Oh dear, how the Lil’Elves are lapping it up. The EU Commissioner, whatever her name is, has said that the Government’s plan to hive off the shipyards is not within EU rules, which has led to a veritable deluge of wise-cracks about how Gonzi should make way for Muscat, because he knows better (yeah, right) and how we’ve lost our sovereignty and how Brussels rules the roost and now we can see what the PN signed up for.
To start with, coming in on the end, as it were, it is the country that signed up for the EU, notwithstanding the opposition put up by the MLP, convinced as it was (but no longer) that our place was out in the cold, not the PN. This oblivious chanting of the mantra “PN-this and PN-that” by the Lil’Elves, generally with supposedly humorous quotes from the PN’s electoral slogans (none of which are as funny as “Svizzera fil-Mediterran” and “Il-Vot Le Rebah” were and remain) demonstrates why so much of the country is unable to make a coherent argument. To his credit, Joseph Muscat has accepted the argument that the shipyards need to be privatised, but has this been taken on board by the rank and file of his party?
Not much, if the comments on the story about Ms Thing’s opinion about the privatisation plan are anything to go by. Incidentally, can we once and for all stop calling these people bloggers? Blogging, at least as it is practised on this web-site and in other serious web-sites, is the process of setting down coherent (well, you know what I mean) thoughts in a structured and syntactically and grammatically correct manner. From the evidence, comments appended to the various “mainstream” items (including the blogs) that appear on the site do not consist in coherent thoughts set out in a structured and ... well, you get my point.
Returning to the story, does anyone really believe that Ms Kroes (see, I do my research, eventually) has said the last word on the subject? Anyone who has bothered to follow any story percolating from Brussels knows that there are wheels within wheels outside other wheels which themselves are within other wheels, all of which have cogs and gears which move this way and that.
Which is a convoluted way, designed to irritate the Lil’Elves, of saying that there’s plenty of water that has yet to flow under our Neelie’s bridge. This will be a disappointment, of course, to all the armchair experts who latch on to pronouncements such as Neelie’s as an excuse to scream and shout and run about. Usually, there are two reasons for this: either it’s convenient for the screamer and shouter and runner about to foment a bit of doom and despondency or said screamer hasn’t actually understood much. The latter usually includes within his remarks such gems as “only in Malta.com”, imagining this to be the very soul of wit.
Now, I’m not putting myself forward as any sort of expert on matters European. Far from it. In fact, my eyes tend to glaze and roll back into my head when I am confronted by the turgid prose of a directive or other dictum wafting towards us from the sublime heights of EU Officialdom. But I know enough to be able to express the idea that just as the Italians got themselves shot of Alitalia, similar arrangements will be made. Never let it be said that the EU is insensitive to commercial realities, for all that the sandal-wearing components of society seem to think that the EU is there to provide safety nets for all, irrespective of whether they deserve it or not. There is a happy confluence here: commercial realities dictate that the shipyards have to be disposed of and the country deserves this to be achieved.
Getting back to the panic-stricken comments, here’s a beaut for you, penned by Mark Fleri, and going “Malta you gained your independence on September 21st 1964 and you lost what you fought so hard for to get on the 1st of May 2004 when you joined the EU. You are no longer Maltese you are Europeans, get used to it. EU controls our government, Gonzi is a goldfish in the ocean.”
To this particular morsel of political philosophy, I can only respond, yep, thanks for reminding me, mate, I’m European. That’s precisely what I voted for, as opposed to the frightening mediocrity of Mintoff and KMB’s Malta. If it means we have to behave like Europeans, so be it.
And then there’s A Daley and his masterpiece of pithy comment: “Oh dear! Oh dear! Another bodged job by Gonzi par idejn sodi! What did PN sign for? The chickens are coming home to roost! Lies and deceit! Iz-zejt tiela f'wicc l-ilma!” You can tell when it’s a Lil’Elf writing, of course, because of the peculiar vocabulary and the plethora of exclamation marks.
I could go on, but it’s getting late and I think I’ll pass the buck over to y’all out there, Lil’Elves and not, for you to have fun commenting. Commenting, mark you, not blogging. Blogging is what I do, much to the chagrin of many of you. You just ride on my coat-tails.
Arrogant? Moi?