To be stuck in a traffic jam each morning to go to work is infuriating. The terrible driving manners, the absolute total selfishness, the sneaky use of service roads to circumvent a few metres of cars, only increases bottlenecks.
Then anger turns to desperation each time you remember that the man responsible to solve this absolute mess is none other than Transport Minister Joe Mizzi. That’s what we voted for and now that’s what we get: nothing.
This man’s only claim to fame is the departure of Arriva and, yes, the selling of kamikaze bendy buses to one of the two Sudans, we never found out which country is was, and probably neither has he. Everything else is jammed.
Mizzi is as hawkish as they come. With his staccato style of speaking to the point of incomprehension, he likes to keep his audience guessing, releasing information in instalments, on a need-to-know basis. There is clearly not much to know. We’re jammed.
This go-getter of a minister, a dinosaur from Labour past, is, to our great dismay, also responsible for the Renzo Piano project at City Gate. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to do much, except monitor the works. He promised to do just that, because he means business, you know.
He did not deliver. The deadline came and went. He blamed the Nationalists, of course, but he hasn’t done any better. Not that anyone expected him to.
Mizzi is also responsible for oil exploration, another elusive project, if ever there was one. He’s bullish there too but l-orizzont may have gone a bit too far earlier this month when it put a large photo of him on its front page next to the words: “There’s oil.” The small print further down the page said he still needs to find that oil. But the man is trying.
Mizzi is totally hands-on, which is probably why he had to fly off to Spain to see with his own eyes if the preferred bidder, who will take over public transport in January, is really up to his standards.
The Nationalist Party was aghast, said the trip “stinks” and infringed the conditions laid down in the call for “expressions of interest” issued by the government. Mizzi was unmoved, as he was unmoved when a Scottish company, which initially expressed interest, suddenly pulled out.
The CEO of McGill’s, Scotland’s fourth-largest bus operator, said they had scrapped the bid because of a lack of openness by the Maltese government.
His gut feeling, he said, was there would be excessive State interference. Now, how did he guess that?
Their Mediterranean competitors in Spain, on the other hand, had no such qualms and clinched a deal with Mizzi, details of which we do not know; in fact, we know nothing except that they start in January. We can rest assured that the public transport project is in safe hands and on track, just like the Renzo Piano project, and, yes, the Mrieħel Bypass footbridge for which, Mizzi’s ministry says, a call for another expression of interest will be issued shortly. But there were no deadlines forthcoming this time.
The footbridge, a simple steel structure roughly 12 metres high, is, according to Mizzi’s ministry, a “major project”. In other words, there is no end in sight for this project, just as there is no end to the morning traffic jams Mizzi is meant to solve.
It was the Finance Minister who first raised the alarm over the economic effects of the total gridlock on our roads. He didn’t exactly say it but, translated into real terms, it means that the Transport Ministry’s ineffectiveness is costing this country money.
The Finance Minister was kind in his words. What he should have said is that it is the government he belongs to that is costing the country money, loads of taxpayer money.
That’s the problem with socialism, that’s the problem with Labour. The government does not produce wealth, no government ever does. The government, through its own nature, hinders wealth creation. It eats away at people’s purchasing power through taxation upon which the ever-burgeoning public sector depends. The added problem with our Labour version of government is that it plunders the country too.
Labour is a two-tier government that marries sheer incompetence with expediency for the faithful
Last week, when the mask fell off the energy project involving communist-capitalist China, the Prime Minister let known that he will be providing electricity supply to all the squatters at Armier. There are 800 illegal ‘boathouses’ there and that is a lot of votes.
Everyone knows, the Prime Minister said, that the boathouse people who occupy public land illegally in Armier are stealing electricity through the public grid. Really? And we’re paying for this?
Instead of calling in the police to arrest the thieves, he’s going to install electricity meters in each illegal structure. And it now emerges that squatters in St Thomas Bay will also be getting their electricity supply, ‘temporarily’.
Presumably, if the squatters can apply for a ‘temporary service’ from Enemalta, then anyone else can for anywhere else, building permit or no building permit.
The planning authority’s compliance certificate, once a useful tool to prevent exactly these type of illegalities, has been rendered useless. This country is being plundered in return for votes.
This is the most shameful, degenerate move by this government to date and that is saying something. That is public land there in Armier, not Joseph Muscat’s.
His duty as Prime Minister is to uphold the rule of law not try to turn things in his favour, as everything else around him begins to fall apart.
So the Chinese communists want to be assured that the money they invest in the power station the PN built will be worth their money. Is this the only idea the Prime Minister can come up with to create demand for an energy supply we may not need? Thief power to satiate the investment of a communist dictatorship?
And we were all led to believe by the Prime Minister that those friendly Chinese were going to build us a breakwater in Marsamxett all for free, out of the kindness of their heart.
Naturally, we must not run away with the idea that, unlike when driving on our roads, this government does not take fast lane when it needs to.
Cyrus Engerer, the Labour MEP candidate with a suspended criminal court sentence, has just landed himself a job in Brussels and not just that. Reports say he will be taking his partner along with him.
Engerer, a Nationalist turncoat who, like so many others, has found a welcome home within Labour, was appointed in June to coordinate work between the Office of the Prime Minister and EU institutions.
It was an in-your-face appointment that came just after Engerer got a two-year suspended jail term.
One can argue that Engerer and his partner are the right men, or women (gets confusing sometimes with all this talk of LGBT rights), for the Brussels posts.
The Prime Minister likes to pick people he trusts, just like he did when he made former European commissioner John Dalli his consultant – but wait.
Half a year ago, a media house chief, Saviour Balzan, had anticipated exactly this. In one of his discordant ramblings, which are admittedly amusing, he recalled meeting Engerer and his boyfriend who, he claimed, expressed “disappointment with Malta and, more importantly, with the Labour crowd”.
According to Balzan, Engerer, who at the time was an MEP candidate, was “eyeing Brussels because he wants to leave Malta”.
When Engerer had to withdraw his candidature for the European Parliament because of the suspended court sentence, Muscat had embraced him publicly and literally. Now he’s fulfilling that happy couple’s wish and carting them off to Brussels. And we have to pay for that through our taxes.
So, every morning, as we sit fuming in our cars, we can think of happy Cyrus strolling down hand-in-hand the wide pedestrian zones in Brussels we can only dream of, taking selfies in front of the Manneken Pis, and, yes, maybe downing a pint or two of Belgian beer, just like a man would do after a hard day’s work. Meanwhile, we wait in exasperation in our congested roads on our return journey home.
Labour is a two-tier government that marries sheer incompetence with expediency for the faithful. The ever-optimistic Transport Minister, our illustrious Joey-come-lately, now tells us he has a plan for our transport problem. It is not worth the bother recalling the rest of what he said.
Malta may well strike oil by then.