity cost: that a skilled/professional person who uses his/her time to clean the house when s/he could be earning, in that time, enough money to pay a cleaner and much more besides has made a poor economic judgement.
The argument of opportunity cost also applies to leisure and not just work.
If you spend four hours cleaning your house when getting somebody to do it would cost you €25, this means that your four hours of leisure are worth much less to you than €25, when really if you are a very busy person with hardly any free time on your hands, they should be worth so very much more to you.
Anybody who cleans his own house when he can afford to pay somebody else to do it is an idiot. It’s nothing to boast about.
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“Anybody who cleans his own house when he can afford ” …
Despite your good command of English, you fail miserably at grasping the concept of gender-sensitive language.
[Daphne – Do you see many women MPs in our parliament? Please don’t tell me that Justyne Caruana scrubs out her own lavatory.]
What about Ms Dolores Cristina?
“If you spend five hours cleaning your house when getting somebody to do it would cost you €25, this means that your five hours of leisure is worth much less to you than €25, when really if you are a very busy person with hardly any free time on your hands, it is worth so very much more.”
So very well said!
As regards to people being idiots if they clean when others can do it for them, I’ve stopped being an idiot two years ago and I will never ever clean my house again.
It’s so great to wake up on Saturday morning and all you have to do is choose where to have your coffee and have your good read.
Also well said in the rest of the article. However, I find most astonishing the fact that some people run down their house-chore assistants.
Mine tells me how some people literally bossed her about as if she were a slave. Of course, she was clever enough to leave such self-appointed “mistresses”.
[Daphne – They were probably very common. I’ve noticed that the more common a person is, the more officiously she speaks to her cleaner.]
Anyway, a very well-written piece and very insightful. Well done!
That’s because they think it’s a master/slave relationship, and not a business relationship where one person provides a service to another.
I couldn’t agree with you more on this, though there is another category you ought to mention – those cleanliness freaks who clean their houses themselves because of their preconceived notion that no one else could possibly do it better.
The concept of outsourcing is anathema to the Maltese. You could still find some who think that a dishwashing machine isn’t useful.
The concept of outsourcing is anathema to the Labour Party. Apparently, it is scandalous that government outsources work at cheap rates rather than employing costly labour.
I don’t want to think of the people who are supposed to be running the country going home to polish the silver instead of reading up on policy or taking time to regroup.
SPOT ON!
This explains the low level of parliamentary debates. And the paucity of members present in the house during those paltry debates. They’re thinking about the chores waiting at home.
It’s because the only person they feel superior to is their ‘seftura’.
When talking about their ‘seftura’, postman or plumber, they will say, ”Qalti/qalli sinjura…..”.
Then when talking to their husband, ”Ma nafx min hi is-sinjura, wara kollhox ghax taqla darbtejn daqsi hu la taxxa, l-anqas VAT, hu xejn, ghal karozza ghandhom tnejn, ‘holidays’ kull sena hu ghada kemm xtrat post ghaliha hu ghat tifla.”
Many Sliema newcomers, talk in such a manner.
Rudyard Kipling did not call them idiots like Daphne does. He was somewhat more restrained.
He was just as adamant however that people with talent should employ servants so that they have more time at their disposal to exploit their potential.
Kipling never drove his Rolls Royce, which is still maintained in pristine condition at Bateman’s. He always employed a chauffeur. Thus he could sit at the back while being driven around the superb Sussex countryside taking it all in and thinking about what to write next. Clever man.
I thought house help fall below the VAT income threshold, and they are therefore exempt from charging VAT?
[Daphne – Yes, but even those who are exempt still have to be registered with the VAT department and issue receipts (without VAT).]
I don’t expect my wife to clean the house. She has a career, runs her own business, is a mother of two. I will never clean our house because I have no idea how to do that, nor have I any inclination to even try.
The maid or whatever Daphne chooses to call her takes care of that.
I don’t do any odd jobs at home. If the doors need repairing or the roof needs a new coat of roof compound, or I want to hang up a new painting then I get a handyman to do it.
If my car is dirty I take it to the car-wash.
Why is it that some people want to do everything themselves? Using other people’s services is beneficial to the economy as a whole but more important is that it frees up my time to much more interesting things than cleaning the house, washing the car or painting the house.
Yet the truth is that in Malta in spite of all the poverty that exists (claimed by PL and the church) it is very difficult to find a maid or cleaner or a handyman or a baby-sitter.
If you do manage to find one you have to treat her or him really well or else they simply won’t come! My wife used to pick up and drop the cleaner from the bus-stop, prepare a packed lunch for her and pay her extra tips to cover her travel expenses.
As for a VAT receipt, we have to pay cash since she won’t accept payment by cheque – ahseb u ara kemm ser tghatik VAT receipt.
Its their problem if they don’t pay national insurance contributions.
Very soon I’ll start looking for a driver because I spend around 3 hours a day driving to meetings and more when you consider the amount spent trying to find parking.
If i could spend the same amount of time working in my car whilst being driven around, mhux il-paga tad-driver thallas! What’s the living wage for a driver, by the way?
From timesofmalta.com
Thursday, 30th September 2010 – 14:05CET
Cleaner takes €43,000 from elderly man’s account
A tearful 43-year-old woman from Birkirkara admitted today that she withdrew €43,000 from an elderly man’s bank account after she gained possession of his cash card and PIN number.
Rita Mifsud admitted in court that she had befriended a resident of Casa Arkati, where she used to work as a cleaner. He had entrusted her with the key of his Post Office box. While she regularly handed him his mail, she had intercepted and kept his cash card and PIN number and between March 4 and last Saturday made 96 transactions for a total of €43,000.
In pleading guilty, the woman returned €7,820 and was ordered to return the remainder within six months.
She was condemned to a two year jail term suspended for four years.
Twist in the tale (or tail ?).
[Daphne – How in heaven’s name is she going to return the money? She sounds like the desperate victim of usury to me.]
Nowhere did I hear the PS say that the cleaner didn’t give a VAT receipt, but only that he found out that she did not pay her NI after she hurt herself.
One *can* issue a VAT receipt and not pay NI.
I stand to be corrected, but doesn’t one have to work more than 16 hours per week to pay NI.
@ Daphne
“They enjoy ordering their cleaner about and talking to her in a bossy voice, something people who grew up with paid help in the household never do.”
I know what you mean. Still, I am not so sure about this one. I have heard people, who have always had help, who speak of and to them as if they were a different caste.
Quite upsetting when you witness it, actually, especially because you’d think they know this, that they should know better. I think it’s more a question of personality. Some people seem to get a fix of adrenalin from bossing others about.
[Daphne – You might think they have always had help, but look beyond what you think you know. Were they raised with help, and was help a new experience to their mother, who talked to the maid the same way?]
Sadly the people that come to mind were raised with help, their parents were raised with help and their grandparents … well at the very least they had help even if I strongly suspect they were raised with it. That is precisely why I found their behaviour repulsive, inexcusable and verging on pathological.
Nothing worse than old money acting nouveau riche or rather feeling the need to remind that they are (and note that I use the word “to be” ) old money.
On the other hand help in my very middle of the middle class family is something new. We converted as soon as we could afford to even if my mother never worked outside the house.
Help was always treated with respect, lunched with us on the same table, was invited to our family events and we to theirs.
[Daphne – Now that’s a real no-no, sorry.Treating the help with respect is one thing, but having no boundaries is another.]
Like I said I essentially agree with you. The people I am thinking of may simply be the famous exception that maketh the rule. Still it’s not such a neat and tidy rule and sometimes personality simply trumps upbringing.