I went along to the 2Cellos concert, opening the Malta International Arts Festival, and it was superb and then some. The things those guys do with their instruments would probably have Mozart and Vivaldi standing in rapturous applause, rock’n’rollers that these two were.
During the quieter moments, of which there were a few – it wasn’t only AC/DC or the Stones that was being belted out – I took a look around me and from what I could see the audience was pretty much the sort of thing it usually is. Perhaps a few nouveau faces, if you get the context of my using nouveau, but by and large quite the usual suspects. I didn’t spot any of the whingers and whiners who used to make snide remarks about roofless theatres and how much better it would be if the Opera House were reinstated rather than having so many millions being chucked away by GonziPN on, yes you guessed it, a roofless theatre, whine, whine, whine.
Doesn’t mean they weren’t there, of course, just that I didn’t spot them. I am willing to bet folding money on the “whine, whine, whine” not being their refrain now, though.
The Great & the Good of today, the nouveau Great & Good if you will (now do you get it?) are perfectly happy to be seen at the Pjazza Teatru Rjal, which I think it’s come to be called, quite aptly. No longer is it a horrendous waste of money, it’s morphed into a rather good performance space, perfect for Maltese summer nights.
Very soon, the same bunch will be posing happily in front of the masterpiece that is the Piano Project for City Gate, trying desperately to make us think that the whole thing was their idea
Which is what it was always intended to be, as anyone with a tenth of a brain knew, but that was then (a GonziPN then, to be sure) and this is now, when everything bad has become good and everyone is frolicking and gambolling like new born lambs, happy as Larry or as a pig in whatever it is pigs are happy in.
Very soon, the same bunch will be posing happily in front of the masterpiece that is the Piano Project for City Gate, trying desperately to make us think that the whole thing was their idea, seriously, yes, it was, just like joining the EU was Alfred Sant’s cunning wheeze in the first place.
Do you remember how every time a bus stopped or its air-conditioning didn’t work or it was 10 minutes late or caused a traffic jam, it was front page news on all the media (except in-Nazzjon Tagħna, grin)?
When was the last time you saw a story about the jolly old charabancs, can you remember? Suddenly, the darn things are no longer to be seen on every front page from Kulħadd (that epitome of astute journalistic endeavour) to this very paper; they’re no longer news. Is it because, following the rule of thumb that if it’s good news, it probably isn’t news, the public transport system has become the envy of the Western world, or is it because the moaners and their agenda have changed, developed, if you will, become no longer necessary?
“Ding dong, the witch is dead”, they chanted when the news broke that a certain British PM had cashed in her chips. They weren’t so crass when GonziPN met its bloody end at the hands of the Bright Young (young?) Thing, but they also stopped chanting “Arriva bad, Arriva bad, Arriva bad” ad nauseam.
The biggest baddest blot on the horizon, at least if you took Joseph Muscat of a few years ago at his word, was Malta’s membership of the EU.
Today, now that the sun has come up and we are bathed in Labour’s Benign Light, it is this self-same membership that is A Really Good Thing, our USP, if you like, when it comes to pawning our national identity in the interests of the State and its business partner, Henley & Wossname.
Plus ça change, mate, but not any longer the same thing, is it now?
Can you imagine the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that would have greeted the news that Enemalta was to be dissolved and its resources, including its human resources, transferred to a new company? And then, the whims and fancies of commercial operations being supreme, onwards and outwards to newer companies, even to foreign-based ones?
The sky would have darkened and the curtain of the tabernacle rent asunder, such would the fury of the workers and their union have been.
But, as I’ve already written, and forgive my reprising it, that was then and this is now, GonziPN are no longer in government, it’s Our Malta All Ours that rules the roost today, so don’t hold your breath waiting for any lines in the sand to be drawn, with the slogan “Issa daqshekk” (Now Enough!) prettily inscribed above them in Tony Zarb’s handwriting.
Times, indeed, do change. Roofless theatres transmogrify into elegant places for the New Intellectuals to hang out, the buses are running on time, a bit like Mussolini’s trains, when you think about it, and Enemalta will be knocked, kicking and screaming, into shape, willy nilly.
In a not entirely unconnected vein, the thkweaming and thkweaming until I faint (à la Violet Elizabeth Botts) model of environmental protest has developed into a less strident, and more focused, type of criticism.
Where, for example, erstwhile protestors about everything and anything used to give us the benefit of their opinion at great volume and penetrating pitch all the time, now battlegrounds are more carefully chosen: hulking great power stations threatening to hatch in Marsaxlokk within a year (or the PM and our Chinese faux ambassador’s husband will resign) do not provoke chest-beating and red faces, while the possibility of a breakwater in Sliema does.
It is, quite honestly, fascinating to sit on the sidelines observing the insouciance with which our Lords and Masters say what they like with very few, if any at all, gainsaying them. What a change from heretofore, when whatever the government said was branded a brazen lie and a load of rubbish: today, it is as if they’re reading from Moses’ tablets. Not the ones that are going to be handed over in school, of course.
For instance, as part of the circus attending upon his signature of a series of pious hopes with the Middle Kingdom, also known as a Memorandum of Understanding with China, the PM let it be known that a Chinese outfit (apparently one that is not in the World Bank’s list of best buddies) will be establishing whether a bridge between Malta and Gozo is technically feasible.
I could have let him know the answer to that for free, and he wouldn’t have needed to make us beholden to China: of course a blinking bridge is technically feasible, it’s not rocket science, bridges have been built before over larger bodies of water.
It’s being feasible in the wider, more accepted, sense of the word that’s important and in this regard, it isn’t, not according to the people at Din l-Art Ħelwa, the real defenders of our national heritage and environment.
How long have the people on the Tagħna Lkoll team been mouthing off about hedging and ministerial interference at Enemalta? It seems like aeons, or at least centuries, but years at least.
The ground has been neatly whipped from under them by a gentleman whose integrity and probity are unimpeachable, even if you adopt the journalistic standards of the gutter: Roderick Chalmers.
He’s made it limpidly clear that he had no difficulty working with the minister concerned and he’s also made it equally clear that hedging is a process fraught with difficulties, rather than being the magic bullet that solves everything, albeit only with the benefit of hindsight.
The world has changed, hasn’t it? Or not.
imbocca@gmail.com
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20