There are only two options open to the Prime Minister if he wishes to win the election that will give him the opportunity to achieve his Vision 2015 for Malta. To call them options may be the wrong way to go about this; only two courses better defines things, which I shall proceed to explain to Dr Gonzi directly.

The first is obvious. He and his government and the machinery at the disposal of the Nationalist Party must make certain that there is not a household on the island that has not heard about Vision 2015 and does not understand its significance.

I know this is slowly being done and the style of the brochure I received last week, qalb il-familji u l-anzjani, may well be one way to go about it. Long rigmaroles of text should be anathema. Visuals with impact need to be the order of the day. And dramatically contrasting visuals, of course, a sort of before and after approach, the government should have aplenty. Ricasoli now, for example; Ricasoli in 2015.

Grand Harbour now; Grand Harbour 2015. Schools and university in 1987; schools and university in 2015. Roads 1990; roads 2015. You get the drift. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

Naturally, you had a field day five times over last week, none more of one than last Thursday when you addressed supporters on the Granaries. You were good last Wednesday with the Labour Party journalist who 'interviewed' you. How daring of him to question you over the reshuffle you did not make - and I repeat, I cannot see why or at what stage you should have done this, but it is fashionable to bring the question up. And how neatly you turned that round to indicate that if a reshuffle were needed he should look closer home.

But the point is your hope, a trifle pious I dare say, that this election will be fought on the basis of the parties' politics; which of the two to trust, which of the two to choose as a mover, achiever or as innovator (yesterday we learned that Malta ranks second best, after Austria among the 27 EU countries, in the provision of e-Government services through its IT infrastructure), which of the two has set itself a clear course for the future - Vision 2015 - or has settled for a coarse insistence on mud-slinging à la 1995/1996. What fan was left clean, then? Only for Dr Sant to open inquiry after inquiry - how many? Thirteen? I forget - and not one found in his favour.

The larger picture, I think most concede this, belongs to you. The past three years has shown this over and over again, from the magnitude of foreign investment that has been attracted to the island to the health and education infrastructures that have been built to the general air of well-being that resides over the island; all the more reason, this last, for the emphasis that needs to be made in Budget 2008 to help those most in need and not only in terms of finance; to grant tax rebates to parents who save the State the burden of educating thousands of youngsters, who would otherwise each cost the taxpayer Lm1,400 per student; ditto to those who use private health care; to address the concern of those whose pension is their only income; to demonstrate a greater appreciation for married couples where the wife and mother stays at home to build a sound family, the cornerstone of society.

Beware the small things in life...

The second course open to you, to reinforce the first, is more obvious but its significance is currently not being recognised enough, yet it may sway the electorate unless it is addressed with a greater sense of application.

Now, I know as well as the next man, and woman, that many people are driven to the wall because they see around them too much sloppiness, nowhere more so than in road works - no, not the building of new roads, but turfing them up to lay down some cable or other and botching it up when the work is completed by leaving an untidy bruise on the surface; leaving them in an untarmacked condition when they service houses that have been standing for months.

I am thinking of poorly supervised building sites, where road dust gets in your eyes, never mind into your house when some Charlie uses a 'chaser'. This may be the fault of the local council, I know; it may even be deliberate, but believe me it is the government that gets the blame.

As road signs and signposting improve (and they have) people go into an understandable rage when they are not warned in time that something will block their route half a mile on, when they are not diverted around an obstacle intelligently. This is often because permission is given to block a street for whatever reason and no mind is unblocked enough to redirect traffic. I know, this is not primarily your government's job, but it's you who gets the blame.

There are more of these annoyances - blatantly released exhaust emissions by buses, trucks and private vehicles (ADT and, I know, the rest of us for not SMS-ing every transgression we come across) that we should not have to suffer any more. Government and local councils need to get that most irritating of all things, the nitty-gritty, right. In the absence of anything wrong at the macro-level, people correctly set much store by the micro-stuff.

...too long a waiting game

So, November and December of this year are definitely out. The Government would hardly be laying on New Year's Eve celebrations to mark Malta's entry into the euro if elections were earmarked any time during those two months. It was always unlikely that elections would be held this year; just nice to strike them off the list with such certitude.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that an election will be called during the second weekend in March or the last, the weekend following Easter Sunday. Pencil in the 8th or the 29th.

Good for Katrine Camilleri

Apart from being well merited, the UNHCR's Nansen Refugee Award to Dr Katrine Camilleri in recognition of her work on behalf of asylum-seekers is an honour to her and to the Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), whose legal team she heads. Of her courage, determination and humaneness towards the plight of these tragic figures there is no doubt - racist-driven arsonists targeted her car and her home precisely because of her strong connections with the Jesuit Refugee Services (JSR). 

The award includes a grant of $100,000 to be spent on a refugee-related project of her choice and she is wisely intending to use the money to strengthen the legal services given by JRS (to facilitate access to our courts by asylum-seekers) and to make information about them more accessible.

Dr Camilleri has made a number of good points since she was thrust into the limelight and one or two questionable ones. She maintains that "detention is a policy of exclusion", which may sound like a tautology to some, but she occupies the highest moral ground when she declares that "people in detention are locked up and treated as criminals". She was reported as saying that detention centres were crowded, often lacking basic necessities, in some cases had limited access to fresh air and immigrants had nothing to do all day.

On one matter, everybody less the criminally inclined, is agreed. There is no excuse, still less a reason, for asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants (Dr Camilleri has a tendency to blur the distinction) to be treated in any other than a humane way. When and where they are not, those responsible for acting inhumanely should be prosecuted and dealt with severely.

If detention centres are as described by Dr Camilleri they should be improved a hundredfold and one hopes that she will use part of the financial grant making certain the authorities wise up on this. There can be no valid excuse, this way on since we first started to receive our first influx of genuine asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, for basic necessities to be lacking, for access to fresh air to be limited; and none at all for those in detention to "be treated as criminals".

However, having said all this, it remains true that Malta cannot take in and retain all the asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who come to our shores; that, as Dr Camilleri reminds us, our resources are limited - therefore, I suggest, the pros and cons of detention and open centres need to be examined and re-examined in the context of these resources; that the holistic approach she correctly wishes to see adopted must itself form part of the EU's holistic approach to a situation that is, we are all agreed, an European problem. Until this happens, fair and humane treatment of those we receive must be at the very centre of the manner we handle the situation.

The numbers game

How it has changed since 1964 when Mary Poppins (probably only the over-50s remember it, but as with all films, television, videos and DVDs have brought this and most pre- and post-war productions to today's audiences) raked in all of $31 million in the United States. But the best of 1939, Gone with the Wind (with its unforgettable line, "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn!") still a classic that may be seen on our television screens, was a tremendous box-office hit for those days - over $74 million in the States alone.

In between, and in descending order, always in the States, The Sound of Music (1965 - $72 million), Love Story, in 1970, with that quotable and self-evidently fraudulent line that was the rage at the time, "Love means never having to say you're sorry" - Hollywood has much to answer for - netted a cool $50 million. Also in 1970, Airport - $44.5 million; The Graduate in 1968 extracted $43.1 million cinemagoers and in 1965 David Lean's Dr Zhivago, based on Boris Pasternak's thunderbolt novel, still excels with its photography, a highly competent screen script by Robert Bolt; not forgetting the beautiful Julie Christie playing opposite Omar Sharif and the haunting Lara's theme. It managed $100,000 less than The Graduate. Go on, work it out.

Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments were the top earners in 1959 and 1957, $40.7 and a round $40 million respectively. Surprisingly, but perhaps no, we are talking takings at the American box-office, My Fair Lady managed 32 million greenbacks. How miniscule the amounts compared with today's - what do they call them? - blockbusters.

All the films I have cited are American - did you know that? - but as Ronald Sassoon points out in his book, The Culture of the Europeans from 1800 to the Present Time (from which I have lifted the figures), "American cinema was only partly American". And it was Hollywod's strength "to attract so many talents, organise them, and provide them with the largest market in the world".

How paltry some of those earnings are compared with today's, when the box-office earnings of Mary Poppins ($31 million) may just about cover the fees of the stars. But why gawk at that? Take a look at what goes into the bank accounts of footballers before their WAGS get their hands on the lolly and splash it on perfumes, Aston Martins (for him), Jag (for her) with designer sunglasses to go with it, and million-dollar residences.

Quote...

In the revolutionary year VI (1798), as the first revolution was quietly being put to sleep by its corrupt custodians in Paris... Talleyrand had been more than usually mischievous. Replacing the Republic's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Charles Delacroix, Talleyrand also replaced him in the bed of Mme Delacroix. She was, we may assume receptive to his advances, for her husband had from some time been incapacitated by a monstrous goiter... Its successful excision by the most brilliant surgeons in Paris was a medical cause célèbre... Talleyrand's own deformity, his limping broken foot dragging along its specially designed shoe, had never been an obstacle to his success as a lover.

He believed that power and intelligence were the perfume of courtship and he wielded them with deadly charm. Mme Delacroix duly succumbed. Their progeny was Eugene, the greatest Romantic of the new age sired by the most formidable sceptic of the old."
(Simon Schama - Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution).

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