How about some optimism?

To hear some people talk and to read much of what the media is intoning, things are looking down in Malta. Good news on the economic front is dealt with gingerly. Bad news, even when this is moderately so, is grist to the printing mills.

Therefore, new investment, SmartCity, Lufthansa, gets a nod, a four-day week receives a requiem. Incoming tourist numbers get a strong mention when alarmists blather about a downturn, no reaction from same blatherers to the figures for 2008, nearly four per cent up on 2007 - which was a record year.

Doubtless, they will regain their tongues and wield their pens when January's tourist arrivals fail to measure up to those in January 2008. But Tourism Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco remains bravely Churchillian, indicating that we must so conduct ourselves during the oncoming storm that people will look back next December and say, this was their finest hour. It will be if we go for really aggressive marketing and advertising. And if our restaurants provide value for money, perhaps better value for less money.

That having been said, 2009 will most certainly not be the year of the fatted calf; the spectre of lean times hovers over most of the world and yesterday we were given an indication that STMicroelectronics will be downsizing its operations in Malta, "substantially". What this means in figures is yet to be seen. The government may think it is reasonable to chip in with some form of fiscal assistance that will lessen any substantiality.

Elsewhere in the world and at times like this, the French do what the French so enjoy doing: they take to the streets and break everything up, helping their economy not a bit.

Having looked with unwarranted disdain at other countries flapping, the Germans have since joined in the panic and flung their billions at the problem; but the political marriage entered into after Chancellor Angela Merkel wrested the chancellorship from the lamentable Herr Schroeder, who is doing very well, thank you, Vladimir Putin, is threatening to dissolve.

The British, well, the evidence that everything Mr Brown touches turns to dust is now overwhelming. How it must rile him to see that while he struggles against powers seen and unseen, Mr Blair is jaw-jawing his way through lectures and all the way to the bank; assuming these financial gods continue to operate in the UK as heretofore, so to speak.

And toughy Putin, whose country's reserves have gone down by a third since the oil crisis began (cutting off gas supplies have not helped; the nose-face syndrome) has seen the price of Urals crude plummet to $45. Thus denuded, he flew to Davos and fancifully called for the US dollar to be knocked off its pedestal as a reserve currency - and replace it with the rouble, no doubt? No, no; he called them multiple currency reserves.

For their part, the Americans are throwing two trillion dollars at the problem.

Malta is not in the inner circle of hell around which many countries are spinning, even if there are some who would talk us into the gloomy go-round. Some enterprises, not many, have gone on to a four-day week but this is infinitely better than closure. Others are riding out the storm and have steeled themselves for the odd cyclone that may hit our shores. Our finance and banking sectors continue to exhibit a beacon of confidence we should all try to adopt. Industry, commerce and labour are pulling the same rope. Investment goes on. The prime minister correctly sends out optimistic signals but warns correctly against complacency - of which there is not much evidence.

Things are pretty good so far, which does not mean they will not get worse. Still, they could get better if government deals with the general perception of the public on the matter of rising energy bills - and falling energy prices. It needs to re-address the matter - before March. Outgoing signals do not tally with those coming in. The latter send out the clear message that consumers should be benefitting from the dramatic fall in the price of oil; the former are encountering poor atmospherics.

Making matters far worse is the manic method of billing employed by the provider. Whoever has come up with this must get down to a nursery rhyme equivalent so that everybody can understand the workings that finally reach the bottom line. Perhaps consumers are wrong; perhaps the provider is right, but this does not seem to be the case.

Abortion via Niebuhr?

Fr Peter's Perspective on the philosopher who inspires Barack Obama, last Sunday, was more than a little curious. 'From Niebuhr', Fr Peter told us he learned in the New York Times (incidentally, a newspaper that totally ignored the 300,000 Pro-Life March that took place in Washington D.C. two days after Obama's inauguration) - 'From Niebuhr (Obama) got the persuasion that he must not seek to implement his moral ideals, but the best for which he could muster general popular acceptance'.

This, we were told, was the reason he gave 'as his justification for opposition to homosexual marriage (it is unacceptable to the mass of his Hispanic and black electors). The same is presumably the reason for his stance on abortion...' Presumably? Fr Peter may wish to enlarge upon Obama's stance on abortion more accurately than his adverbial presumption suggests; on the other hand, he may not.

For the time being, the truth is that well before he set his eyes on the White House, Obama had adopted a personal 100 per cent anti-life position, including partial-birth abortion, for which there is demonstrably no 'general popular acceptance' in the US.

To add injury to injury, the UN Population Fund, which it is claimed has a link with China's coercive population control, will soon start to receive American taxpayers' dollars. (Ominously, it has been reported that this link, confirmed by the then US Secretary of State General Colin Powell seven years ago, has recently been erased from the department's website).

Obama repealed his predecessor's ban on federal funding for the provision of abortion services outside the US, not in the glare of publicity he sought for his instruction to close down Guantanamo, 24 hours earlier; more like a thief in the night. I wonder what Niebuhr would have said to that?

The President issued a statement promising to "reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies... It is time we end the politicisation of this issue"; which is rich, for his was not a moral decision, if he got his Niebuhr right, but a political one.

A former presidential candidate reacted strongly: "It is both sad and infuriating that in the same week President Obama extended new rights to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and began planning to release men whom we know have murdered Americans, he is preparing to sentence innocent children to death through abortion."

When Mr Obama announced closure within a year - the period has since been revisited and a longer time-scale is now in place - he asked countries to take back some of the detainees. There have been no takers, as there were none when Mr George W. Bush asked. Plus ca change...

Obama wants to be the Great Unifier, to reach "across the aisle", find "common ground". Yet, even on the economic stimulus plan he has had drawn up - without the bipartisan consensus he promised - he said he was prepared to ram it through the House of Representatives minus that consensus. "I'm the President. I won." That's what he was reported as saying by the Daily Telegraph's Tim Shipman in Washington. Natch.

The bipartisan spirit is dead in the water; it is rarely if ever alive in Washington, or anywhere in the world where democracy reigns.

Fingers crossed

And with hope and a prayer, yesterday's provincial elections may help Iraqis to enter a world as another country where democracy has started to reign. Should hope be fulfilled and prayer answered, Bush may feel justifiably proud that aside from Israel there is another country in the Middle East that allows its citizens the freedom of the ballot and, therefore, choice at the polls, and this in circumstances that are not without danger to life and limb.

The difference between yesterday's elections and those held in 2005 is the scale of participation. More than 14,000 candidates will fight for more than 400 seats on the provincial councils.

The courage of those who took part in the vote in 2005 was still required of voters yesterday, but the political landscape in Iraq has changed albeit you would not know this if you have been following BBC or, perhaps even worse, CNN.

The landscape has changed because Sunni voters who boycotted the last elections were expected to turn out in large numbers, taking with them to the polling booths loyalties that would have been pre-determined a few years ago, but no longer are.

For another, reports suggest that the sectarianism of the past has weakened and those who went to the polls yesterday intended to weaken it still further. As the result unfolds, it will not be Westminster in Baghdad, not by a longish chalk; but it will be aeons away from Baghdad under Saddam Hussein.