Tonio Borg, what have you gone and done?

Speaking on why the new rent laws will not apply to gay couples or couples who live together, the Deputy Prime Minister apparently made his personal feelings about alternative lifestyles very obvious.

“That’s all we need!” he was reported to have said (I can just picture him bristling with righteous indignation). A few days later, when he saw the public backlash, he said he was quoted wrongly, because he never mentioned gay or unmarried couples – but he did say that the transfer of inheritance of a lease would not apply to relationships beyond the current ones protected by law. I fail to see the difference.

In any case, he still caused some ripples at Stamperija with his blunt statement that, anyway, the PN is not a liberal party but Christian Democrat. So there.

Raise your hands if any of you are surprised by this “revelation”. Frankly, the way I see it that if the Nationalist Party is liberal, then Barack Obama is a Republican. I know that the spin doctors fondly like to imagine that their party is very hip and swinging and much more “with it” than that stuck-in-the-mud Labour Party, but whom are they kidding?

Tonio Borg’s remarks have, predictably, sparked off a (not always coherent) debate about ideology and just whom the Nationalist Party really represents.

Good question.

Take your time, and get back to me on this one will you? Preferably some time before the MEP elections.

I’ll show you mine

Meanwhile, as Labour and Nationalist supporters bicker among themselves online (prodded gently along by the occasional “Back to the 80s” interview such as the one with Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in The Sunday Times), few are realising that it is futile to keep going round in circles about “who started it”.

Instead of entangling ourselves in useless argumentation about what happened 30 years ago, we should be more concerned with what is happening now.

And is it my imagination or is a new topic initiated each week to get people squabbling?

Let’s see, one week we had the Ghadira road, then the Renzo Piano project, then Alfred Sant’s article, George Abela for President. Now it’s KMB who – last time I checked – is no longer in power.

Meanwhile our “roads” have so many potholes we can start advertising Malta as being the closest thing to going to the moon. They collapse if it rains more than three days in a row. It is an unacceptable situation, so why do we accept it? We seem to have been browbeaten into submission, resigning ourselves to the fact that the Government Knows Best, and it’s OK for us to live in a country where we have to manoeuvre our cars over the occasional strip of tarmac.

This week in San Gwann (in the middle of rush hour traffic) I saw a sorry looking truck with a couple of morose men half-heartedly scooping asphalt into one of the worst craters.

On the same day I read in our sister paper that road patching was scheduled to begin “if the weather holds”. By noon it was raining again so I guess the morose men packed up their dejected shovels and went home. This patchwork approach to our road infrastructure simply begs the question of why, after 20 years of a Nationalist administration, the roads have never been done properly in the first place.

Aware of the mounting anger of frustrated motorists, a six-day repair job of the most damaged roads has now been announced, which I guess is better than nothing. There, you see, I’m doing it too. We have become so used to apathy that we are pathetically grateful when even the slightest action is taken.

In Parliament, Dr Austin Gatt was reported to have said that, “while some roads in Malta were bad, we should not exaggerate as there were cities in Europe where the roads are even worse.”

Is this man serious? Are we really supposed to console ourselves because (supposedly) in some tiny village somewhere in Europe they have roads worse than ours? OK, Dr Gatt you show me a really terrible road in Europe and I will show you photos of (for example) the road behind the Mosta football ground.

Deal or no deal?

Big deal

This week Mepa made a big song and dance about removing abandoned vehicles from the countryside. We were treated to news reports and large photos splashed across the newspapers. The very fact that it needs to publicise it simply underlines the fact that for years, nothing has been done about the countryside being used as a scrapyard. Maybe they expect us to prostrate ourselves in adulation for actually doing their job.

Return to sender

Every evening I check my mailbox with trepidation. Would this be the day when we receive our water and electricity bill? The longer it takes to arrive, the larger the amount grows in my imagination. This, more than anything else, is what is contributing to most people’s anxiety. It’s like waiting for an exam result when you know it’s going to be bad news. The anticipation and dread of opening that envelope is often worse than the news itself. When you know, you know, and you can try and cope with it. But not knowing can drive you round the bend.

The rainy winter we’re having, which turns our stone-built homes into iceboxes, has not helped of course. Arriving home to a dark, cold apartment is just too depressing, so I do hereby confess to Enemalta, that yes, in the evening, I am turning on the heater. Call me wasteful if you wish, but in a household with two incomes where we are working long hours to earn money to live comfortably, I think we deserve not to have icicles forming on the tips of our noses as we eat dinner.

Winter makes me grumpy enough, but between dealing with weekly punctures because of those things out there we laughably call roads, and never feeling quite warm enough no matter how thick my socks are, the last thing I need is to deprive myself of heating.

On top of all this, there have been so many conflicting news reports about the new utility rates and why they are going to be so high when the price of oil has never been so low, that I’ve given up trying to figure it all out.

At this point I just wish I were a bear so I could hibernate till spring. I just hope our utility bill arrives before then.

Quality street

Would you say your quality of life is better today than it was, say 10 years ago?

This occurred to me last Sunday when I went into a recently opened confectionary shop. Running it is a young, cheerful looking couple, with their infant son lying in his pram smack in the middle of the shop. I couldn’t help but wonder if they would still be so cheerful a couple of years down the line when working seven days a week would have taken its toll. Or would they eventually end up having to close shop as so many businesses do – either because they can’t take the long hours any more, or because they realise it’s not viable?

I have no idea how many small shops go out of business or change hands, but purely from my own observation, there are quite a few. One day you see a shop, and the next week it has been boarded up with a “to let” sign on it. Then it changes hands, major refurbishment takes place, a new proprietor tries his luck with something else, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps its lack of business acumen, or not doing enough proper market research or sometimes it is simply choosing a bad location. I often see boutiques, for example, tucked away in such unlikely places that I wonder, “who on earth is going to come here to buy clothes?” Then there is the over saturation of the market itself. Just how many clothes shops (or hairdressers/beauticians/wine bars/restaurants/coffee shops) does one small island actually need?

Finally, there is the cash flow problem. With more companies announcing a four-day week, and others announcing redundancies (perhaps not in large numbers, but redundancies just the same) – people are strapped for cash and are cutting back on purchases full stop. There was a time when it was those in the lower strata of society – that have come to be known as “the working poor” – who were always the hardest hit. Today it is also the middle-class earner who is unable to keep his head above water.

I was still musing about this when I passed the various vegetable vans dotted along the road. This set me off on another train of thought. Most of them set up as early as 7am even on a Sunday morning and stay there all day to try and sell their produce.

It seems to me that, because it has become so hard to make ends meet, we have got it all backwards. Some people are “living” merely to toil away for hours on end to earn enough money so that perhaps they can salvage an hour or two when they can really “live”.

And although most of us at least have a weekend to try and have some kind of life, when you think about it, we still spend a ridiculously long time at our place of work when compared to how much time we spend at home or doing things we enjoy.

As a colleague pointed out to me, we spend more time with each other than with our families. Something’s wrong with this picture.

All stitched up

The board of censors has banned Stitching, a play being put up by Unifaun, which tackles the theme of unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

The producer Adrian Buckle says he will go ahead with the play anyway, a decision that is being considerably supported by all those who believe in freedom of expression.

Of course, predictably, the publicity generated by the banning of the play means that more people will go and see it than if it had not been banned – if only to see what all the fuss was about. It will also be an act of defiance against censorship.

I wonder if Tonio Borg will be there.

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