I predicted on national radio last Sunday that Opposition leader Simon Busuttil’s forthcoming visit to the People’s Republic of China will be one of the major issues up for discussion by the time our parliamentary representatives, poor overworked souls, go into summer recess.
Of course I do not take credit for the fact that the following day the July visit to Communist China by a PN delegation was already a hot potato inside the House of Representatives. Nor do I think the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader took the floor for a duel because of my retort to Charles Xuereb’s prodding yours truly as to which so-called national issues I thought we would all be discussing in the next few weeks! But it’s going to be fun. Why should Gaffarena, who seems to do well under whichever administration happens to be running things, and Zonqor take all the space on the debating stage?
It will be interesting to see how Busuttil et al will be pussyfooting around in their talks in China, particularly after the declarations and quick-fire assessments they had made of the huge Chinese investment in our energy industry. The investment has not only saved hundreds of jobs, but it has also given an incredibly strong injection to an ailing industry that was on the verge of complete collapse after the dubious professional choices made and the scandals that erupted before the March 2013 general election.
Perhaps the declaration that made the most headlines, here, there and everywhere, was Simon Busuttil’s “grave concern” that with that investment, the Chinese “now have a finger” on our energy switch. He actually and inexplicably expressed his misgivings at a time when other European leaders were queuing up in Beijing and elsewhere for investment negotiations that could help repair their own floundering economies.
Will Busuttil now go to Beijing to demand they take that finger off our switch, I wonder? He can even do it in Mandarin - 手指 – if he likes. When he was still Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, twice Prime Minister of Australia, had once greeted and delighted – in Mandarin – a Chinese delegation led by then President Hu Jintao. It made both diplomatic and economic sense that Australia’s Prime Minister-in-waiting knew the language of the country’s most important economic ally and strategic competitor. Of course, the incumbent Prime Minister at the time (2007), John Howard, didn’t know whether Rudd was ordering sweet and sour chicken or simply welcoming the Chinese delegation.
When Napoleon’s Empire spread from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the very outskirts of Moscow, French became the lingua franca and the language of international diplomacy. It was the language of Empire, as France became the world’s imperial power. The military rise of Great Britain in the 19th century and the United States in the 20th century made English the language of business (and of Empire).
In a rather juxtapositional way, on her arrival for the first time at the airport, the current US Ambassador to Malta chose to address the local media in Maltese – a gesture that quickly ingratiated her with the rest of us.
There is every possibility that Mandarin, after all, could one day be the language of world business, but hopefully not of Empire. But let’s just start with the finger – in whichever mode Busuttil would like to have it presented, while making sure nothing is lost in translation.
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Historians – love them or hate them
History is an exciting subject. The problem is that subsequent generations of historians can make it dull or interesting with their interpretations of figures and events, so it is always a question of how you judge those interpretations from your own personal point of view. There is no compromise – you either love or hate the historians you read, from your very first school years to university.
A case in point is Maltese history, which has been interpreted in so many funny and biased ways in the past that many of the legends used to fit the interpretations that are still found in new research work and, incredibly, also still believed. But of course, if you read Maltese newspapers today, as the historians have read those of the past, there can only be confusion, misinterpretation and, often, pure fiction.
Happily, this issue with diverging historians is not restricted to this tiny, polarised land. A controversial English historian, David Starkey, has recently come under fire for comparing the Scottish Nationalist Party, the SNP, to the Nazis and the Flag of Scotland, also known as St Andrew’s Cross or the Saltire, to the swastika, while claiming that Scots treat the English like Hitler’s fascists treated Jews.
In a Sunday Times interview, Starkey argued that supporters of the SNP, who stormed to electoral victory across Scotland in last month’s UK general election, are “incapable of recognizing that this is National Socialism”. Among other contentious claims, he added that nationalism for them is “much more important than the socialism, as it was in Germany”.
It is such a pity that a historian of the calibre and reputation of David Starkey has had to come out this way against a nation that is after all rightly seeking to win back its freedom and sovereignty. It is even sadder to watch him being bludgeoned – by many who rightly felt offended by his absurd claims – with such retorts as “he blurts out the silliest thing that comes into his mind on any given day”, and “Starkey has become little more than a serial utterer of bile and bilge”.
Back to us – do you still believe the Maltese National flag was a rip-off from Count Roger’s very own standard? Or that the French were ignorant, evil rulers who in their two years here spent their time only on ransacking churches? Or that the British were benevolent imperialists? Or that Mussolini loved Malta so much that he asked his wartime airmen to drop their bombs in the sea? Or that we couldn’t have become a republic without independence and free without being independent?
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Forever blowing bubbles
No, the title has nothing to do with my East London football first love. The bubbles referred to here are those that swimmers in the St Julian’s/Balluta Bay area have to contend with already this summer. Strange, small bubbles pop up with every move in the water, leaving one wondering whether it is safe to swim there anymore.
The ever increasing number of boats, from small speedboats to large local and foreign-owned yachts, particularly at the weekend, is top of the suspect list. There has even been the accusation that many of the yachts actually sail out of Portomaso, which is constantly monitored against pollution from drainage releases and oil emissions, to deposit their waste in the otherwise pristine waters of St Julian’s Bay, where one hardly ever sees a police boat patrolling to control such unfair and illegal habits by boat owners.
The small sandy beach at Balluta and the rocky right-side coast of St Julian’s Bay, including the zone known as the Exiles, offer the only reprieve from the summer heat for many people living in the area and visitors from other parts of the island.
Perhaps one needs to urgently see what the source of those bubbles are. Local swimmers cannot go anywhere else, the yachts can. If not, it is about time the bay is protected from irresponsible yachtsmen and sundry weekend sailors.
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Mount Kinabalu and Gżira
A British girl and her group of friends were deported from Malaysia for posing naked on a sacred mountain. It was revealed in court that the girl and her friends had been making a lot of noise and some had even urinated in a pond, offending tribal elders in the Mount Kinabalu area.
I honestly feel those young men and women deserved no better, but then I could hardly believe the next missive on the incident – some Malaysian officials and politicians blamed those young people’s actions for causing a deadly 6.0-magnitutde earthquake.
At more or less the same time, a group of young men were filmed walking naked at The Strand in Gżira, Malta and later posted on Facebook and the TVM website. Has any action been? I know Gżira is not exactly sacred, so we can hopefully avoid the tremors…