During the face-to-face encounter with Lawrence Gonzi on Xarabank last week, Joseph Muscat repeated his mantra that he would reduce the utility rates. According to him, people are on the breadline, not making ends meet and cannot afford to buy food or warm their homes due to the high rates.

Now I tend to take sweeping statements made by politicians and used car salesmen with a pinch of salt, so I googled “how many mobile phones in Malta?” In a report in The Times (June 5, 2012) citing the Malta Communications Authority’s annual report, it was stated that “there are one and a quarter mobile phones for every person”. At the end of 2011, there were 521,748 subscribed mobile phones for a population of 410,000. On average, each subscriber made 631 mobile calls, translating to 943 minutes.

Then I googled “how many Facebook users in Malta?” and I found that 52.94 per cent (215,340 people) of the population use Facebook and that its penetration of the online population is 89.5 per cent, ranking Malta at number 127 on the list. This means that 240,603 households have internet access and computers.

Then I googled “how many cars in Malta” and found out that, at the end of March 2012, there were 313,027 licensed vehicles and that 4,044 new licences were issued in the first quarter of 2012.

Now that’s not bad going for a country whose population, according to Muscat, can’t afford to pay utility bills or make ends meet. Pity I can’t google how many women wear those awful false nails, how many have had breast augmentation in the past 12 months and how much money is spent on colouring hair blonde or red or orange and all the other “kapriċċi” that they can’t really afford. Pity I can’t google how much money is spent on cigarettes and alcohol.

I appreciate that there are poor people who for some reason or other do not earn a decent wage or cannot find employment. However, for the rest of the population I believe it’s a question of bad priorities and bad budgeting.

People are living beyond their means and, no matter how much money one has, if not well managed and wisely used, money eventually runs out.

And you can’t blame the Government or high utility rates for that. Blame the guy who is promising to reduce your utility bills and giving you false hopes that if you vote for him you’ll have more money to spend on your “kapriċċi”. Dream on!