Miriam Dalli, an MEP aspirant, made it pretty darn clear that, seen through Labour lenses, the European Union is “them” and we are “us” and ne’er the twain shall meet, really.
The same sort of sentiment is expressed, less elegantly, by Alfred Sant, also an MEP hopeful, and, in his case, he seems to have had a major irony-bypass. Someone who fought tooth and nail, (in)ably aided and abetted by none other than his successor, who now hobnobs with the great and the good of the EU as the Prime Minister of a member State, to keep us out, is mooching around, hither and tither, trying to scoop up as many votes as he can to be sent to the great debating shop in Brussels.
If it weren’t for the fact that it is our OUSP in the context of the sale-by-retail of our passports, I’d have to wonder whether Labour wasn’t contemplating some sort of stunt and floating the kite that it’s time to move out of Europe. OUSP, incidentally, is ‘Only Unique Selling Point’, which isn’t a tautology, before some pedant writes in to complain.
In fact, our membership in the EU is our OSP, our Only Selling Point, because unique it sure ain’t, as evidenced by the fact that Portugal and Bulgaria have started to race us to the bottom by flogging EU-entry rights.
Be that as it may be, for your common or garden Labour voter, the EU is the work of the devil and the less we have to do with it, the better. Nigel Farage would be at one with them on this.
Which is perhaps why, though not only why, Joseph Muscat and his henchmen are sticking the knife into Simon Busuttil with such gusto over the fees he earned when he was helping to pilot us towards the safe haven of Europe. The faux-fuss that Labour’s little weasels are kicking up about this is wondrous to behold and the fact that Busuttil was the face and brains behind getting us into Europe goes a long way to helping these characters feel all self-righteous about demanding to know why he got paid for his trouble.
There have been wholesale replacements of boards, advisers, chairs, functionaries and consultants
The fact that the payments, the choices made and everything to do with the thing were perfectly legal and above board, is immaterial to these types. They’re now starting to descend to the depths of pooh-poohing the choice of Busuttil in the first place because, don’t you know, they’re such luminaries of intellectual and academic prowess, all of them.
I’ve long been on record for saying that every government has the right to choose people it trusts to carry out sensitive work. If Muscat wants his various government-owned entities to run with people they trust for certain kinds of work, then that’s his prerogative and there’s an end to it. It would be nice if they were competent or knew their subject but, at the end of the day, it’s the client’s choice.
The thing is, though, there are a few issues that militate against Muscat taking the perfectly appropriate position that he only wants to work with people he trusts.
In the first place, before the elections they made such a fuss about everything being perfectly transparent and clear (as if they weren’t before but leave that aside). Everyone would be able to compete for work, they said; we’re not interested in your political allegiances, with us, everyone can play a part.
Yes, right, look, there’s a marine, go tell it to him.
With a few, very, very few, notable exceptions, there have been wholesale replacements of boards, advisers, chairs, functionaries and consultants. Again, because I’ll be accused of moaning about this, I’m not, as far as I’m concerned, the piper who calls the tune, full stop, but please don’t treat us, the G U, like morons: we can see what’s happening.
In the second place, there have been some appointments that have been as baffling as they have been cosy.
Why, for instance, was Michelle Buttigieg, business partner of Mrs Joseph Muscat (forgive the anachronistic mode of address, just making a point don’t you know...) appointed to drum up tourism in New York, when the US market is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty peripheral? If we really wanted to get the Yanks heading this way, a sight more than Buttigieg would need to be invested in, as it is, that’s 60 grand or so which is swinging in the wind for nothing.
And what say you about Mrs Konrad Mizzi, ensconced in her native China to do what, precisely, and at quite a princely stipend for it, at that? As things stand, the denizens of the Middle Kingdom don’t need much incentive to head West to spread their largesse; witness their investment in Enemalta, a weird investment if ever there was one.
Had the appointments of the two mentioned ladies followed a proper call for applications and a rigorous selection process, then one might not have had so much to say about it, if at all. A point made, while these appointments were being debated on telly, was on the lines of “what, just because they are who they are, they don’t have a right to work?”, which is a typically Labour argument, sounding reasonable until you bite into it.
Yes, they have a right to work but they don’t have a right not to compete for opportunities just because they are who they are because their jobs don’t need special trust, just competence.
In the third place, and this is particularly rich when you remember the raucous noise made about the salary hike the Cabinet had given themselves back in the day, Muscat is a fine one to talk about payments made when he’s going about appointing his own backbenchers to remunerative positions. In the old days, people occupying such positions were, in fact, answerable to Parliament, now they form part of it, which is somewhat peculiar, to say the lease.
All in all, instead of trying to distract the public’s attention from Mepa’s abandonment of its regulatory role, from the appeasement of hunters and from so many other things that are going to result in a very interesting MEP-vote pattern, Muscat would be well advised to clam up about payments made to Busuttil, so many years ago and over so many years, perfectly legally and legitimately, to boot.
After an absence of too many months, we had lunch on Sunday at Dvenue in Xagħra, an enjoyable and tasty experience. A boy’s night was also had at Krishna, while ManU were failing in their duty to beat ManC. How any ManU supporter can show his face in public these days is beyond me, but the food was fine.
Nothing from the cultural front to report on: on the evidence of Xarabank of the Friday before yesterday, the scene is in great danger of morphing into a dusty dry desert.
You can check out a blog of mine on the subject, suffice it for the purposes of this column to remark that a discussion (to the extent that ‘discussion’ and Xarabank can live in the same sentence) on culture turned into a tussle between Mary Spiteri and the bloke responsible for Ġensna (‘culture’ and Ġensna in the same sentence?) as to who was responsible for leaving her nibs out.
Oh well, all it will take is an LNG tanker and an oil tanker to collide in Marsaxlokk while the fireworks are going off and the point will be moot and no mistake.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20