Every year since I’ve been writing this column, people expect me to write about the Budget. And every year, I don’t. The kinds of people who think the budget is life’s fascinating fulcrum sometimes ask me why. The reason is obvious, though not to them: the Budget is boring. It’s that fatal combination of accountants, lawyers and small-town politicians, crowded into a room bristling with hostility and listening to the reading-out of deadly dull facts, statistics, numbers and percentages. We’ve come a long way from the days when we waited in suspense for the announcement of the price of a tin of mackerel (“Hames centezmi u tlett millezmi!”), accompanied by table-thumping from the thug-lined government benches – but then again, we haven’t. It’s a lot more civilised, but I still can’t get over the pettiness of it all. Instead of the price of tonn taz-zejt, we have announcements about Lm50 rebates on energy-saving household appliances, tax relief on a month’s worth of childcare, and the halving of the departure tax to Lm10. Of such grand stuff is the Maltese budget speech made.

What a killer. And still, when I drove home as the budget speech was being read out, I couldn’t help noticing that the streets were as dead and empty as they are during an England-Italy World Cup Match, or the Eurovision Song Contest. People behave as though the budget speech contains the meaning of life, and then they’re disappointed to find out that it contains nothing exciting, or even remotely interesting. They should do what I do: have a hot bath while all the droning is going on, and then read about it in the newspaper next day. After all, what possible use is any budget information between bedtime and your shower the next morning? You might even sleep better. The next day, you get it all in bullet points, and can skip straight to the bits that directly concern you.

The Budget is always petty, small-minded and Lilliputian by force of circumstance – the foremost of those circumstances being that we really do live in Lilliput – because there isn’t any money for the things that truly belong in a national budget speech. One example is this: “We have budgeted Lm15 million for road-building and road repair”, or “We have allocated funds for research into how best to ensure that all Maltese homes are properly heated in the winter months, so that this country will no longer be the only one in Europe where nobody has central heating.”

The only time I discussed this budget with a politician, I told him that the only thing I am interested in, given that roads are off the radar, is what the government plans to do about the heating of homes in the winter. He said that this wasn’t on the radar, either. Fine, I asked, so you think it’s acceptable that we live in a country where only two per cent of the population can afford to keep their homes constantly warm, as opposed to switching pathetic little space heaters on and off each time they enter and leave the house – or worse, have absolutely no heating at all? I got that look that men sometimes give me when they think I’m being a neurotic and obsessive woman, but don’t dare say so, smiling tolerantly instead. But then, I find that heating homes is rarely a priority for men who spend almost all their waking hours in an office heated with an air-conditioner paid for by the company or the Treasury, while their kids do homework in freezing bedrooms and wives huddle against hideous space-heaters with giant gas cylinders sticking out of the back (after first hauling the heavy cylinders up the stairs and into position).

Ensuring that the Maltese live in decently heated homes in winter, when the temperature indoors is colder than that outdoors, is not a priority for the Maltese government. A Lm50 refund on energy-saving equipment is thought to suffice instead. This puts Malta in the wonderfully schizoid position of having the iciest homes but the most sophisticated information technology systems in Europe. We shiver in our living rooms, but we can blog. We can blog while shivering; shiver while blogging, and dodgy doctors and pharmaceutical companies love it. They are the only ones to benefit from Malta’s non-existent heating systems, with all those antibiotics prescribed for viruses that are the result of cold, damp living conditions indoors. Almost every home has its broadband connection, but no home has proper heating. Am I the only one who sees how very odd this is?

***

If I hear anyone bang on about the cost of the departure tax once more, I shall scream. The cost of the departure tax is not the point. There’s a principle at stake here: no government should grant permission to its citizens to leave the country only against payment of a tax. Even if the departure tax were to be pared down to 50 cents, it would be unacceptable. There are ugly names which may be used to describe what the government is doing when it tells us that it won’t allow us to leave Malta unless we pay it a sum of money. The most accurate of these names is extortion, and though the government – and the Labour opposition who first came up with the idea of a departure tax – may get very cross indeed to hear it described as such, the essential nature of this departure tax is precisely that: extortion. “Pay me or I won’t let you leave.” As in all cases of extortion, the victims in this case are left with no alternative but to pay, if they want or need to leave the country. The dreadful implications are not immediately evident to those who don’t stop and think about it, because Malta is an island (oh yes, oh dear) and people are forced to leave it using the strenuous and costly means of planes and ships.

Now let us imagine that Malta is a landlocked State, like Switzerland, and you can get into a car and drive out, or even walk out, at any point on the border, straight into another country. Don’t all sigh with longing, now, because it’s never going to happen, not with global warming being what it is. To be able to extort money from every person who leaves, the government would have to build a wall right round the borders, with barbed wire, electric fencing and checkpoints manned by officious types a bit like our local wardens, but with cash registers. There would have to be border patrols to make sure that nobody gets out of Malta without paying the government. “My God, those poor people!” our geographical neighbours would say. “They have to pay their government to be allowed to cross the border.”

People can’t see the departure tax clearly for what it is because nature has furnished the government with a Berlin wall that looks remarkably like the Mediterranean Sea. Only those who actually live here realise how complicated and expensive it is to get out, even for a day. And perversely, those who live here don’t realise how badly disadvantaged they are, or that the departure tax is effectively extortion, because they have no experience of living on the mainland and driving wherever they please for the weekend, without their government taking note of their comings and goings. Our government can only monitor our comings and goings because we are forced to use the port and the airport. It has used our disadvantage to its advantage, which is appallingly opportunistic extortion of the worst shoddy order. Curiously, the government seems to think that it’s just about the money, and that halving it will make us think that the glass is half full.

***

Steve Mallia brightened things up for me on budget day with his article in The Times. Clearly, he’s one of those lovely and positive people who sees the glass as half full, while I am one of those who believe that you might as well see it for what it is – half empty – and then set about finding ways to make it full. There might be some people around who are content to accept a half-full glass, and give thanks for it, but I’m not one of them. That’s not such a bad thing for humankind. The wheel was probably invented by somebody with my outlook, while the rest of the cave-dwellers upbraided him (or her) for not being content to walk: “At least we have legs.”

Steve’s article opened with the immortal words: “The government will today halve departure tax in one of a series of budget measures aimed at putting more money in people’s pockets.” No, Steve, no, no, no and no again: the government is not putting any money in our pockets, still less ‘more’ money. A more accurate wording of that sentence would be: “The government will today halve departure tax in one of a series of budget measures aimed at taking less money from people’s pockets.”

This same kind of strange double-think was apparent in the Prime Minister’s words, quoted in the same piece: “We intend to ease some of the burdens, but we will do so wisely and won’t be going overboard.” Am I missing something here? The burdens that the government plans to ease are caused by the government, and not by somebody, or something, else. It’s not a matter of “easing” some of the burdens, which implies that these burdens are caused by third parties. What the Prime Minister should have said is this: “This year, we plan not to burden the people as heavily as we have done so far.” The glass is half empty. The job in hand is to fill it, and not to persuade people that they should be happy with half a glass.

***

Is it my imagination, or is there a sudden rash of child abuse reports in the press? The latest court report is of a 27-year-old man who stands accused of raping his eight-year-old daughter and corrupting a three-year-old girl. I imagine that this is because awareness of the crime has been heightened, the police are better at dealing with it, and abuse is increasingly less concealed as a filthy secret and source of shame by the parents of the abused child (if they are not the abusers themselves, that is).

***

Poor Lino Briguglio has been dragged to court and charged with inciting racial hatred. He asked the black friends of the black librarian who has worked for 18 years at the Foundation of International Studies, where Professor Briguglio’s office is, to leave the building instead of hanging around and shooting the breeze. He was right: nobody who works in an organisation expects to be allowed to invite friends to hang around the office for company and conversation. The librarian, now the ex-librarian, decided that his friends were being thrown out because they are black – which kind of begs the question as to why his own blackness never caused offence in 18 years.

I rather suspect that it wasn’t anybody’s blackness that caused the upset, but somebody’s obnoxiousness. Whether you’re black or white makes no difference; you still have to follow the rules. If those rules include no friends hanging around the office, no difficult behaviour, and no shouting at or fighting with colleagues and bosses, then so be it. To break the rules, testing the limits of tolerance of those who work with you, and then complain that you have been sacked or reprimanded because you’re black is just more obnoxiousness. It’s like breaking the office rules when you’re a woman, and then claiming that you were sacked because the boss tried to get into your knickers and you tightened the elastic.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised the police acted with such alacrity in charging Professor Briguglio, when the case is so ridiculous and more properly belongs before an industrial tribunal. They dragged their feet for years in Norman Lowell’s case, they completely ignore the relentless racial spite of Arlette Baldacchino, and they have done nothing about Martin De Giorgio and Paul Salomone, or that nasty little man, Charles Spiteri, who cooks in his spare time. I suppose Professor Briguglio is a soft target and a sitting duck. He’s not going to set anybody’s house on fire, blog a venomous rant on the web, or urge acts of vengeance in the Internet chat-rooms, where all these sad losers congregate in a desperate attempt at punishing others for what life has done, or failed to do, to them. The glass really is half empty when Lino Briguglio is prosecuted, while that bunch of nutters claims protection under freedom of expression laws. Better not get started on that one, because I might never stop.