Now that we are washed

All in the queue please. Some of my friends used to tell me: "You'll see, once in the EU we won't have to wait in European airports in queues with the great unwashed". I non-committedly said: "Great", although I have come across quite a few continental unwashed too. Some of them even come here to rinse their fumes in our sparkling seas mixing with authorities, splashing in aquatic gimmicks with their moonish bellies holding them perfectly afloat. The problem is that in European airports some of the queues are shorter in the great unwashed's sections than in our clean areas. So, washed or unwashed, I tend to go to the shorter queue even if my opportunism is not always appreciated. Oh to withdraw from the EU at least occasionally when I travel!

But speaking of unwashed, our cinemas sometimes host these people - local and exotic. Sometimes you look around you and wonder who has been using great economy on soap and water. The latter may be exorbitantly expensive but wait till it's privatised and I dare you go to the cinema after that! I sometimes wonder whether I could ask some cinema patrons to at least place their feet in plastic bags. Or perhaps I could ask the management to lower the air conditioning to about 40º below zero so that some people's socks do not remind me of Mount Maghtab. I am otherwise quite tolerant and never object to people invoking holy names when they experience spectacular action on screen. One must not disturb people who are praying.

Adult monopoly

The Prime Minister's inclusion of the ministry of the economy among his exciting chores was not necessarily a good idea. Of course, one must appreciate his tact, strategy and diplomacy. Indeed he never said that the economy would be solidly in concrete but just that it would be solid. With some imagination one could imagine an economy solid in the sand. Please note that I have been very polite with my choice of words.

I always believed that a separate ministry for the economy had to be set up sooner or later. You see, people are not grateful to the Prime Minister's efforts to make a success out of something he looks quite awkward at handling. But people absolutely prefer to see an economist manipulate the monopoly of the state. Otherwise they tend to try and take the michael out of the lawrence. The Maltese are indeed not particularly kind; shame on many of them!

A storm in a tea cup

I really don't understand the big hullabaloo about the long list of resigning chairmen after finding it difficult to eat kirsha with a particular minister. Kirsha or bigilla, discipline has to be exercised. And if you don't like it, right about turn; left right, left right, growlff! This country's well-meaning (but great-gaffing) administration has not understood the advantages of having a minister whom people wrongly consider as difficult to work with. I would call this a benefit in disguise. If you believe that a minister is not too warm, promote him to Prime Minister. And if no one wants to work with him, so much the better. The country could have a Prime Minister and no ministers. Look at all the ministerial salaries that would be saved!

Tourism and mirrors

When the opposition says that the country is getting fewer and fewer tourists, it may be considered by government partisans as political propaganda. The problem is that independent structures and individuals are also claiming that this year tourism is quite a brodu, if not the clearest of insipid broth. Tourist numbers simply do not grow just by out-shouting reality and becoming hoarse by yelling: "Here they come, oh here they come!" when they are not coming. Please have pity on the hysterics who place a few tourists in a mirrored room, which multiplies tourist images tenfold.

Anti-ecological journalism

I have seen somewhere a "journalist's" opinion that "better a golf course than a barren piece of land". To most Maltese, who care about the countryside especially when they see it disappearing, such opinions are ecologically horrible. I thought that everybody knew something about flora and fauna and that the "barren piece of land" earmarked for a golf course at Ghajn Tuffieha was quite rich in both. But a scribbled page is perhaps more artistic than a barren tabula rasa.

The wolf is coming

It seems to have become quite common nowadays to meet people who complain about the incapability of the government to raise anything, especially funds, to inject the ailing economy. People appear to be looking over their shoulders all the time to see if the wolf is coming, if some government or parastatal structure's emissaries are approaching to invite them to offer money to the government's coffers. More and more people are groaning that they have had it up to here with blood-letting and the ever-increasing cost of living. But people don't understand the excitement of contributing from the nose to excessive government collections. After all we have heard it over and over again that the government is only removing the fat of the Maltese. U iva, come on be a sport, if some bone marrow is removed with the fat, don't make such a big fuss about it!

The circling vultures

Each time the Malta Labour Party organises some conference, the vultures close in to evaluate, to analyse, to compare and to sniff out what went wrong. The conclusions are coincidentally always the same, conference after conference. There is a rift! There is great internal trouble! There is disagreement! There is a veritable nuclear war taking place behind the scenes of every MLP get-together. This is all exciting and worth examining very closely for the good of the nation. But the analysis of what the government is doing is of no interest to vultures. For vultures shriek that they are doing their duty. And their duty is rich in agenda. The agenda of attracting public attention away from the sinking ship in which the people have invested their all.

Slurp!

The national discussion about domestic violence has been quite interesting and useful. Real national solutions will definitely come out of it. I have even learnt some facts that I had never imagined to occur on our islands. Some men actually make their wives eat out of a dog's bowl as mental cruelty. I wonder if these men feed the dog out of the wife's plate. More must be known about this. Do some men feed their wives out of a cat's bowl or a horse's feeding bag? Above all, to be fair with men too, do some wives actually make their husbands eat out of the mother-in-law's plate?

The census

In yesterday's article entitled Lukarda And The Census, the third sentence in the penultimate paragraph should have read "It is significant to note that the early 1930s in Malta, 10 shillings could have bought five pounds (not Lm5) of beef and five pounds (not Lm5) of pork".

The error is regretted.