Among the good news this week is that the government is telling the nanna of all nannas – also known as the European Commission – about its review of our very-unhealthy-for-a small-island departure tax, (my view on this would be rather that governments should encourage the Maltese to leave as often as possible, with a one year stint abroad compulsory for all Maltese and Gozitans in the same way that military service is in some countries!). I have to say I am smelling the arrival of the nanna state in Malta – not so much the feeling that big brother is watching you, but big nanna.
All political parties talk like this now, even the Greens. It is the new trend, not just here but also in the other big European island, the UK, and most of mainland Europe. In some ways it is what the public asks for, as well. The machinery of state is full of holier than thou people who want to tell advertisers how to advertise (remember those yummy not-for-girls Yorkie ads?) who seem to want our every movement controlled by the state, be it where people park, how often they wash their car, what they eat and the like.
Somehow, although the big issues, like fireworks factories erected near people’s homes and the repeated experience of death around this sport, hunters in our back yards so you can’t go walking without pellets flying above you – you hope, and church festas with the most devil-like petards, are not stopped and controlled, real civil liberties seem to be going, going, gone. In their wake come heavy state direction and control. It’s odd, don’t you think, that democracy is kind of regressing to this, and that the people who are the biggest control freaks call themselves liberal?
Government does not seem to be only, or mainly, about managing the economy now. There is a new – in a way, I think, EU culturally-driven – mania and development to centralise everything but also to think that commissions and centralised bodies can regulate every aspect of human existence, and can alter human behaviour. Perhaps they can, but is it entirely desirable? Isn’t a bottom up approach as equally important as a top down one?
Even though it is good that the EU funds projects, does it have to be an administrative and expensive nightmare for it to do so? In this brave new post-EU world that nearly the whole of Europe is experiencing now, should bureaucracy and bureaucrats be more powerful and influential than those local people who have the far more important ability and capacity to create, manage and implement projects on the ground?
And, you know, criticising the EU does not mean you are anti, or it shouldn’t.
I know that a group of undoubtedly clever but bureaucratic people get together and set the parameters for a project. Then, in every country, in every locality, even if local circumstances dictate totally different needs, you have to fit those criteria and do it in the way the EU nanna state prescribes, or you will get nothing. Why can’t the nanna state EU bods trust the people down there more? Why can’t there be more flexibility and more allowances for different countries, varying cultural practices and the like?
There are many examples but I can pick two that are definitely true and not just coming from our moaning minnies hearsay culture, because I experience them myself in my other life as a Housing Authority chairman. Regarding funds to renovate government housing, somebody up in the EU decided that this could only apply to blocks of flats, as it is true that most government housing is structured in this way in the EU.
Well in Malta this is not always the case. There is plenty of empty, run-down government-owned housing in Valletta and the three cities, but much of it is dispersed: two rooms here, a kerreja there. So why should it have been difficult, not to say impossible, for us to get money for housing in this way? It is just daft. I mentioned it to Barroso when he was here, and he told his advisers to look into it, but the point is that you should not have to speak to the President of the European Commission. Wouldn’t it be easier if the EU allocated funds for housing, asked member states to put forward proposals for what was needed in their own country and then funded it accordingly, rather than centrally prescribing what everyone should want?
As it is, there is really only money for green measures (with some fiddly money for common parts of government blocks) because our housing does not fit their criteria. I am not saying green housing is not vital, but when you chair a Housing Authority where there is such a shortage of free housing that is needed for those who live only on relief or low income, where some live in danger, where many are sharing, you really do have different priorities.
The same thing happened with our Equal project, which gave young people leaving institutes training for jobs and housing and much more beyond the scope of this article. We received the Best Practice award from the other EU countries for the common sense way in which we managed it, I think. But the Housing Authority had its own funds, so we could supplement or provide – if the EU, with its mania for centrally prescribing, didn’t provide, or left out something very necessary. So it is strange; there is money for you to compare yourself to other countries and to learn from each other, but in terms of what these youngsters need, there isn’t enough funding. Which is more important – that as many kids as possible leave institutes and succeed in life, or that we have interesting workshops and meet up with the Dutch and the Swedes to compare and learn? I know where I would put my money.
The EU and governments should be less centralising and prescriptive. How can a few people in the EU understand the complexities of every country’s fostering, of the different orphanages and homes? Every country has a different history, a different culture, and I would rather see funds for a project allocated more generally and then each country saying how it is going to use these funds than have this dictated to us by big nanna EU.
Still, what are we doing, moaning about airport taxes and the nanna state? Headline news in the UK’s Daily Mail on Thursday was about people being asked to answer 53 questions before they can leave Britain and the Nuffield Institute on Bioethics campaigning or championing policing even what food parents give their children! Imagine having a good parent card like a driving licence, with penalty points if you give your kiddies a burger.
How about giving the poor some more money in a country like the UK, where food costs may spiral by 18 per cent this year? Go away, nanna state. Bring back common sense, personal freedom and responsibility too, of course.
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