Starved of eloquence, I had to listen to David Cameron
Starved of eloquence and demoralised beyond measure by the relentless banality, even idiocy, of Maltese political rhetoric, I stopped in a shop this afternoon to listen to a live broadcast of David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference.
I stood there among the bottles and packets and gewgaws and just listened, drawn to the wall-mounted television by the siren call of properly constructed sentences spoken with conviction by somebody who knows that the beauty of his language lies in its precision.
These are some of the things he said.
1. The Labour Party is anti-aspiration and anti-success. He referred in particular to Ed Balls’ statement that Tory government reforms are dangerous because they will “create winners”. People should not be hostage to the circumstances in which they were born.
2. Wealth and business are not dirty words.
3. When you think of somebody who runs a business, don’t think of a tycoon alone in his tower. Think of the man who rises before dawn to wash other people’s windows. Think of the woman who stays up late into the night trying to get the numbers to add up so that she can pay her staff. What sort of courage must it take to cut yourself off from a regular salary to set up your own business? Cameron said he admires people like that and will be doing everything possible to encourage more people to do the same.
4. Those who can’t work will be looked after. Those who can work, but won’t, will not be allowed to live off the hard work of others. Fairness does not mean letting one person work and taxing him to pay for the benefits given to another another person, who won’t work as hard or who won’t work at all.
5. People who show initiative, who work hard to bring in extra money, those who run their own businesses, should not be penalised by heavy taxation to the benefit of others who are unwilling to make a similar effort.
6. Fairness does not mean giving people more money in benefits. It means giving them opportunities to find work by, for a start, providing good schools, making hard work pay and making marriage advantageous over cohabitation in terms of income tax.
7. Labour must never be allowed anywhere near Britain’s economy ever again (wild applause from the floor).
And more in the same vein. The running theme was hard work, not pay rises or living wages.
It was a world away from Joseph Muscat’s whining about how ‘businessmen’ should pay their employees a living wage that, instead of being fair compensation for services rendered, is calculated on the basis of what the employee wishes to buy and pay for.
But then, about the only thing our own Labour Party has in common with Britain’s is that both are anti-aspiration and anti-success. They hate people who try, and they hate even more those who succeed.
When will we ever hear a Labour leader tell people that if they want more money they should try working for it, retrain, take some risks?
When we will hear Joseph Muscat explain to his electorate that only in few very cases does money come from privilege. With the rest, it comes from hard graft, sound thinking and planning, and smart decisions.
Instead, Labour leaders tell their people that if they want more money the Labour Party will help them take it off others who work for it, invest for it, and take risks for it. Ghax mhux fier li xi hadd ikolllu l-eluf u xi hadd iehor ikollu xejn.
And true to form, here comes Muscat with his living wage, cribbed off Ed Miliband in Britain.
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What you wrote about Joseph Muscat applies also to Tony Zarb.
Early in the conference, Cameron recounted how, in the few days following the May elections, his daughter asked him why he spent so much time with someone called “Nick Leg”.
Joseph Muscat came to mind.
Excellent post, Daphne. Watched the speech on Sky–strong content, well-delivered. However, do not torment yourself, the no-hopers here would not understand.
Music to my ears. Cameron pretty much summed up the basis for a fair society.
I guess you are right: the basic and simple principles mentione, are a far cry from sounding fair to a substantial portion of the populace (Maltese).
Unfortunately, many Maltese perceive the receipt of social benefits as a sacrosanct right. Unless the ‘leaders’ of our society change tune, there is little hope that a vast swath of the population will change its way of perceiving benefits.
And, judging by the way things are being said, it is not anywhere close.
Music to my ears, too.
I suppose Joseph Muscat would like to deliver a speech like that, but he is in the wrong party, and would not be credible in any case.
The economy is about CREATING wealth, not about extracting money from those who have made it.
Wealth is created through investment and hard work.
I fully agree with him. After working my ass off to get my degree and then climb the career ladder, on come Labour with their ‘no tax on overtime’ and ‘living wage’ to shorten the gap between who is lazy and who works.
Just when you think that we’ve had enough of the current administration, on comes a stark reminder of what Labour represents.
Ohh how I wish it was Gonzi who delivered that speech. If only..
Indeed. Gonzi’s speeches have degenerated into a boring list of supposed achievements, delivered in a whining voice. Then he throws in the usual description of his latest meetings with foreign investors asking him for more Maltese engineers, because they’re the best in the world and so brilliant.
Road engineers ?
No, engineers. The engineering lobby has now surpassed the lawyers’ and the kuntratturi’s in terms of seductive power. And Gonzi, being the do-gooder that he is, has a weakness for bullshit-spouting yuppies.
Fiducja is fine, but leadership also requires sobriety and critical insight.
Baxxter, engineers create something and are paid for a product which you use and is tangible. More engineers more production more money from real production.
Lawyers, on the other hand deal in the tertiary sector which depends on people who work in the other sectors.
What would happen if there were no engineers? The world would stop.
On the other hand ask yourself what would happen without lawyers.
Both are needed, but we have to strike a balance.Malta needs more engineers and less lawyers.
Wrong. So wrong. Malta needs more intelligent people, whichever field they come from. And I’m not impressed by the thinking abilities of Maltese engineers.
Ray, we can keep dreaming. The reality in Malta is that both of our major political parties are too far to the left on socio-economic matters and too far to the right on matters of civil liberties.
Not much choice actually between the two. One of the major differences that I see (besides thinking by myself whoever is more competent of the two blocks), is that one party is steadfastly pro-Europe (and has an open mind towards globalisation in general), while the other is still a bit of a Euro-phobe.
Xeno-scaremongering comes to mind. In my opinion, the PL (if in fact it is genuinely pro-EU) has still not convinced its followers that they are whole heartedly pro-EU.
It’s bliss reading through and agreeing with every point you mentioned.
I fail to understand why hard working people are viewed with such spite and resentment, as if someone is successful only just because the odds were in favour.
I get goosebumps listening to this crap about the living wage. People should get off their butt and do some proper work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgNGlJoHYeg I watched part of it when he spoke against bailouts, and in favour of removing the 95% tax on money earned by single mothers who work.
[Daphne – Yes, that was another point that struck me. Single mothers and the 95% tax rate on everything ‘extra’ that they earn is a problem akin to our own with married women who work for a low income: it’s just not work it because most goes on tax and national insurance.]
Ah yes he also said that Britain was ridiculed by the release of a mass murderer who was given a hero’s welcome when he arrived in his country.
There’s more : //www.youtube.com/watch?v=75b3AIRsuTE
It’s going to be tough for the Brits.
This is political history repeating itself ad nauseam.
Socialist governments spend other people’s money, lining their own pockets in the process. When this money runs out, they are kicked out of office.
Their place is then taken by governments that encourage wealth-creation. Many people work very hard to reach this goal.
When the lolly is finally available, the loafers re-elect a Socialist government that then proceeds to distribute, unfairly, the hard-gained earnings of those who have striven hard to make the grade.
A vicious circle which is very hard to break. In fact it is impossible to break as long as the haves and the havenots have one vote each. This process ensures that wealth does not really grow. It is only redistributed at intervals.
Roughly what is happening is that fifty percent of a community is parasitic. The other fifty percent works its guts out.
Such chest-swelling political rhetoric, I’m about to burst. But political nonetheless.
In the real world, this is what he means:
(pandering to those who are sick of spongers)
Our country is broke; would the leeches, who have had it good for so long, and the single parent slappers among you who have done so well in providing the social security service a raft of statistics to contend with at considerable cost – even though we recognise your contribution to our nations flailing birth rate (which most economists thought was a good idea until we discovered Poland) – kindly get off your backsides/backs and appear to be doing something constructive (even though, due to wage arbitrage and in the name of globalisation, there isn’t really much for you to do at the moment- try Germany).
And for those self styled entrepreneurs who have opted to work for themselves (truth be told, guys, you are the best thing that can happen to any government…you work for us, we pillage).
What we don’t take in higher income tax, we will take in some other sneaky way. The simple reason being; neither you, nor your government has any other choice. You see, the banks have gone and pulled a fast one on us, and now, we are expecting you to do your bit and help us paper over the cracks, because really, how do you expect us to admit to the people that the same people who have hijacked all political parties (they rule us if you didn’t know), have put you, your children, your children’s children etc, in hock for many years to come. Now you don’t expect us to actually put these poor bankers in jail, do you?
Regarding high rate of income tax – in the late sixties it was so high here in Malta that many married women just resigned. Remember that there was no separate computation in those days so with two incomes you ended up in the top band and it really wasn’t worth working.
To be fair, the British Labour party is a far cry from our dear Partit Laburista.
Can you honestly compare Joseph Muscat to Gordon Brown ? – I don’t know much about Milliband yet.
Apart from the eloquent way in which the speech was delivered I am not convinced (not even party delegates at times particularly when he was talking about key points of his programme) about the substance.
It surely was a well structured speech delivering smoke, in the sense of nitrous oxide, to dampen apocalyptic reality left behind by Brown. On the other hand Ed Milliband is adamant do to even worse than Brown.
Tough times for the British.
@ David Buttigieg Oh come on, Gordon Brown brought the UK to its knees, almost as bad a case as Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici did to Malta.
And then his almighty gaffe claiming he saved the world from economic destruction!
As to engineers . where are all the Maltese construction companies who, a year ago, claimed it’s impossible for SmartCity Malta to build and complete a block in 12 months?
Was it Maltese engineers who achieved this? No, it was FOREIGN leadership.
We are just miles behind in the construction industry , be it office blocks , apartments or road building. Just look how long it took to complete Tigne Point – 8 years?
Well I disagree,
Gordon Brown inherited a disastrous situation in a disastrous time – the worst recession since the 1930s.
All things considered I think he did reasonably well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/06/samantha-cameron-conference-dress
Ok, ok, I know it’s The Guardian.
I heard the speech too. Eloquence, conviction and directed towards an intelligent audience. Inevitably I thought about the local scene. It never ceases to amaze me the dumbing down of Maltese political speeches, interviews, debates and the like. EU has had no affect whatsoever in breaking out of our insularity and petty parochial approach to poltics.
British politicians assume that the audience at home or reading the papers has more than a few brain cells firing at the same time, while here we seem to reduce our arguments to the least common denominator. But then again, the same applies for most homilies, radio discussions and phone-ins. We seem to work on the premise that we need to pander to the largest audience available and that is never going to be the thinking public.
Back on the subject of Cameron’s message of “go out and work”, and “nobody owes you a living”, I cannot help feeling that neither party here in Malta will ever have the guts to say that. The nanny state is part and parcel of our collective makeup now. Whether it’s the residual damage of colonial rule or not is a moot point. I always cringe whenever a party leader boasts as to how much money from the government coffers is given out in social benefits. Maybe the government sees it as being benevolent and caring; I view it as a sure sign of a sick society that cannot stand on its own two feet and needs dole outs to survive. The respective political parties should boast when the economy is so good, when employment is so high, when so called disability pensions are so low, that the need for social services is less than it is today! But that would take me back to my initial argument, that only the few can undertsand that argument, the rest would consider it as the governement being tight with its money! Will things change? I’m not holding my breath!
Bearing in mind their political ideology, your comparison of the leader of the Malta Labour Party with the leader of the UK Conservative party isn’t exactly apples with apples.
[Daphne – There you go again, reading and not understanding. I did not compare the two. I said that our political leaders lack eloquence. And I also said that this is what we need to hear, not stuff about living wages. I hadn’t realised that the Malta Labour Party has an ideology. There is no indication of any.]
Gonzi vs Cameron would have been more appropriate. It is not your fault, however, that you had to make a do with Muscat given that Gonzi, unlike Cameron, is not the typical quotable intellectual since he hardly ever makes clear-cut political statements on which one could take a stand.
The substance of that speech, which you summarised so well, was that work, not handouts and Big Government deficits, create wealth.
So I see no point that some of your contributors refer to conspiracies about the bankers or to smoke.
Just because you see no point, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. All one has to do is understand what really happened in the aftermath of the sub-prime debacle which everyone seems to refer to now as simply an economic recession.
Daphne has already gone on record as being a supporter of free markets. When you have a real free market, failures are not bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions from the public purse, but are left to fail, that’s what the system is all about.
Why add the additional Burden of financial moral hazard (new term for you to learn) to the existing one of deadbeat social security spongers that Mr. Cameron so eloquently derided?
Instead of guaranteeing depositor’s funds and letting the banks go to the wall, the British tax paying public now has to fork out just that ‘little’ bit extra for a whole lot longer, while still paying out to the deadbeats and contend with (still failing) banks which refuse to lend the same money that they so graciously accepted from them.
This is nothing to do with conspiracy theory (your new buzzword for the millenium?), just plain fact.
If you actually believe that any countries’ policies are based on the will of the people and not of special interest groups,
err…what can I say?