The time is approaching when a substantial number of us will be going to the polls. Well, when I say “us”, I’m being contextually inaccurate because my local council is not up for election. Quite lucky that, as I’d have something of a crisis of conscience approaching, given as I live at the end of the village that seems to have been disowned by the council, except for parking ticket purposes. Precisely why I should vote to elect anyone to a council that hasn’t improved our lot one iota is beyond me but that’s not a question I have to address any time soon.

You can’t go around taking other people’s ideas... and claiming them for your own...- I.M. Beck

I had a glance at Labour’s electoral manifesto for the local councils and it’s moderately worrying.

Not because of what it contains, because all the proposals are excellent ones and worthy of consideration, which is in the nature of the beast. After all, Dom Mintoff’s manifesto for the 1981 election didn’t include the idea that he would be cocking a snook at democratic principles or taking a hatchet to the idea that education should be given a demolition job, for all that we should have seen that one coming given his attitude towards the University in the preceding legislature.

While on the subject of the old boy, you might want to try to take a look at the Dear Dom documentary that should be hitting the screens soon. It tries to tell the truth about Mr Mintoff, which will make a nice change from the hero-worship that seems to permeate the media whenever he’s mentioned.

What’s pretty worrying about Labour’s manifesto is that while it has a decent number of decent proposals – as many as could fit on a page and a bit, around the pretty snap of Joseph Muscat signing it with grin, anyway – there’s nothing in there about how the proposals are going to be given life when they get into power.

Insofar as that’s concerned, more of the same, then, because, on the national level, Labour have been telling us that utility rates are going to be brought down but, as to the how for that one, we’re in the dark and then some. Sargas, anyone? I don’t think so.

So when I read about how the citizenry is going to be consulted whenever some project or other is being discussed, I have to wonder precisely how this democratic feat is to be accomplished. I also have to wonder why we bother electing a council in the first place if they’re going to turn to us straightaway to take their decisions for them.

And then there seems to be this idea that when tenders are being adjudicated, a member of the public will sit in and be consulted. Again, how this will be achieved is left to our imagination. Perhaps we’ll have mini-elections if there are more than one busy-body putting themselves forward to talk about the rubbish collection tender or the lamp post painting job.

The list of “how the ’eck you gonna do that, Joe?”questions can go on and on, of course. How the ’eck are you gonna put up surveillance cameras and not impinge on privacy (more Labour control-freakery, hey?)? How are you going to decrease officialdom and jobsworthiness? How are you going to increase employment?

Actually, that last one’s a pretty good question: increasing employment is a nifty idea but through local councils? Come on, get real.

But the two ideas I liked most are the one where we’re going to get free Wi-Fi (internet Wi-Fi, according to the manifesto, like there’s any other) and how we’re going to get childcare centres sprouting like weeds.

The snag for Labour’s notion is a pretty large one, though. We already have free Wi-Fi all over the place, so what they’re saying they’re going to do has been done already. And the same goes for childcare centres. I don’t use them myself but I’m told that there are quite a few of them and pretty good they are too.

This habit Labour has of copying things and making them their own is something of which they really should cure themselves. You can’t go around taking other people’s ideas, especially the government’s, and claiming them for your own, especially if they’ve already been done. It just shows you’re a load of amateurs who really shouldn’t be trusted to play with the country.

It’s not as if this is something new. I came across a rather catchy ad for RedTouchFone recently where some shiny happy people chirp the catchphrase “Colour your lives” or something twee like that.

The thing is, it’s a pretty good lift from a Sat1 (a German TV station) ad that has the same catchphrase and the same type of shiny happy people chirping it.

I’m starting to understand why Labour are so anti-Acta suddenly. They’re lucky electoral proposals aren’t subject to patent or copyright because their free Wi-Fi brainwave would have led them neatly into the intellectual property court to answer charges of having purloined the government’s already executed ideas and tried to pass them off as their own.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20