Procurators for feel good on the government side have been having an increasingly tough time. Happenings on the ground, in the way by which families live and by which people earn a living, have become bleaker. The tactic of decrying the negative feelings people talk about when referring to their personal situation as being the outcome of scare-mongering by a doom-and-gloom opposition has become stale and unconvincing. When my colleagues and I discuss the problems of families we do so because we are responding to what we learn on doorsteps and in homes. It surely is more than a bit awkward to try and accuse thousands of families of having adopted gloom-and-doom attitudes.

The budget for 2007 left a much slighter impact on the popular mood than the Gonzi administration and its propagandists expected. All too soon, much of the congratulatory massaging that surrounded the budget launch got dissipated. The PN's media machine with its allies then went into a partisan overdrive of negative campaigning, which seemed to reinforce the sentiment - ostensibly written off by the governing party - that a general election was in the offing. Moreover, the whole effort achieved the aim of sidelining the budget itself, scrubbing off the public mind the supposed economic and social benefits to be derived from it.

I am one of those who were astonished by this approach. To be clear, I had right from the outset failed to be impressed by Dr Gonzi's proposals for 2007. The whole effort amounted to a book-keeping exercise. Even when considered as such, it included quite a number of areas where data, assumptions and estimates remained very much open to question. More importantly, what was missing was a valid strategic thrust to tackle the real questions that are undermining feel good over the immediate to medium term... namely inflation, competitiveness in leading economic sectors and job creation...

On the economic front, prioritised and meaningful measures to give boosts to tourism, industry and the trade sectors were either thin on the ground or ineffective. Budgeting millions of liri for priority funding on tourism and education sourced from the EU as of next year hardly betrays a committed and realistic rush to get things moving. Given EU procedures for disbursement of funds, this can hardly be done in time.

Then we had the Prime Minister shrugging his shoulders and saying that his government can do next to nothing to beat inflation, which was pathetic in the extreme. The "revelation" that the government's statistical office had committed an Lm88 million "mistake" in measuring the record deficit left by the Nationalist government in 1996 hardly improved matters.

Next in line came the fake brinkmanship over the Smart City project. Everybody in the know is aware that the Gonzi administration cannot afford to let that project go up in smoke. They made the cardinal mistake of trumpeting how good it was and they will now be obliged to accept what the Dubai investors want them to accept, on the latter's terms. People are understanding how, once again, the government has been totally incompetent in delivering on the opportunities that shape up.

On the social front, it has become apparent that the give on income tax and other rebates will not go far enough to even compensate for the ravages of inflation. Government statistics, themselves suspect, already give evidence about the steady erosion in living standards that families are enduring. They show how over the last two years and a half there has been a decline in real income per family of close to four per cent. One percentage point of this happened during the first six months of this year. To date, neither the Prime Minister nor his sidekick as parliamentary secretary on public finance have replied satisfactorily regarding this outcome.

All indications are that the relief in income tax "given" under the budget for 2007 to a range of middle-class families will not outbalance the losses in real income that such families will experience as a result of the inflation that occurred in the first nine months of this year. Meanwhile, people who will not benefit from such tax relief because their income is too low continue to face even greater burdens.

With time, citizens have been making their sums and coming to their own conclusions. They will understand that things have hardly changed so much since the summer. We might very well succeed in joining the eurozone by the government's preferred date, January 1, 2008, but we should take steps as of now to ensure that achieving that target will not mean bringing our economic and social system close to exhaustion. There has been too much hoop-la about how we are impressing the authorities in Brussels with our budgetary "achievements", without enough focus on how the lifestyles of normal families are being affected by inflation and the lack of substantive job creation. The Gonzi administration seems indifferent to these issues.

Which is why the government's procurators for feel good face an uphill task, no matter where they are located. One cannot envy their assignment.