Did you see that excellent likeness of me on that rag, KullĦadd? Their respect for the truth is manifested by the way that, on the day they buried, in breach of the law, the right of reply we sent in about the lie they had published, they put up a cartoon deriding me for daring to attack their right of freedom of expression.
They don’t seem able to distinguish, poor lambs, between the right to have and express an opinion and my right not to have lies published about me. Their problem, not mine, of course, and the silver lining is that there’s now a darn good cartoon about me going the rounds. I’ve put it up on my Facebook page if you want to take a look without soiling your hands by touching the nasty little rag, even virtually.
You have to love the way Joseph Muscat’s appeasements before the elections are starting to catch up with him. He’s had to make sure, as is pretty obvious, that the hunting conservationist oxymorons are kept happy, lest they decline to support him next time around, which means that the autumn bird-slaughter season has been confirmed in its extended mode, putting at risk birds that are not allowed to be shot at.
Of course, your common or garden hunter is completely and utterly law-abiding and wouldn’t dream of shooting at anything that shouldn’t be shot at, so the raptors that soar in over the countryside in the late afternoon/early evening period are as safe as houses.
If you believe that, you’ll believe anything and you can line up to buy this rather neat tower I’ve got for sale in Paris, it’s made out of iron and steel and you can have it for a cool million euro, even less than one of our passports.
They weren’t one of the organisations that Muscat had cosied up with before the elections, so he doesn’t have to be very, very nice to them now but even the Malta Employers’ Association has been able to bask in the effect of the ‘be nice to everyone’ sun that shines out of the back of the Prime Minister’s neck.
The ‘be nice to everyone’ sun shines out of the back of the Prime Minister’s neck
The proposals that the MEA dreamed up of late have plenty going for them. They also had many going for them, in the other sense of the phrase, as in ‘going for the jugular’, because the defenders of the poor downtrodden worker thought they (the MEA and their proposals) were simply the ungodly aspirations of top-hatted bloated plutocrats whose earnest desire is to evict single mothers into the snow on Christmas Eve.
The whole point of those proposals, from what I can see, was to get the debate about exaggerated workers’ rights moving.
There’s quite a degree of reasonableness on the side of arguing in favour of preventing workers from abusing their sick leave rights, though, perhaps, the MEA went a tiny bit over the top when they included sports injuries into the mix.
There’s also a rather large dollop of difficulty inherent in defining which sort of injury or infirmity is self-inflicted: being dumb enough to lie in the sun without proper protection rendering yourself unable to put on a shirt tends to indicate that – just maybe – you’re not really fit to hold down a job. But I’m not here to discuss the pros and cons of the MEA’s proposals, suffice it to say that just as there are abusive employers there are abusive employees and it’s about time that something were done to eliminate both of them from the environment. No, what I’m looking at here is the political fallout from the proposals, in continuation of the theme I’ve started.
Apart from the predictable harrumphing and glowering by the majestic union leaders, one of whom thought it would be appropriate to invoke the “long, hot, summer” idea that had first seen the light when George Abela, not yet His Excellency, had been in danger of having his collar felt because of the way he had interpreted his brief to defend the General Workers’ Union.
This time around, it was Tony Zarb, head man at the self-same GWU, who trumpeted that if the employers wanted a long, hot summer, the union was ready to give it to them. The snag is, though, that summer is more than half over, so the best Zarb was going to get was a long, hot month or so, which rather tends to have less of a ring about it, doesn’t it?
And then when you see the carpet being neatly whipped from under his size nines by the Prime Minister, who, being a Labour premier, tends to hold sway over what the GWU does, you almost have to pity him.
And don’t go telling me that Muscat didn’t actively defuse the whole debate: his crack about the proposals being somewhat radical, or words in that sense, wasn’t a manifestation of his British sense of humour, it was his way of stopping the debate before it got embarrassing for him and his government, which has to play nicely with the bloated plutocrats.
Probably one of the zones where Muscat’s pre-election blandishments gave fruit was the Sliema-St Julian’s area.
For him to have got the swingeing majority he did, he had to have made inroads in places where, historically, the PN tended to find love and comfort.
The dear folk of the urban conglomeration where so many aspirant middle-classers, and why not, want to live are getting a bit hot and bothered at the moment because they’re feeling that they’re being targeted by people with nefarious intent.
The extent to which there’s a Romany band roaming the streets, armed with a crayon to scrawl esoteric markings next to their letterboxes is not a point which the Slimiżi are particularly interested in debating. They’re feeling that their joints are being cased and that their homes are no longer the impregnable castles that they used to be and they expect, nay, demand, that Muscat and his minister for cops, waiters and robbers (well, the latter were only his professional responsibility before he became a minister, to be fair) do something about it and do it now.
Somehow, I don’t think that the people who were screeching and yelling at poor Manwel Mallia last week were particularly impressed by the picture of him welcoming a slew of retired coppers back into the force.
By happy serendipity, the story about that was carried on “another paper’s portal” just above the story about his stormy meeting with the denizens of Sliema. If Mallia thinks that bringing in a few old cronies is going to stop the Sliema crime wave, then I’m afraid he’s got another think coming.
It’s not only Sliema-St Julian’s that had been on the receiving end of Muscat’s bouquets. Gozo also had its share of promises, promises.
Whether these promises are going to be seen as having been fulfilled by the sight of a bunch of newly-minted puliti squeezing themselves into tuxes and long dresses and having a waltz around Ġgantija remains to be seen, though I suspect that quite a few people up north have been very offended by the shambolic response to the helicopter incident a few days ago.
I mean, really, quite apart from the sheer amateurishness of not ensuring that the emergency helipad at St Luke’s Hospital was properly secured, what the heck was that press conference later? The least that the attendees could have done was make the story clear and unequivocal: who did what, when and why.
As it is, no-one now seems to have a clear idea of where the chopper was when it was diverted. I’m sure that air traffic control and the AFM were completely up-to-speed on the whole thing, don’t get me wrong. What I’m referring to is the way the story was unfolded for the journalists, with a complete disregard for clarity and consistency.
And don’t tell me it was the journalists’ fault: they’re perfectly capable of getting a story straight, when they’re told the facts.
imbocca@gmail.com
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20