Isn’t it somehow significant that Labour seems suddenly to be totally engrossed with a hiccup or two that developed on the Mosta Bypass and on the delays regarding the St Julian’s bridge rather than focus on its all-important economic proposals?

For it to hope that the rumpus surrounding Michael Farrugia’s ill-conceived attack on the much-respected Albert Fenech to go away and be forgotten is understandable, even though people, let alone the PN, will not let it do so.

But to go the whole hog of demanding and getting a right of reply from Bondiplus, surrounded by the usual “We love Bondi” coverage on all fronts, and then to come up with the ludicrous joke complete with graphics and accompanying sounds which appeared on Monday is just not serjeta.

Nor to come up with Dr Sant on Sunday joking that the Labour proposals do not cost Lm115 million as Lou Bondi had them, but “just” Lm15 million, of all coincidences.

This is one of the most central issues of the election campaign and it is a pity it is being treated so flippantly by Labour when so much of its credibility is at stake. One could also argue that the government too has so far failed to come up with its analysis and has more or less left Lou Bondi out on a limb, even and especially by giving people to understand that only one of Lou Bondi’s costings, that relating to overtime, came from Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech. And there is a deafening silence from the rest of the university academe, the employers’ associations, the constituted bodies and the many professional economists one finds when one does not really need them but hardly ever when one does. That’s what the demonisation and hounding of Lou Bondi is all about.

Labour is so very right when it criticises the way projects are undertaken by this administration – with delays and cost over-runs – but then it gives grim foretastes of the same when it treats figures in such a superficial way. It used to criticise Eddie Fenech Adami for famously saying that “Lm10 million one way or another make no big difference” and here Labour is doing exactly that.

Of course, each of Labour’s proposals stands on its own so each has to be studied and analysed. To discover one is wrong does not mean all of them are so. Beyond them, there are other considerations to make.

Let’s take the public holidays proposal: Labour suggests that giving back the holidays that fall on a weekend will cost nothing since this measure was taken to encourage competitiveness and, as Malta has meanwhile slid down the competitiveness scale anyway, it’s no big deal.

Its argument is based on the premise that the wages are already being paid.

In 2008, there are five public holidays that fall on weekends. This means that if the Labour proposal were to be introduced, an employer would be paying workers for five days for which there is no production.

According to the last official statistics by NSO, there are at present some 97,000 employees in the private sector and 42,000 in the public sector. If we had to cost five days of work on the pay of a clerk in the public service at Lm80 a week (very modest when one considers that median income in 2006 was Lm96.25 per week), the total cost for the private sector would be Lm7.8 million and Lm3.4 million for government. And Lou Bondi’s costings put the price tag for this proposal at only Lm5 million.

Then there is the proposal to halve the energy surcharge. One would have to ask which oil price this is being based on - the $70 dollars a barrel or the $100? The government, even here perhaps prematurely, cost it at Lm20 million, which was around the figure given by Jason Micallef, the Labour secretary general on Xarabank. Now, wonders of wonders, Labour has got it down to between Lm12 and Lm15 million.

And that’s apart from the ethical and environmental consideration that such a measure will only increase consumption, not thrift, and that you can even benefit with Labour being in power if you heat your swimming pool in winter than if you have a two-room tenement in a kerrejja.

It is now clear that very different workings went into analysing the no tax on overtime proposal. It seems that Labour costed this measure at just Lm2 million by considering that the number of people working overtime amounted to just 6,000 in 2006. Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech has said that the government collected no less than Lm12 million in tax on overtime in 2006. So if people choose to shift to a lower pay range so as to get most of their earnings as overtime and avoid tax, this could result in a tsunami of lost revenue that Mr Fenech chided his own prime minister for being on the low side when he said government could lose as much as Lm30 million. For starters, Dr Gonzi does not seem to have included lost National Insurance contributions.

There is no space to analyse the last proposal – interest rate subsidy for first time property buyers.

Two days after the ‘frame-up’ Bondiplus programme, Labour issued a statement in which it said it could push economic growth to between four and six per cent and, more notably, that the money given to families would then circulate in the economy and increase government revenue. What economic textbooks did these people study on? For everyone knows that you cannot call up growth just like that, by deciding you want a six per cent rate (let alone the nine per cent rate Platernian demanded in yesterday’s orizzont). To achieve that kind of growth you have to let other things go, very risky and thank heavens now not allowed under euro rules.

And anyone with an A level in economics knows that in Malta some 50 to 70 per cent of increased money in circulation just flies out of the country through increased consumption of mainly imports.

Are the Labour figures so bad it has to dangle such lures to those who do not understand economics?