What a difference one notices this week.
We have had numerous occasions where more good news keeps pouring in. Things such as road works starting in many towns, embellishment work in others, low cost airlines starting off their operation, some S50 million added on to our EU monetary intake, the Lufthansa Technik announcement, call centres coming on line, your pensions guaranteed, those under 46 years of age having also their pension guaranteed although they will work more, and probably others that I might have missed.
Then you get a contrast, listening in to One News, and the daily outbursts of gloom and doom, where One journalists keep harping on the same item, in keeping with their unhidden agenda of warping up news items.
My colleagues must put up with this situation, and more so the prime minister, who gets a microphone stuck up his face by a running journalist, giving the impression that questions are being asked. A well rehearsed play, week in week out, just wanting to pour filth on to you.
Why don’t they send their intelligent questions by email? Then they would get an answer. There is one catch in it that One TV hates. When you write your answer, it has to be printed in toto; it’s clear, black on white. The situation today is that journalists alter, cut, paste and edit in the way they wish. They skip sentences, change others, cut short others, in order to give a distorted picture that is really contrary to what you said. I did have a first hand experience on this.
The pathetic thing is that the journalist puts his words into your mouth, wraps in a question, and asks if you deny or confirm. Answers are given, but you will realise that a surgical operation takes place. They must waste a lot of time to get these interviews on air by connecting what cannot be connected.
What comes out in news items is contrary to what you say. Some MPs refuse to give interviews in this manner, and they are correct, as this is a low form of what a professional journalist should be.
Back to the good news that is going round the country. We tend to forget our old/new/newer Labour achievements, such as borrowing money from China, payable in gold, and when the price of gold went up, Malta had to pay through its nose. Remember the Russian order of ships to our shipyard, with money due never arriving. Let’s also not forget the chocolate and the toothpaste that made many a Sicilian happy.
Do you really want to vote for a party that guarantees failure and with leaders that search out for serpents? With so many holes to block, they should get the Dutch boy who saved Holland from flooding, as our history books recount.
The contrast is evident, a fast moving prime minister who is hands on, with all persons in the group backing the same man, versus an alternative leader who spends most of his time looking across his shoulder, just in case another serpent comes to life.
During my house visits, I have constantly showed the budget benefits to the self-employed. The official employing your wife/husband, with no extra cash outlay, serves a dual purpose and benefit. The first is that the spouse will get a pension, and the second is that the wage given is considered to be an expense.
This budget has a whole series of benefits that need to be repeated, in order that many of our families can benefit.
On other visits around Madliena, and in the Swieqi region, one notices the work that started on some roads, and the street lighting in other streets, that have been appreciated by the residents. In Ta’ Xbiex work on the promenade gets underway, while the residents hope that their views will not be impaired, in Sliema garbage collection will start in the mornings, in Gzira some roads have been completed, others are nearly finished. If only the Swieqi and Gharghur council get together to do up that road that links the two localities, then we are really looking up.
Sorry for the others, but we are on our way to another election victory.
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