I quote, as this column is supposed to, from some medium or other, which was, itself, quoting "Opposition Leader Alfred Sant" who (had) "expressed disappointment over yesterday's meeting of the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development, saying the issue of deteriorating living standards was not addressed".

The medium concerned went on to write that "Dr Sant told a press conference that the MCESD had been expected to come out with proposals over how there could be better control over rising prices. He insisted that not all the price increases could be explained by the rising international price of oil or cereals".

Just to put a neat little book-end at the other end of that quote, I shall, for the record, as one does, unquote, so you'll know I'm not quoting anymore.

The MCESD to which our hero was referring is the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development, which is a forum at which the great and good of the country attend to discuss matters of great pith and moment. I was privileged to attend one of their meetings recently, in my "real life" as it were, and I don't think I will be found guilty of revealing state secrets when I say that the discussion was constructive and the positions taken reasonable. And the members are, in fact, pretty substantial folk.

I also noticed they had cookies and pastries available and I am told they were good cookies and pastries, apparently served up in honour of yours truly, who being on a no-carb kick, thanks to Mona, was unable to verify the claim.

Dr Sant's comment about the MCESD was not made in the context of the meeting at which I was present, so I am free to give you my tuppence ha'penny worth of wisdom about it (the comment, I mean).

You will recall that the meeting about which Dr Sant was having a bit of a whine had been convened in order to discuss the cost of living and you will also recall that, at the end of the meeting, the general consensus was that a) there's not much that can be done locally about imported price rises and b) there was more of a perception about the loftiness of the cost of living than there was substance to it. Now this is very inconvenient to Dr Sant and his mates, who have been going on and on and on and on about how the populace at large is being crushed by the enormous weight of the cost of making ends meet and how the uncaring plutocrats on the PN only have eyes for the friends of their friends' friends and their well-being, leaving the plebs to fend for themselves. The representatives of civic society have made it pretty darn clear that this is not quite the case, though, which rather leaves Dr Sant twisting in the wind, ever so slightly.

Never one to let inconvenient things such as facts get in the way of his political agenda, Doctor Alfred Sant swung himself into action, pooh-poohing the MCESD into what he hoped would be oblivion by remarking, without even a trace of a tongue implanted in his cheek, that he would have thought that they would have come up with solutions.

"But what to?" one has to ask, given that the problem, such as it is, is imported and one to which the solution is not exactly within the PM's gift. Not to put too fine a point on it, if the price of oil and cereals is the problem, and we don't produce any of these commodities within our shores, precisely what does Sant, Dr Alfred of that ilk, expect anyone here to do about it? And why, if I may be permitted a supplementary, does he think anyone will take him seriously when he mouths his "expectation" that the MCESD should have been able to come up with solutions?

That's not to say that he won't bang on and on about the cost of living, secure in the knowledge that the coffee drinkers in the morning and their tombola-playing cronies will cheer wildly when he makes his usual platidunious (and according to William Gates Esq, that word doesn't exist) not to say fatuous remarks about the way Maltese families aren't coping.

When will he learn that he can't fool all the people all the time? Come to think of it, perhaps he has, because he's been vociferously silent recently, leading to a slow-down in the nose-dive Labour's poll numbers have been showing. Finally, someone's twigged it, methinks.

Harbour cruising

I've been musing on the point for some time that there's not much of a difference, in principle, between the two main parties. This is not to say that I don't have pretty pronounced (that's two PRs in a row) about which of the two I'd rather have at the helm, and no prizes for guessing which that is, because the devil, as they say, is in the detail.

There's not much to choose in policy, then, but there's a sight of a lot to choose in how these policies are achieved. Do we want policies that change with the wind, endless preaching about "zero tolerance for corruption" (and a track record of having done sweet nowt about it when able to protest about corruption when your party was in government) and equally endless (Equally endless? Surely that's a redundancy to end all redundancies) statements of the obvious without concrete solutions being proposed at the same time?

Or do we want to give the current lot a few more years to consolidate the situation? Like it or not (and if you're a certain type of political beast, you don't) tourism is on the mend, foreign investment is going OK and then some, employment is in good shape, the euro introduction looks like it's on track and, generally speaking, the country isn't in bad nick, over all.

There's plenty that can be improved, of course. The roads are still in need of more EU-dosh poured into them, though they're not anywhere near as bad as they used to be, especially when we endured the penny-pinching of Dom Mintoff's day. Certain public services seem to have forgotten that the idea is to serve the public, rather than the other way round and it would be nice if we all could put our hands on our hearts and say that there's absolutely no corruption anywhere, but we live in the real world, so we don't: the consolation is that sometimes something is done about it. And, at least, we don't have violence to season the corruption, if my diminutive blonde heckler will permit me to hark back to my past.

If you'll let me mumble on with tongue inserted, though, if you need any confirmation that there's not much between the parties, consider the plans and proposals the MLP keep making all the time. Don't consider the empty statements of intention and pious hopes, such as "eliminating illiteracy", to which "duh" is the only realistic response, even when the pious hope is expressed by affable types like the new edition Micallef Stafrace.

Consider instead the plans for the Grand Harbour area with which Dr Sant and his buds came out with such a fanfare and, if you have the time or inclination, compare them with plans and proposals that have been taken out and given a brush-down every couple of years or so by the current bunch. You might find that it's pretty lucky that the laws of copyright don't apply to political statements.

That's in between having a really good giggle at the thought of one of Malta's premier developers moaning about the country being over-developed, incidentally.

Soon, we will be able to hope for a political landscape composed of pretty similarly-minded people, with the Greens to keep them honest and the rights and lefts consigned to the wilderness they so richly deserve.

Not just yet, though.

Not joking

I'm told that the story about which I reported last week, that of the earth-shatteringly important debate raging within the towers of academe about prophylactics and the automatic vending thereof, was not a hoax, as I suspected it might be.

I say this because I was directed to a website that purports to work against ladies showing their lady-bumps by the person who keeps me organised at the office which was horrifying in its fundamentalism and I was about to have a rant about it when I noticed that I was being taken for a ride. The thing is, it was so similar in tone to the hectoring stance adopted by the assorted obsessives about whom I moan and groan on occasion that I could hardly be blamed for falling for it.

Condoms, therefore, cannot be had for love or money (now there's a juxtaposition of concepts) at Tal-Qroqq, at least not out of a machine. This is not something that should trouble us, though the mere fact that the debate is on is, on the other hand, troubling in the extreme.

If the people who are able to lay down the law up there are so out of touch with reality that they don't think it's useful to provide students with the blinking things, how suited are they to running a university, I ask with all due respect.

imbocca@gmail.com

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.