“Does Dr Gonzi think that we are fools” asked Charmaine Calleja (TMID, 25 October), and immediately rushed to declare that “I am sorry …… I will still vote for a new beginning”.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread and that is what your correspondent did. She should be sorry for herself, her family and her country if ever, God forbid, there is a change of government.

She claimed that Dr Gonzi’s “leadership was characterised by various unsocial measures”. It is politically immoral to say that. Is it unsocial that tens of thousands of children will in some way be benefiting from the Budget 2008? That hundreds of families of persons with special needs, pensioners, workers, young couples, primary, secondary and tertiary students, AFM members will benefit in some way or other?

Your reader ought to remember that in 1998 backbenchers of the Labour Party itself claimed that the budget that was presented by the Labour Finance Minister carried unsocial measures. Let your reader “vote for a new beginning”, as she said she would, and let her hope against hope that what New Labour did not achieve (apart from a shortlived 22-month record in government), the new beginning will.

Ronald Briffa

Fleur-De-Lys