It was inevitable that our Budget, designed to eradicate a growing deficit, would be met with a chorus of disapproval. All budgets are destined to. All over the rest of Europe, these choruses have been getting louder and louder as various countries introduce still more austerity measures to combat looming bankruptcy and to avoid being named and shamed by Angela Merkel, whose country, no matter what happens to it, rises, in no time at all, from the ashes and debris like the proverbial phoenix, to emerge even stronger than before. There is no secret to the Teutonic formula. It is simply that Germans and Arbeit (work) are synonymous. This is why in post-credit crunch depressed Europe it is Ms Merkel, like Brunnhilde, who is calling the shots and poor Nicolas Sarkozy has to face those proverbially fierce Gallic riots since he raised the retirement age. No, the situation in Europe is anything but rosy.

Last Monday’s Budget was as good or as bad as could be expected, depending on which end of the political spectrum you view it from.

If anyone expected a decrease in water and electricity rates, much as we hate them, they must be the types who see UFOs every other day while the elusive 10 per cent decrease in tax rates promised in 2008 before the Lehmann siblings went bust remains as elusive as Baroness Orczy’s Pimpernel. Yet, not all is lost and, despite the prognostications, there was plenty that was positive but remains to be analysed by the various experts.

There have been educational and cultural initiatives that I approve of in this Budget. The first and most important is the €15 subsidy per capita called the students’ cultural participation programme, created to encourage secondary school students to attend cultural activities over and above the ones they are entitled to free of charge. It is essential that young people broaden their cultural horizons with regard to general cultural education and this subsidy, although seemingly small, will, I am sure, go a long way to open minds and hearts.

Another potential investment in cultural education is a pilot project that besides involving teachers and students also mentions professionals in the creative industry to get together in the setting up of various projects that will open up a whole new world outside the tedium of the workaday classroom. How this is going to work in practice remains a little vague and I would love to know more about it once it is put in place.

With Malta’s future largely depending on cultural tourism, the enhancement of our main product, artistic heritage, must be enhanced to a degree that Malta must not only be a showcase of baroque art left to us by the chivalric order we were lucky enough to be ruled by for almost 300 years but that this tradition was maintained throughout our subsequent history to the present day.

This is why by 2018, when Malta becomes cultural capital of Europe, the following entities should be in place: a dedicated concert hall for our homeless orchestra, a museum of modern art that will display the work of 20th century artists whose work to date remains in storage, the renovation of the Museum of Fine Arts in South Street, Valletta along with its annex to better house our national collection of Pretis and Favrays, to name but a few, and the relocation of our public library to a more accessible location along with its enhancement to international state-of-the-art standards. These are just the main areas of concern I am pleased to observe are being addressed, albeit slowly and cautiously.

However, with each Budget I have noticed an increased awareness and commitment to culture as such despite the fact that, inexplicably, sport still seems to take priority.

It is actually a good thing that culture has been taken over by the ministry responsible for tourism or, rather, the mega-parliamentary secretariat juggled by Mario de Marco, whose responsibilities encompass the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, tourism, culture, the environment and all their permutations. From personal observation, whenever culture was annexed by the educational ministry it suffered because the education responsibilities are so vast and endless that culture ended up by playing fifth fiddle to everything else. I find the Education Ministry inexplicable in certain aspects like why there is still no change in Systems of Knowledge, which, at present, is doing more harm to culture than good. When culture is coupled with tourism, the economic aspect becomes clearer and the increased awareness as a generator of funds due to increased tourism in a roundabout way benefits each and every one of us too.

Although logic tends to reject this mentality, I find, through personal experience, that Product Malta works better. It is called putting your money where your mouth is.

Therefore, if and when the Museum of Fine Arts in South Street is revamped from top to bottom, which it sorely needs, the overriding concern is to have an alternative location in top condition ready to temporarily house the national collection so that not one day will pass where anyone, local or tourist alike, is denied access to our art treasures.

What other country the size of ours can offer what we can? Here we are the size of a small European city with no hinterland except the deep blue sea and, yet, we can offer valid and unique cultural experiences in a generally kind climate and pleasant environment. This is why there has been a €1.16 million increase in cultural budget in addition to last year’s, which had schemes, for instance, that enabled the government to purchase original contemporary works of art and be fully refunded, a scheme designed to help professional artists keep working at their art and not have to seek other unrelated jobs to survive as many are forced to do.

The ideas are excellent and the initiatives inspired. It now depends on how effectively they can be implemented that will produce the projected results.

kzt@onvol.net