Just ignore the ambjentalisti and the hunters whose opinions, though very valid, seem to over dominate our written media. Forget about the yuppies and the Nimbies who are concentrated in certain streets.

How are the ordinary Maltese, most of whom term themselves as middle class, often erstwhile Nationalist voters, the Mosta male and the Ferries female, planning to vote next time around?

I have deliberately chosen two areas of traditional Nationalist strongholds because votes are going to be lost here far more than they will in the traditional Labour strongholds in the south of the island, where the bets are still largely on a Nationalist victory, which is true for the south where Nationalists will keep more votes than in northern Malta where they will not, at least not on current perceived performance.

I believe all the surveys point to large numbers of the undecided or don’t-knows, or even the I’m-not-going-to-vote brigade! These are what we can now loosely term not working class or middle class, but Malta and Gozo’s new coping class.

This term, according to a snippet in the UK Sunday Times last week, was coined by Eghan Harris, an adviser to the former Irish PM. Commenting on this class of people who are struggling, in the UK as well as here, Alice Thomson wrote.

“These people are copers. They take responsibility for their lives. And they want some recognition that they are doing a good job paying the country’s bills.”

Do the Mosta male and the Ferries female feel they are getting this recognition? That they and their peers are actually the ones, and not our ministers, who keep this country going? The ones who have to work hard without the benefit of possible tax evasion? The ones who ensure ministers receive privileged pensions? The ones who ensure our brand new if a bit leaky hospital will be one of the best in Europe? The ones who pay for our still largely miserable roads? The ones who pay for one in five new mums to live off relief or thereabouts? The ones who pay for today’s pensioners, although their pension is pretty miserable?

And yet ministers continue to write platitudes about how good the government is at looking after the vulnerable. Most of us agree and expect that, but how well is the government looking after those who are footing all these bills? It’s very, very easy to spend taxpayers money, much, much harder to earn it and when you look at how little you take home every month even if your salary is in the Lm10,000 plus bracket, you do wonder how the coping class is coping. They get so little back from the government after all. Most send their children to private schools. Most use private health care. Most in other words do not feel they are getting a real return on their investment, in the form of the taxes they pay while the non-copers seem to be very well cushioned don’t they? Well, certainly the non-genuine ones who make up an enormous percentage of relief recipients (excluding pensioners) are very well cushioned, and may well continue to vote along traditional party lines.

But will ordinary taxpayers, Malta’s coping class, do the same? I doubt it.

These people are utterly switched off the media. They may watch a bit of the 8 o’clock news occasionally, but after a long hard day at work politics doesn’t sex them up anymore. They may read the headlines and one columnist from time to time. Otherwise they just try to cope, trying to catch up with the expenses of what have become the prerequisites of our lives, exorbitant electricity bills to survive our hot houses, regular trips to have our hair straightened, to do and redo nails, private schools for the children, a meal out now and then, gadgets galore for the children besides keeping their home reasonably up to date.

This requires two incomes normally, and an army of grandparents to help out. To have a home at all today means a mum and dad who help you get a foot on the property ladder, otherwise forget it. A recent survey in the UK actually showed that many older teenagers worry more about getting on the property ladder than anything else, more than about jobs or their education. Because, increasingly, without equity rich parents who are willing or able to help you, you simply cannot get on to the property ladder at all, an issue that will be big come the next election and bigger still in the following years.

There is more bad news according to the same Harris, which is not much comfort to the Joe Salibas and Jason Micallefs of this world and their strategy groups who are trying to read the nation’s mood and target policies accordingly. Modern society is no longer like a pyramid with the upper class at the top. It is in fact a “rugby ball with a huge middle class.” And this is very true in Malta where you have the work-hards and the don’t-work-as-hard, and the few who truly can’t work and are really genuinely poor.

So there you have it. You, like me, might be a member of the new coping class. You might have voted Nationalist since 1987 though your family roots are more left of centre, or originally true blue or Stricklandjan. You don’t really know what you want out of your political choices but you know you don’t want more of the same.

You barely follow the media and you certainly don’t read articles written by ministers. Your main focus is your children, your partner, your job and your standard of living, which is being eroded, and this quarry posing as a nation. You may not vote or not want to vote yet. But in the end you will vote for those you think might recognise your status as the coping class, might reward you for working rather than bumming off taxpayers. Why oh why are none of the political parties addressing Malta’s largest class, the coping class?

Will Mosta male and Ferries female feature in the new, now being written manifestos? Dr Josie Muscat is hinting at these Mosta male Ferries female aspirations, along with some rather more unsavoury ideas too. He is from the south but is he reading the mood in the north too? Perhaps our political parties should be doing the same.

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