If a week is a short time in politics, then a fortnight is an age. Two short weeks ago, Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party were riding along triumphantly on the wave of popular discontentment with the botched public transport reform. It was clear that they expected that wave to carry them into office, with the disgruntled masses supporting their entry to Castille. Only it didn’t quite work out that way, did it?
Labour persists in banging on about unkept promises, without telling us what (if anything) it proposes to do to change things- Claire Bonello
The Budget presented by Tonio Fenech was quite a reasonable one in the circumstances and went down quite well with the electorate.
That left the Labour Party flailing around rather aimlessly, its loud squalling about unkept electoral promises and no tax cuts sounding rather banal. In general people do have the good sense to realise that it’s not the right time to go slashing the tax rates, electoral promise or not.
Given the choice between insisting on the fulfilment of an electoral promise which might weaken the economy, and something more suited to the current situation, rational people will not go down the path of pigheadedness.
But Labour fails to see this and persists in banging on about unkept promises, without telling us what (if anything) it proposes to do to change things.
In doing so, the PL is further reinforcing its reputation as a policy-light party, one which revels in the role of opposing government action, but which can’t come up with a realistic alternative. If it mulishly persists in keeping mum about anything policy-related, it’s no wonder that the only position we can see it occupying for the foreseeable future is that of opposition.
• The Christmas lights in Regent Street were switched on last week but we beat the Brits in the Christmas decorations department. In the last few days of October roundabouts were already adorned with plastic cribs.
Last week the Nativity sceneson our roundabouts were lit upand the Christmas shops – those mono-themed establishments where you can buy a multitude of Santa models and tinsel in as many shades are already decked out for business.
It’s just as well that Halloween was celebrated after summer because otherwise I bet that businesses would segue seamlessly from selling lilos and suntan lotion to Christmas stockings and plastic reindeer.
I know that all this decking the halls with holly is probably meant to prod us into buying stuff and boosting business, but I find the premature and prolonged ho-ho-hoing to be rather irritating.
It’s not just the incongruity of seeing Christmas decorations glinting in the October sunlight that jars, but also how the extended festive season is doing away with our sense of anticipation.
Not that long ago, there would be a lull between one celebration and the next – a period of time where people could pause, take stock, and generally follow some routine before throwing themselves headlong into another bout of revelry. Nowadays, we’ve hardly dismantled the bunting for the village feast and put away our Halloween pumpkins before we’re dragging out the giant Christmas trees.
There’s absolutely no time to look forward to the next party because it’s always party time. And there’s very little possibility of our being able to let anticipation for celebration day to mount, because we’re caught up in a constant celebration. By the time Christmas Day rolls round, it’s a bit of an anticlimax.
As one of my favourite writers, theologian Ron Rolheiser, pointed out, we have reversed the fasting-feasting cycle which used to be followed previously. Whereas before people would fast and abstain in the weeks before Christmas, and indulge on the day and after that, nowadays it’s completely different. There are so many pre-Christmas parties to indulge in that by the time Christmas Day rolls round, we’re sated, over-full and need to diet.
All sense of wonder and excitement has been beaten out of us. As for the stimulus we’re supposed to be giving the retail sector, couldn’t it just be a case of buying the same amount of stuff over a longer period of time?
Just because we’re being visually assaulted with Santa Claus models in shop windows from the end of September, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll buy more of them. If you want to buy a hanging Santa, you’ll just go out and get the one and not buy 10 simply because they’re available half-way through summer. I should think it more likely that people will be fed up to the gills of seeing festive ware out of season for months on end.
So packing the shops with forests of plastic fir trees and assorted baubles isn’t going to be such a shot in the arm for the economy, but just another annoying – and unsuccessful – sales tactic. As I walk past the shops playing Christmas carols on a loop a good two months before Christmas, I can’t help thinking that it wasn’t the Grinch who stole Christmas, but the shops just made us sick of it – before it’s even here.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt