From Mr V. Spiteri

Hearing the Leader of the Opposition’s criticism of the 2006 budget, I despair. Dr Sant seems to be astonishingly naive, or ignorant, of what is happening in the world around us.

Neither Dr Gonzi nor Dr Sant can do anything about the hike in oil prices. Dr Sant tells us he was so clever that he could see that the prices of oil were going up. He seems to assume that the professionals in the City of London LIFFE (London International Financial Futures Exchange) were not at least twice as aware, with their research capability as he was with his limited experience in this field. If we are to rely on the Labour Party foolishly gambling away our money, making the fat cats of the hedging industry even fatter, then we are done for! The truth is simple – hedging as well as the futures and options markets are regarded as the riskiest forms of gambling on the market. I am therefore glad that ex-Minister John Dalli has been ousted; he is very much like Dr Sant in that he would consider gambling my money (not his) on buying “options”. Hedging and Futures and Options are regarded as 5-star gambling and I do not think that either of them has any right to squander the money I pay in taxes so foolishly. Dr Sant also pretends to be the prophet sent by the almighty, foretelling the demise of the textile and manufacturing industries in general. Of course he insists on the canard that had we not opted to join the EU, these industries would have survived. He is wrong and I have no doubt that he too knows that this was another of his ploys that failed dismally. I forecast the demise of the textile industry in Malta at least 15 years before it occurred to Dr Sant.

At a family barbecue behind the Buskett Palace, I advised three of my nephews who were employed in the textile industry to look for another job because there was no future for textiles in Malta. I had seen the collapse of the textile industry in the UK caused by the disparity in wage expectations between the affluent West and the Third World. For all Dr Sant ranting, we have to come to grips with the fact of living more and more in a world without jobs.

Technology is wiping out more jobs that can be created to compensate for job losses. We are all familiar with the car factories entirely run by robots. I worked in an aerospace factory in Denham UK on a two-shift system. The early shift ran from 6am to 2pm and the evening shift from 2 to 10pm. The machines ran themselves between 10pm and 6am. These machines could re-set themselves, replace a blunt tool, inspect each component with a motorised electronic probe, and issue ISO 9000 and HR 1000 compliance certificates. Skilled engineering jobs have been replaced by completely unskilled labour thanks to the new generation of sophisticated machining centres.

Not even farming and agriculture have escaped the effect of technology. In Israel about 36,000 Palestinians lost their seasonal job picking melons. They were replaced with the “ROMPER” robotic melon picker. This machine equipped with a probe to measure the optimum degree of ripeness works much faster and more precisely than any human can.

It is a worrying fact that global unemployment has now reached its highest level since the great depression of the 1930s. More than 800 million human beings are unemployed or under employed in the world. That figure is likely to continue to increase, as millions of new entrants into the workforce find themselves without jobs. We need the goodwill of all parties to survive in the new uncharted waters we find ourselves in. We cannot afford the luxury of the inane political squabbling that has become the hallmark of our Parliament. All Members of Parliament have a duty to the country which must come before narrow partisan interests.

Victor Spiteri

ATTARD