So, let me get this straight.

All over the world, governments and corporations are falling over themselves to encourage people to spend in order to prevent the economy from going into further recession.

In the UK, even the unpopular Gordon Brown got it right this time round, with his reduction of VAT to entice Christmas shoppers to dig deep into their wallets. Meanwhile, high street shops have already slashed prices to bring in the customers.

With the economies of Germany, Italy and Ireland and Spain also in the doldrums, the European Central Bank continues to cut interest rates in the hope of spurring growth.

And here... what do we do? With people scared to spend too much because they are being assaulted by new taxes every time they turn on the evening news, the Gonzi administration decides this would be a spiffing time to announce an e80 million project to resurrect the Renzo Piano project. Yes, because that’s what the country really needs right now, a new City Gate and a new building to house Parliament on the site of the old opera ruins. Talk about bad timing.

When people stop spending because they are not sure about their finances, that’s when a country is in trouble. But when a government can’t seem to stop spending frivolously, then we’re the ones in trouble.

When money for the household budget is tight, the first things sensible people economise on are the “extras”. Governments, which are playing around with our money, should not be any different.

Some might argue that the City Gate/Parliament project is a much-needed investment to beautify our capital city, but many people are not seeing it in these terms. Who can blame them?

Why, just a few minutes ago we were being told that the country is in deeper debt than was previously thought, and that we have to make good for Enemalta’s inefficiencies with increased water and electricity rates. Heqq, sorry (we were told) there is not enough money, after all, to give you the income tax cuts we promised you during the election campaign. By the way, while we’re at it, we know you won’t mind being charged for sewage will you (because instead of a tax, we’re calling it a tariff, which has a much nicer ring to it, don’t you think?).

And, oops, we got it wrong, the sun will not shine brighter because you voted for a PN government and you are all going to just have to make sacrifices and roll up your sleeves because this is an “international economic crisis” (and definitely, absolutely not our fault). So, we think this is a perfect opportunity to make pensioners with impeccably kept older cars pay more for their car licence.

Let us say there are still enough wide-eyed, gullible people out there who swallow this line of reasoning hook, line and sinker. Perhaps they need to believe that the government they voted for is doing the right thing, because otherwise they cannot rationalise their choice. But from the widespread public reactions I’m hearing (and reading online), more and more people are simply shaking their head in disbelief. Even though they cast their vote for the PN, they cannot keep justifying the bizarre decisions coming out of Castile.

I’m sure if someone did a poll asking, “what should the government spend e80 million on?” ordinary people could come up with quite a list of urgent infrastructural requirements to make Malta a better place to live in. At the top of my list are the abysmal roads – I’m visiting my neighbourhood tyre repair guy so often, he’s starting to get the wrong idea.

There is such a thing as priorities, you know, and somehow I don’t think City Gate is one of them.



A word of advice

... to Paul Borg Oliver. When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

That infamous e-mail, which ended up in Jason Micallef’s inbox by mistake, is being analysed to death, but the more PBO tries to justify it, the worse it looks.

He claims it is perfectly natural for the personal data of private citizens to be passed back and forth between party and government, describing it as a customer care exercise to ensure that complaints are followed through. He also says that the information was from the Nationalist Party to government entities, and not the other way around.

No matter which way you slice it, what this e-mail has really exposed is a system all of us have “known” about for years – the only difference is that we are seeing it confirmed in black and white. The system whereby if you channel your complaint through the right channels (for which read “il-partit”) it will be put on the fast track.

The implications of this are staring everyone in the face, and can be summed up in one telling line in that e-mail: “Our aim to go for the integration of the respective work in the Customer Care department is to make the process before the general election a process spread during the whole legislature.

Now, let me think...what was happening “before the general election”?

I seem to remember people who were flatly refusing to vote PN being personally contacted, cajoled and sweet-talked by political activists – heck, even the Prime Minister himself told us he was on the phone on the very eve of the election practically begging people to vote.

And in return they were being promised... what? The mind boggles.

Funny, I seem to remember a slogan from long ago, “mhux pjaciri, drittijiet” (not favours, but rights) – isn’t it just too cute the way the two main political parties have so much in common after all?

Political patronage in Malta is well documented in Jeremy Boisseivain’s Saints and Fireworks written in the 1960s, and little has changed since then. The only difference is that it has become more sophisticated – whereas before people would queue outside a minister’s door for favours now it’s all done by e-mail and special Excel sheets, which are processed through PN headquarters (uff, silly me, I meant through the OPM).

You don’t have to worry about your personal details falling into the wrong hands either. After all, what could possibly happen? It’s not like someone is going to key in the wrong e-mail address and forget to double check before he presses “send”.



Macho man

A story from the Law Courts.

A young man “playfully” throws a biscuit at a young woman, which hits her in the eye.

She (allegedly) slaps him “in front of all his friends”. He reiterates by (allegedly) punching her in the face and breaking her nose.

Of course, some will say, it’s all the woman’s fault. How dare she humiliate the guy in front of his pals like that? What’s the big deal about having a biscuit thrown at you? After all, men throw biscuits to dogs all the time and they simply wag their tail.



Down the drain

But the court story of the week must surely be the one where a man flushed his wife’s diamond necklace down the toilet because she was taunting him that her lover had given it to her.

We were informed that the woman still managed to retrieve the necklace (eww). Good thing she fished it out before Austin Gatt’s sewage tariff/tax came into effect.



jcassar@independent.com.mt