SLIPPED IT

Given that the MLP’s chosen mode of communicating policy and position is by sound-bite, Facebook status or lists of desires that are called solutions (this disregard for the English language must be making Dr Johnson spin in his grave) it’s lucky that their bright boys and girls sometimes go on the box to expound their thoughts, as otherwise we’d never get to hear what they’re proposing to do to us if the electorate grants Joseph Muscat’s fervent desire

So it came to pass that the brightest of the MLP’s bright ones, Prof. Edward Scicluna MEP, no less, was on Bondi+, having a bit of a ding-dong with Tonio Fenech, Minister of Finance.  His is a thankless job because it involves taking money off us all the time, while his interlocutor (Scicluna this time) can sit back and pontificate, as oppositions always have the luxury of doing, to be fair.

The cherry came at the top, which in media terms works too, since the end of a show is the top. 

Predictably, Scicluna came out with the now-tired (really, really, tired) crack about Ministerial salaries and the increase thereto, now reversed, that the uninformed refer to as the “€500 increase”.    He probably thought it was a neat sound-bite with which to end, not being a seasoned politician.

If I were Scicluna, I’d have avoided this one like the plague, for a number of reasons. 

To start with, being a numbers man, he’s susceptible to a charge of not knowing his figures (that increase was more in the region of €370, but 500 makes for a better sound bite).

To be going on with, at some point or other, someone is going to point out the MLP’s gross hypocrisy on this whole issue.  At least two of its MPs, I’m told, benefit from precisely the same treatment as the Ministers were afforded.  These two MPs – whose names I have – benefit or benefited from a publicly-funded salary, augmented in one of the cases by a Board-membership honorarium, and from their Parliamentary Honorarium as well, in full, leading to one of them earning something in the region of €52,000 a year (yep, that’s a grand a week)

Are these two going to be asked to hand back their dosh as well, or is this handy little measuring-rod only fit to beat the Nationalists about the head with, with typically Lefty hypocrisy?

But the best reason for avoiding the subject of honoraria, from Scicluna’s point of view, is his own MEP pay-packet. 

Asked by Tonio Fenech, in riposte, what he earned, and pushed against the wall by the direct and simple question, he was forced, in weak parry, to confirm that he earns pretty much what the Ministers used to earn (I write subject to correction, because numbers tend to make my eyes glaze over) and this for a job that involves, one may put it, somewhat less of an investment in time and commitment (if the way some of Scicluna’s colleagues do their job is an indicator, anyway) than your common or garden Minister.

Touche’, to continue with the fencing metaphor, and touche’ encore, when it was pointed out that Scicluna’s rather handy pay-packet was funded by the EU’s tax-payers, not all of whom are living in an economy that has survived as well as ours, and amongst whom are, of course, Maltese tax-payers.

What price Labour’s shock-horror now, then?