As the finance minister puts the finishing touches to Budget 2010 he must be yearning for Budget 2011 when, with a favourable economic wind behind him, he can knock together estimates that will win him plaudits all round – less those of the eternal grousers.

Tonio Fenech has been listening to the threnody sent up by the opposition for some time now and should disabuse it of its seemingly endless lamentations.

It will not be easy-easy because times have indeed been difficult – although not as bad as they would have been had the government not had the nous to intervene decisively and successfully in areas where jobs were threatened; had it not set up financial institutions that weathered the storm when most others across the world fell foul of it; had the training and employment agency the government established not been in place (37,000 have benefitted from training and re-training courses in the past five years); had technical institutes of quality, like Mcast, not been created; had the government not set up skills training courses; had overseas investments not been attracted to Malta by virtue of the country’s stability, and had local expansion programmes (upwards of €350 million in bonds alone and investments by Lufthansa Teknik, Malta International Airport, the Brandstätter Group, to name but three) dried up in these recessionary times.

Things are far better, pace the doom and gloom brigade, than we could have expected. More than 800 licences were issued for new businesses this year and between April and June there were more than 1,200 new jobs compared with the same period last year. Jobs, jobs, jobs are the answer and, a corollary to this, investment. Still, the perception out there has an alien sheen about it and needs to be addressed.

Fenech’s decision to cut down on public expenditure is not only wise. He should have done this last year – and the year before that. Where the cuts will come is the rub; he does not want to slow down on those projects that will beautify Malta or upgrade it as a tourist product. Alongside these cuts there has to be a major assault on tax evasion and fraudulent claims for social benefits.

Ideally, of course, he should cut back on income tax or further readjust thresholds to leave more money in our pockets for us to spend or save. He has no intention to do so; perhaps he can revisit that decision. And for my penn’worth, why not make any pension that is not supplemented by other income, tax free?

Ex libris

The sentiments expressed in Kristina Chetcuti’s delightful contribution to this newspaper a fortnight ago whizzed me back 46 years in time when I, too, looked upon bookshops as secular places of worship.

Row upon row of books; hardbacks and paperbacks sometimes neatly arranged, sometimes higgledy-piggledy so that to find what you want became a veritable treasure hunt; sometimes strewn any which way across a huge table; and occasionally, as I was reminded, a little bell announced your entry and a member of staff asked, ever so quietly, whether you needed any help? Often, two or three hours would pass before a little old lady informed you it was time for lunch; do you mind if you call again?

In the early 1960s I remember contacting my late brother-in-law, Denis, when I was serving in Germany; how great it would be, I wrote him, if we started a bookshop together; not just any bookshop, I had pointed out at the time, but a place where customers could enter a space crammed with ‘other men’s flowers’; but not only.

The place would also be a coffee house, ye-oldish type, and the smell of books would mingle with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee; people could sit around, leaf through whatever took their fancy; and for those who wished to peruse in silence, a reading room, too, and a newspaper and magazine section in another room (it was to be a huge shop).

There would be coffee table books on coffee tables with space for Mocca-sipping and everywhere customers could browse through unpretentious soft covers and prestigious hardbacks; books on art, religion and history, biographies, dissident literature, drama – drama-drama, social drama, comedy-drama – and poetry, from Chaucer through Shakespeare to Clive James; and there would be a copy of every Folio Society edition; in the background, endless melodies provided by Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven and scores of Vivaldi – all gently piped around the bookstore. Music would be on sale, too; books, music, coffee, bliss.

“We would not”, I told him, “make much money; die paupers perhaps”. Denis cherished the idea of books and music and coffee and lounging around, but baulked at the idea of a garret-like income in plush surroundings, which was sensible of him. It was a nice dream at a moment in time when a Queen’s loyal soldier learned that President John F. Kennedy had sent the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev an ultimatum over Cuba, Nato was on alert and the US President months away from his assassination.

Distasteful Vodafone

It seems to be the ill-considered opinion of Vodafone Malta that handing out free condoms during the Fresher Week at University is an exercise in communications.

Most everybody else saw it as a crude exercise. Asinine to ramble on, as its spokesman did, about what he called his company’s “focused campaign …without getting into the merits of what is best”. This sloppy and unfocused reasoning sounds zany coming from an organisation that has no problem with thinking it is best. What merits is it talking about, anyway?

One must ask, for example, why Vodafone Malta, which sells products that are not remotely connected with condoms, should feel the marketing need to dispense these free of charge (actually Vodafone subscribers paid for them) and describe these absurd antics as a “focused campaign” – focused on what?

Why Vodafone feels it has the ethical wherewithal to involve itself in what its spokesman called an “ongoing debate” that has absolutely nothing to do with any of its products; why Vodafone assumes that we are mentally challenged and incapable of reaching the conclusion that if it hands out condoms in a Vodafone Malta ‘play pack to cover all your needs’, it is doing so solely to attract custom to itself .

The company’s spokesman went all over the place to inform us that, “We think it is up to the community to draw their own conclusions and”, he went on with breath-taking irrelevance and mushy smarminess, “we have to be sensitive to the community”. How did it do that, pray? What ethical background, never mind business, did it bring to this “on-going debate”? But let me retract a part of that question; it does have a business to involve itself. It is called self-interest.

The company, went on the dismal spokesman, stressed that it “respected everyone’s point of view”. He could have fooled scores of thousands. In fact the only thing Vodafone Malta respected was its chance to advertise itself by promoting condoms in a Vodafone pack that offered ‘unlimited calls and SMSs all day and every day’. Even that sell, I imagine, is meretricious. Vodafone Malta’s subscribers must draw their own conclusions.

Oh, Alfred

How you must be turning in your grave; but then Carter received it, even Gore with some convenient lies; not to mention, but OK, I won’t refer to Yasser Arafat. So, was this a sop for President Barack Obama’s failure to win the Olympics for Chicago? Has to be; or is he being bribed into not sending more American troops to Afghanistan – at least until after the announcement? And is that why he got all het up when his commander in Afghanistan – his choice – said the war would not be won unless more troops were sent to the theatre of operations and a new strategy worked out?

The previous commander was sacked because the White House did not have confidence in his strategy; the new man to replace him would sort it all out. You would think that after 10 months in the job the new commander-in-chief would have strategy all sorted out. After all, Afghanistan was where he said the war against terror would have to be won.

With candidates shortlisted 10 days after Obama’s inauguration ceremony, naming him for the prize was something else again; perhaps he grew on the committee during the next few months.

Still, it could have waited until 2010 when enough time would have passed to judge whether the man deserved the prize or not; and this year honour a man who has been fighting for peace and democracy in Zimbabwe for years, suffering torture, imprisonment and the death of his wife. For his part, Obama suffered not an ounce of discomfort, faced no danger as he talked his way in “extraordinary” fashion (how the BBC lingered over the word) to an award he does not yet deserve.

The best line must go to a Peter Beinart. “Perhaps next year they’ll start giving Oscars not to the people who have made the best movies of last year, but to the people who have the best chance of making the best movies next year.”