I.M. Beck - quote unquote

In the current debate about the new labour laws, the one in which the Malta Labour Party, shield of the working class and defender of the labourer, voted against the amendments, Alfred Sant had a field-day, chucking jargon about like there was no tomorrow and letting fly with phrases crafted to bewilder.

One such gem was his characterisation of the new law as an expression of "neo liberalism". I am not a political historian with a big brain, so I had to look it up, which I did by pressing a few buttons on the jolly-old steam driven computer, rather in the same manner as Dr Gonzi, who blew away Sant in the House on Wednesday evening.

Apparently, this esoteric concept of "Neo-liberalism" means a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism there as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. In the usual manner of such things, you will note that the definition is hardly precise and relies on emotion rather than reality. It is handy to use this type of shorthand, causing knees to jerk in time to a tune to which only you have the sheet-music.

Stretching the brain somewhat on a Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, I can perceive, in the depths of the long article through which I ploughed to dredge up the political correct pile of drivel that defined the concept of "neo-liberalism" in the previous paragraph, a trend. Basically, neo-liberalism is when business and wealth creation are seen to overcome the forces for good and cause governments to turn away from social programmes and being a caring father-figure.

Don`t blame me if you didn`t understand much of that, I found it pretty turgid myself, but let`s leave the definition at that, simplifying it even more, if you like, by saying that "neo-liberalism" is capitalism, otherwise defined.

It is currently the in-thing to dump on the nasty, bloated plutocrats because they are the hidden force behind the government. I used a small "g" because this sort of rabid paranoia has been evidenced in western countries with some increased vigour over the last few years but I can use a big "G" because here in Malta, Sant`s machine has been pounding away at the idea that Big Business, usually controlled by a few comfortably off types who are friends with the people that matter, has controlled the PN Government for years.

These idiotic notions that capitalism is bad in and of itself, of course, ignore the fact that if it wasn`t for business, the poor would have become even poorer than Sant and his ilk keeps saying they are, medicine and such like products would not have been developed and generally we would be living in the dark ages.

Equally, Sant`s machine, in propounding the myth that Malta is controlled by a few dark capitalists, ignores the evidence, namely that we are in general a sight better off than when the Labour Party and its own set of dark forces controlled the economy and mucked things up.

But let`s just get back to the man`s crack about the new labour law being an example of "neo-liberalism" gone wild.

The new law, to the chagrin of certain members of the employing class, increases protection of the worker to extents undreamed of a few years ago.

Bullying, harassment, discrimination and various other forms of negative behaviour towards employees have virtually become crimes and employment rights are protected as never before.

Given that some employers seem to think that because they pay a salary, they own the person to whom it is paid, this is all a good thing, but precisely how this is "neo-liberalism" rather than the complete antithesis of it, is something that Sant has declined to explain.

Perhaps it is true that he hasn`t actually read the bill, yet, which would be par for the course really.

Real security

In his weekly PR column in The Times, published on Wednesdays, just perfectly timed for me so that when I find nothing to write about I can click on to it and find inspiration within seconds, Alfred Sant said, in the context of a diatribe about the EU (surprise, surprise) that the Fenech Adami administration does not wish to face awkward questions about how membership would impact on our independence and security.

I am as eager as the next man to protect our independence and security, but the dear fellow will forgive me, I hope, if I go "duh"? This latter is a phrase much beloved of our teenage fraternity, whose powers of expression seem to have atrophied in direct proportion to their power of digital dexterity.

What independence?

OK, fine, we are a country, we have a language (which we seem to delight in massacring), we have borders (which do a fine imitation of a sieve all the time) and we have an airline. But let`s get real, please, and recognise that our country is dependent for it survival, as is every other country in the world bar the big 20 or so, on the goodwill or, at least, benign indifference of the rest of the world.

When the saviour of the country was at the helm, we used to hear these neo-colonial expressions of jingoistic fervour chucked about with gay abandon all the time, rallying the faithful against any particular bogey-man that happened to loom in the sights of Mintoff and his aspiration to strut the world stage.

Mintoff is being slowly rehabilitated into the ranks of acceptability for Sant and his machine, so expect to hear these sentiments increasing as the elections grow nearer, in the hope, from their point of view, that the terminally bewildered who form the bulk of (Le)li Cuschieri`s listenership will start looking at the EU as an invasion force of Turkish barbarians or something like that.

Sant, you will have noticed, joined the word "security" to the hip of independence. Not content with summoning up the spectre of losing our independence, he seems to want to bolster the fear by raising concerns about security. For all the world, you`d think that we had an army, air-force and navy that is capable of driving off the foe and ensuring that we can stand alone in the face of any enemy.

Balderdash. A platoon of adequately trained mercenaries armed with a few decent weapons could take over the country within minutes of any mad dictator taking a fancy to us, so we don`t have any security to speak of and I`m not being insulting of our armed forces when I say this. For Heaven`s sake, Bondi`s Babes almost did it and all they had was a camera and some chutzpah.

I would feel a sight more secure in the knowledge that the EU, just a few miles to the north, has something of an interest in keeping us within the fold than I would feel if we cut ourselves loose to float about in the Mediterranean, never a particularly secure place, fending for ourselves against any fundamentalist loon that happens across us.

In the news

It seems that my little flights of whimsy sometimes hit home, prompting the worthies that were my inspiration to rise up and muster their dignity to shoot me down.

Thus it came to pass that Adrian Muscat Inglott, defender of consumers everywhere, elevated himself to his full height to inform me that I had failed to do my homework and discover that the two babes who had ordered a full set of Sidney Sheldon tripe had done so in order to fulfil an assignment set within the context of their attendance at the Faculty of Management and Accountancy.

Precisely how I was supposed to divine this, given the paucity of information on this aspect of the matter in AMI`s own column, was not explained, though this did not prevent the dear fellow from ascribing the plummeting of academic standards to my failure to investigate, rather than to his failure to give all the information.

Personally, I would pin the plummeting onto the faculty member who thought up the idea that some lit-crit of Sidney Sheldon`s efforts to denude the Rain Forest would be relevant to the pursuit of a course in management or accountancy, but that`s another matter.

Then it was the turn of my old friend Joe Farrugia, one of the main spokesmen for Malta`s employers. He said that he wondered which of the proposals submitted by the employers I.M. Beck finds `ludicrous`.

In essence, none of them, if you look at the whole thing without a sense of the ridiculous, but for Malta`s employers to come out with the idea that public holidays that fall on a week-end should not continue to be added to vacation leave entitlements, when this has been the case for so many years now, borders on the sublime, especially when viewed from the outside looking in, as I am, against a backdrop of the U-turn everyone and his brother made on the ludicrous protections the unions have when they decide to order industrial action.

What everyone seems to forget, especially in Malta where the media are still enamoured of press releases, is that public perceptions are based on sound-bites and fleeting impressions and not on scholarly theses such as the one penned by Mr Farrugia.

In other words, if the employers look like they`re being hide-bound old capitalists, then they are HBOCs, even if I know they`re not.

Who said it?

Of someone who has already figured in this column, it was said that "He doesn`t like the word `govern`. He is more of a chairman and a general manager and he looks at Malta like a commercial company".

OK, this is not going to be a competition, because it would be unfair to expect you to have this sort of thing at your finger-tips, even if I was minded to offer a prize of, say, a trip to the Caribbean, all expenses paid, for two for the first person to e-mail the answer.

It was said by one Frans Sammut, an author of no mean fame, in an interview carried in Crossroads last week and it was said of one Alfred Sant, an author of no mean fame himself.

That sort of comment, I have to say, scares the living daylights out of me.

To start with, the idea of Malta plc echoes the thought processes of Tony Blair and his GB plc and look where they`re heading, to hell in a hand-basket and no mistake.

To be going on with, Sant as an entrepreneurial type has a track record that is second to none. I`m not talking about his computer-gaming while PM for 22 whole months, where he seemed to be labouring under the impression that you could press the ESC or Reset buttons whenever you liked and start playing with our lives again.

No, I`m talking about the time he actually ran a company. It was Metalfond and he ran it all right, right into the ground.

Corrections

My source of the number of people voting for Labour at the last general elections, with something of a red face, came huffing and puffing up the hill last week to tell me that he had got it wrong, just a bit, and it was more like 170,000 people who had voted for them.

Which just made my point that the 20,000 or so who turned out on May Day even more telling, when you think about it.

Another point of correction was that the play in which Jon Rosser had been rather good was The Royal Hunt for the Sun, also written by Peter Shaffer, and I thank the good folk who e-d in to tell me and to remind me that I had been remiss in not giving due credit to Anthony Bezzina who directed Amadeus and without whom all this would not have been possible.

Very true and hearty congratulations to the dear fellow, with apologies for not doing the right thing in the first place.

Meal time

As usual, in a week where I thought I had problems filling the space, I`ve run out of the stuff, but I have to let you know where I stuffed my face, since I have been told that many people enjoy this segment more than any other.

Which speaks volumes about the rest of the column, I fear.

Anyway, this week`s eatery was D`Ico in Sliema, off Prince of Wales on the Ferries side. A short menu, very well cooked and reasonably priced, though it`s a shame about some of the riff-raff they let in to the place. I mean to say, there were people from Bologna there, for pity`s sake (for anyone who`s wondering, that`s just a small joke - they weren`t really riff raff).

Just a small cavil: the staff are perfectly friendly, but perhaps they should be less friendly with their friends and spend more time looking around to see which table needs what. Just a small hint, that, to make the place almost perfect.

Go there but book before, it was well packed last Saturday.

And if you have time between meals, trot along to the GWU Building in South Street and have a look at the paintings on exhibition there. The man with the brush is one Patrick Dalli, whose appreciation of the human form is worth some appreciation on your part.