Who is right about Malta’s beaches?

On Tuesday 3 June, the two main English language newspapers ran very different headlines about the same story. The english language Independent’s read “Four Maltese bathing spots fail EU’s minimum water quality standards”, while The Times declared “Malta gets high marks for bathing water”. Both were right. They purely chose to highlight different aspects of an EU report to major on. The Times wanted to highlight that 83 out 87 of Malta’s beaches had achieved the necessary standard while the Independent was dismayed that four hadn’t.

So who took the right line? Given Dr Gonzi’s boast that “Malta will be the ultimate Mediterranean tourist destination by 2015” the Independent did. Do you seriously believe that Cannes, St Tropez, Positano, Capri, Monaco and the like would put up with a “sea, sun and floating turds” slogan for their beaches? The MTA had better act now or was the Prime Minister’s statement just another twinkle in his extraordinary imagination?

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Russia erases political opponents – but not totally!

I have warned for a very long time that Vladimir Putin and his gang run a violent dictatorship that will silence or even eliminate critics. I have commented on the assassinations and disappearances before. But here is a less violent and quite effective way of shutting up the midget’s critics.

Last autumn a prominent political analyst, Mikhail Delyagin, appeared on a talk show and was less than complimentary about Mr Putin. When the programme was shown his remarks were cut out and technicians had digitally erased him from the screen just as a disgraced comrade might have been airbrushed out of a photograph in the good old Soviet days.

It turns out that he had been on the government’s stop list, a roster of political opponents who are barred from appearing on the State-owned television. Delyagin rightly claims that this is “an excellent way to stifle dissent”.

Nevertheless, government technicians weren’t quite as efficient as the little Prime Minister would have liked and when the programme was broadcast it was noticed that they had missed a bit. Whoops! There was a pair of black trousered legs with a hand resting on them sitting alone next to the guy with the microphone. Very funny I suppose – what a cock up! But we shouldn’t overlook the horribly serious intent either.

Putin may want the world to think Russia enjoys democracy and freedom of the press. However, it doesn’t and the world, and especially an increasingly gas reliant EU, should be warned.

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So farewell Lady Macbeth – but for how long?

Having refused to face up for weeks to the inevitable fact that Barack Obama would become the official Democratic candidate for the 2008 US Presidential election, Hillary Clinton has had finally to confront the reality of it however unpalatable that is to her and her ‘hubby, bubbly, toil and troubly’ band of mates. Sadly for them – that is those who believe that the Clintons somehow have a divine right to live in the White House – they are to be frustrated and this despite the ferocity of their dirty tricks campaign against her black opponent.

Is this the end of America’s very own Lady Macbeth? Has the world finally seen the back of Hillary Cling-on? Will the lady, affectionately known as the “Witch of White Water” by her New York constituents, now fade away to be an ex First Lady? Does she really wish her new “friend” Barack well over the next five months?

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Could I have exaggerated the state of basket case Britain?

I get a lot of e-mails and The Malta Independent on Sunday receives several letters accusing me of exaggerating the state of basket case Britain and how useless and morally bankrupt the leadership really is, of the corrupt and misguided lunatics who run the asylum once known as Great Britain.

Naturally, all readers are entitled to their opinions. So who is right? Perhaps we should take a little look at what the British press is reporting instead of reading my self-opinionated rantings. So here is a selection of the British Sunday press from 1 June 2008.

“Law on the side of the thugs” – News of the World – Red tape, ridiculous human rights legislation and political correctness are allowing yobs to laugh at the law and police. (This article was penned by a policeman.)

“Failings by social workers lead to dozens of deaths” – Sunday Telegraph – Errors by social workers, in recent years, have led to the deaths of dozens of children born into dysfunctional families. The biggest problem is that social workers often turn a blind eye to the plight of abused children because they are afraid of confronting their violent parents an official government report reveals. (Several such cases have made the press in recent years. One in question was that of a little girl whose mother starved her to death in Birmingham two weeks ago.)

“Killers galore on bail” – News of the World – One in five killers walks away on bail. Over half a million youths carry knives and last year there were 148,000 reported attacks – up 33 per cent in Labour’s decade in charge (their 1997 election slogan was “Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime” – so that’s a great success then.) There is now one knife crime every 24 minutes in the UK and only three per cent of youths who appear in court end up in prisons (which are full anyway.)

“Hero shopkeeper shot dead in revenge attack” – The People – A father of six has been shot dead days after he had successfully fought off a machete-waving gang attempting to rob his shop.

“New charges over Jersey abuse” – Mail on Sunday – A third man has been arrested for child abuse regarding a children’s home on the Isle of Jersey.

“Abuse shock” – The People – Domestic violence is soaring in Britain. It is up from 593,000 reported cases in 2006 to 664,000 in 2007. (This means that on reported cases alone the female population of Malta would have all been assaulted four times each in 2007. Moreover, it is believed that only one case in every 10 is actually reported to the police.)

“£33 million child benefit paid to foreign children who live abroad” – Mail on Sunday – 72 per cent rise over last nine months in government funding, with even more paid out in tax credits, for children who live abroad and are in no way British. (Given the state of British children the government can ill afford to lose these millions).

“Ten-year-old drinkers face crackdown by police” – Sunday Telegraph – Alcohol fuelled disorder by 10-year-olds is of epidemic proportions across the UK and the government and police are looking at new ways to confront the problem. (All previous pathetic efforts having failed miserably).

“Stabbing leaves two kiddies dead, 1 fighting for life – mum and dad held after she phones police” – News of the World – A mother attempted to murder all three of her children and succeeded with two. The father was later released.

“Jail threat to parents of binge-drink teenagers” – Mail on Sunday – New umpteenth announcement by ministers to tackle drunken violence on the streets. This one proposes to jail the parents. (Quite amazing as the government has also announced that most prisoners will be released half way through their sentence as the prisons are already full to bursting. So where are these useless parents going to be locked up? Or is the government proposing to release all prisoners after serving only 12 weeks to accommodate these dysfunctional mums and dads?)

“Cash for bad parents” – News of the World (lead story) – The government is to introduce plans to reward families with problem children by giving them £2,000 each if they agree to look after them properly. (Given the previous headline this is even more amazing – who will get the money and who will go to jail? Does the left hand of the government have the faintest idea what the right hand is doing?)

“Amazing pic of Exeter Nicky Reilly as an Arab” – The People – This headline was above a photograph of a British man who became a bin Laden devotee and tried to suicide bomb an Exeter restaurant two weeks ago.

“Too middle-class, too white to adopt” – Mail on Sunday – A very successful and financially secure married couple didn’t care about ethnicity when they attempted to adopt an Asian child but social workers did and turned down the adoption request on the grounds that the couple were too middle-class and white.

Most of these stories were repeated across all the Sunday newspapers and there were many more in a similar vein that were just too numerous to mention here.

In addition, it is however worth reporting that there was an interesting feature in the Sunday Telegraph by an educational expert. She was trying to explain why a UNICEF report last year (and to which I alluded at the time) named British children as possessing the lowest level of well-being in the developed world.

I have referred almost fortnightly to the financial ruin and moral bankruptcy that has invaded the very soul of a nation that was, without doubt, the most respected in the world less than a 100 years ago. I have been warning against this apparently unstoppable ragged march towards post 1960 red brick university left wing and politically correct stupidity in the British press for 20 years. In 2002, I wrote the Saturday Essay for the Daily Mail and said as much. My e-mail was jammed with over 3,000 e-mails agreeing with me, and none against.

Apparently, the British press, if it can be dragged away from shallow celebrity for a few column inches, is now waking up to this state of affairs. A state made all the worse by the complete incompetence and moral corruption of the Labour government which has overseen the worst ever decline in the nation’s history over the last decade.

Of course none of this is helped by an economic recession that I predicted would be serious when I wrote at the beginning of the year, “In the UK, the economy, which is 80 per cent driven by consumer spend, looks particularly vulnerable as a result. The solid foundations that were so painfully put in place during the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher have been frittered away by Gordon Brown over a disastrous decade at the Treasury. The British economy has been booming on consumer spend, caused by increased equity in homes, brought about by galloping house price inflation due to a shortage of the same, rather than by the creation of real wealth.’

Last week The International Herald Tribune seemed to agree when it commented, “The British economy is one of the hardest hit in Europe by credit crunch because much of its growth over the last decade came on the back of a housing boom that is now over.” In Britain, many business leaders who wrote me off as a pessimist in January are now agreeing precisely with my diagnosis.

So have I exaggerated the current plight of basket case Britain? Or is it all champagne and caviar while listening to Mozart in Hyde Park instead, as suggested by one or two readers of The Malta Independent on Sunday who visited London recently?

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