Roamer's column

I was struck by the level-headed tone of an item submitted to this newspaper last Sunday by the senior manager, corporate communications and business development, Malta Tourism Authority. It was to the point and explained what the authority was doing, has been doing, to market Malta as a cultural centre. We also learned that the MTA was "currently collecting and collating information about events to be held in 2005 for next year's edition of the Malta Calendar of Events".

A few lines before this, we were told that the MTA's overseas offices "need(ed) to have a finalised programme to hand over to tour operators at least 18 months ahead of the date of the event" (my emphasis). This suggests, to me at least, that MTA's overseas offices should already be in possession of the calendar events taking place in the winter of 2005 and the first month of 2006. I doubt this is the case and it confirms my worst fears.

The time to collect, collate and publish information to cover events from January to July 2005 is, by the deadline the MTA sets itself, January 2004 at the latest, and even then the MTA does not reach its self-imposed deadline. July/August 2004 for 2005 is far too late. It is on 2006 that the MTA should be working at the moment. Barring last-minute changes, the bulk of the information for 2006 is already known. I know problems exist, not least a tendency on the part of organisations and people to procrastinate in sending in their "returns". These must be brought to heel. Maybe the authority lacks teeth; perhaps it should demand a few implants.

I have no axe to grind with the MTA. It has a difficult task to perform and vital objectives to achieve if it is to market Malta successfully. This makes great demands on it, but it exists to meet them. In the same way that the organisation criticises Government from time to time, sometimes rightly so, it too must expect to receive criticism highlighting any of its failures; and that for its own good and for the improvement of its product planning.

Marketing culture and the MCCA

But if the MTA attempted to explain its position, the MCCA is something else again if John J. Schranz's reaction to my piece on marketing Malta as a cultural centre is anything to go by. Dr Schranz clearly did not understand a word of it, which is surprising.

He is a remarkably intelligent fellow. His article on pages 54-55 confirms that he is extremely well read. Sadly, in the 2,000 words he wrote, he failed quite magnificently to deal with the observations I made after first looking into Kultura 21's editorial. Let me repeat the paragraph that caught my attention:

"As a country we should believe wholeheartedly in the idea that culture pays. There are huge dividends to be reaped if we manage to get our act together and make best use of our cultural assets in the field of tourism. We need to market our assets constantly, imaginatively and energetically, until Malta establishes itself as a prime cultural site, a choice destination for those whose main reasons for travelling are cultural" (the emphasis throughout is mine).

Read Dr Schranz and all he can say about my selection of this paragraph is that I failed to link the stated belief that culture "pays" to key phrases preceding/following it. Instead of answering the thrust of my argument, which agreed word for word with the paragraph in question, namely that for culture to pay, for dividends to be reaped, our cultural assets need to be marketed constantly, imaginatively and energetically, Dr Schranz went on a long holiday blinded by the intellectual sunset into which he decided to ride.

Read him. There are footnotes galore and quotes from Singer (No Perception without Memory), Flusser (Towards a Philosophy of Photography) as well as from various papers he presented here and abroad. We are told to take the term "culture pays" not as "merely the buying and selling of the so-called 'culture industry'. "Kultura 21's editorial manifestly transcended that narrow reading, rising above across-the-counter transactions to the richly metaphoric, all-embracing sense, desiring improvements on all fronts - including (Dr Schranz's emphasis) the economic. It pays to take heed... but 'it' does not 'pay' in liri".

This is intellectual narcissism. The point at issue is a simple one and it was superbly made by the editor of Kultura 21 when he made a ringing declaration which endorsed unequivocally the argument that we must sell Malta as a cultural centre. Never mind what went before and after; germane to what I wrote was the editor's unqualified acknowledgement that there are huge dividends to be reaped from selling Malta as a cultural centre and the need to market our assets constantly, imaginatively and energetically - abroad. These phrases do not merely include the 'economic'. They clasp it to the very bosom of their meaning.

Making money is good

Selling Malta's wares, be they the arts, culture, temples and cathedrals, churches and palaces, the sea-sun-sky triangle, scuba-diving or a quiet propensity for tiddly-winks is not an intellectual pursuit. In the context of Malta's tourist sector, it is the responsibility of the Malta Council for Culture and Arts (MCCA) - as indeed it is of organisations like Heritage Malta and Din l-Art Helwa - to help with the sale of the first six of those wares however distasteful this proposition may sound to intellectuals.

Having said all of which, I must refer to Professor Joe Friggieri's very courteous contribution in the correspondence columns (page 18). Would it be discourteous if I were to remark that he should not be too coy about making money? If MCCA "projects and activities have been heavily curtailed by budgetary constraints", that is all the more reason for turning in a profit when you publish a calendar in a newspaper with a readership of 120,000 (my editor will love this reference). Rake in another ten pages of advertising and you have two, three thousand more liri with which to market culture, pace Dr Schranz, more effectively.

But my heart went tick when I read that the MCCA "(was) actively seeking closer collaboration with the MTA... and it should be possible to establish new synergies between the two..." Take a footprint out of Nike and do it, or lynch the minister who should be making sure that what the MCCA seeks, it will find, including a seat on the MTA board.

Eco's echoes

The decision on an eco-contribution, euphemism for tax, has been taken. When the Opposition's finance spokesman called it a new tax "pure and simple" he was not reaching a profound conclusion and, significantly, he did not say that were Labour to be returned to power the tax would be removed. The Leader of the Opposition has already asked people to read his lips: there will be no increase in the burden of taxation if a Labour government were to materialise in 2008. Read them carefully. Observe, though, he did not say he would lighten the tax burden.

Eco's tail, such as it is, is firmly lodged inside the fiscal system. Would it not have been a firmer tail had Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech targeted vehicles that pollute the atmosphere of every corner of the island with those exhaust fumes? He could kill three birds with one stone: rope in Lm4 million a year, safeguard our health and protect the environment.

The imposition of any tax is rarely met with approval; naïve to expect anybody to rush out into the streets shouting "hurrah!" It was inevitable that a part of hell broke out when the awaited tax was announced. Inhabitants therefrom claimed with one side of their mouth that the principle of an eco tax system was correct in principle. With another side, they described the Bill as proposed "an affront to the businesses affected". They have something of a point, but not a whole one.

Government has decided to move forward on two fronts in the battle for the environment: to tax certain goods in the hope that certain products placed on the market can be returned to their source of purchase for disposal rather than indiscriminately entering, or avoiding, the waste system. Valid questions have been raised about some of the products selected for the tax. Secondly, the government is looking to a waste management system in a country where people make no distinction between one kind of waste (paper) and others, plastic, metal, glass and food leftovers. The battle will only be won after a vast struggle against a sub-culture that permeates the land.

From this titanic endeavour nobody is exempt, not WasteServ, nor local councils (on these falls the mandatory duty to set up bring-in sites) nor industry, nor state and independent schools where civic education must include Xummienu-type messages about waste management, nor the leisure industry, and certainly not the foot soldiers on whom ultimate victory depends - you and me and everybody else, the littererati. Let me extend the metaphor: we have gone over the top and are approaching the wire. The difficult bit starts now. We are a long way from the wire.

At some bring-in sites that are operating, bins are being correctly used but their location has become a magnet for discarded carpets, geysers, the odd washing machine and - would you believe it? - rabbit skins. It is clear that wardens and policemen in patrol cars have to patrol bring-in sites aggressively and be empowered to impose draconian fines on anybody who decides to turn a bring-in site into a dump.

Over-arching this war on waste there must be an advertising campaign using billboards and every prop, trick and telly. Without one, all is lost.

Wake up, Sir John

It is the opinion of pop singer Sir Elton John that there is a shortage of successful pop songs condemning the Iraqi war. "There is an atmosphere in America right now that is deadly", he told Interview magazine. "Everyone is too career-conscious. They're all too scared... Things have changed. I don't know if there's been a time when the fear factor has played such an important role in America since McCarthyism in the 1950s as it does right now."

This is the sort of patronising observation that downgrades the ugliness of McCarthyism, an -ism that saw Reds under every bed, shook the American film industry and unscrupulously ruined many of those who laboured in it. This year, presidential election year, the no longer fear-crazed industry is screening Fahrenheit 9/11, the creation of Michael Moore for whom Mr Bush is the devil incarnate.

F 9/11 received a 20-minute standing ovation at this year's Cannes film festival (demonstrating a liberal ability on the part of the glitterati to pitch in with the best of the Communist audiences when it comes to anti-establishment hand-clapping and a reluctance to be the first to stop). The film was awarded the Palme d'Or to the delight of anti-Bushites everywhere and public plaudits from not so running-scared, career-conscious personalities in the American film industry.

In Washington, senior Democrat senators and congressmen lined up to watch it and felt that, like justice, they had to be seen doing so. The lead actor and villain of the piece was the President of the United States. Moore made no bones about it: he produced F 9/11 precisely to land Mr Bush in it. This was his contribution to the election of Mr Kerry in November. In parenthesis, the Lexington comment in The Economist reminded its readers that when Moore endorsed Wesley Clarke's campaign (Wesley who?) and described Mr Bush as a deserter, that campaign collapsed.

But back to stout-hearted Elton; not only did he get the atmosphere in America wrong, he polluted it. He seems blissfully unaware that for all its failings the country is recognised everywhere for the democratic space enjoyed by intellectuals and idiots to parade their views and to call the President by whatever name they wish to label him. By stating so crassly that pop-singers in the US lacked the wherewithal whereas brave he held the banner of courage high, he offended an entire industry. Does the benighted pop-singer really believe that by giving that interview he was sticking his neck out when everybody else in the industry in America had, turtle-style, withdrawn theirs? It is more likely he was lighting a candle in the wind.

A long paragraph

As if Elton John's Braveheart were not enough, a contributor to The Times remarked last week: "Once the (sic) Pandora's box has been opened" (by whom?) "the world is far more at risk than it ever was." And "the common man is fed up to the teeth of (sic) having to witness if not be part of the warmongering miasma that has engulfed the world". And: "The common man wishes to live in peace on his relative cabbage patch without having to finance quixotic (sic) wars in countries that are of no interest to him." And: "...would the average Maltese have been delighted to march off their precious sons and heirs to the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan"? No, but suppose, just suppose for a moment, that ill-intentioned people razed St John's to the ground during a church service - or for that matter, when there was not a single soul inside - and a plane was crashed into the walled city of Mdina, there may be no delight in watching 'precious sons and heirs' marching off to war wherever, but we would as sure as hell call on the European Union to send their precious sons and heirs to do something about it. Turning to the UN would be a waste of time. Look at the speed with which it is dealing with genocide (some prefer to call it a humanitarian crisis) in Sudan. And: "For after all, does the man in the street really and genuinely care whether Saddam is in power or not?" I would have thought that the man in the street who truly matter, the Kurds and the Shi'ites in the Iraqi streets, really care whether Saddam is in power or not. And: Saddam's arrogance "can only exist as he well knows that he still commands a high level of support in Iraq". Does he now? And: "The coalition has engulfed itself in a quagmire of terrorism and strife to (sic) which only total withdrawal (my emphasis) may prevent from adversely affecting the West; however they are in it too deep now and there is too much at stake now (my emphasis). That sounds as if the total withdrawal assertion has been abandoned within the space of a few words. There is too much at stake. What precisely is at stake?