The government is busy trying to announce major projects to pull the country out of its economic slump – but it is being met by opposition at every turn. And not just by the Opposition either. It seems that most people are refusing to be pulled out of their funk.

They’re in a bad mood and they intend to stay that way

Why is that, I wonder?

Although it’s true that, as a nation, we love sinking our teeth into a juicy controversy, in this case there is something more going on.

The problem is that, once it was given another mandate to govern, the Nationalist Party was expected to deliver immediately. If the Labour Party had won, people would have probably made allowances for a transition period until the new administration had found its feet. But the PN needed no transition; it was already there. This time around it quickly became apparent that the public was impatient, wanting to see things done right away. It was as if voters were saying, “Look here, we’ve given you another chance to take a shot at it, now we want to see some concrete action.”

So when month after month went by and those shining promises written on glossy pamphlets failed to materialise, the mood turned sour. The party, which is usually so good at homing in on what people are feeling, seems to have lost its touch. It has gone from a party that could do no wrong, to a party that cannot seem to get anything right.

During its long stretch in power, it has used up all the goodwill the electorate might have felt towards it.

We are all weary of hearing the same old tired excuses and have become sceptical that anything tangible will ever really get done to turn Malta into the EU fantasy which was dangled before us in 2004. We go abroad to other parts of Europe, such as Dublin, take in the cleanliness, the efficient public transport and kilometres of well-built roads and realise that the way we are forced to live here is a sick joke.

So, rather than trying to dream up fancy new projects, which will drain our public coffers and promise yet more upheaval on an island already in shambles, what ordinary people really want is just the basic things to function properly.

Then maybe, just maybe, we will be able to drum up a bit more enthusiasm the next time the government announces a venture costing millions of euros.

Knock, knock

I know the plight of illegal immigrants is no laughing matter, but incredulous laughter was my immediate reaction when reading the account by my colleague Bernard Busuttil last Monday. He described how his family was woken up by a knock on the door of their Marsaxlokk residence to find a man asking if he could borrow a pair of size 42 shoes. The scenario was just too ridiculously absurd, as was the image of a number of immigrants roaming freely around the fishing village early on a Sunday morning asking for dry clothes and food.

The implications, however, are not so funny. Do we have any real national security protecting our coasts on this island? Can a boatload of immigrants just casually land and set foot on Malta without anyone noticing? This did not happen in the dead of night after all.

We haven’t heard anything more about this, but I think Maltese citizens deserve an explanation as to how this was allowed to happen.

The slapstick nature of this story continued when it was reported that, after being rounded up by police, several immigrants managed to escape when the military truck they were in stopped at traffic lights. To date, three of them have still not been found.

It sounds like something straight out of Prison Break.

He’s my brother

Being related to a politician can have its perks if one is criminally inclined. You might start to feel that no matter how bad your behaviour is, no one can touch you. You might even push your luck and start taking more and more risks as you become gradually more over-confident and cocky. At the back of your mind you might think that if push comes to shove, and the law catches up with you, all you have to do is tell them your name and connections and the whole thing will be dropped.

The phrase “Do you know who I am?” takes on a whole new meaning.

The two cases of Chris Said and John Dalli, both of whom have brothers on the wrong side of the law, have brought to public attention just how much a double-edged sword political power can be. The clout which comes with public office can be heady and intoxicating, but when the people you call family threaten to drag you down with them, suddenly, being in the public eye doesn’t seem so alluring any more.

And obviously, the public is bound to ask whether the politicians ever exerted undue influence to protect their black sheep siblings.

Interestingly enough, brothers seem to cause the most problems for politicians. American presidents Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama all have brothers who caused them embarrassment because of their scrapes with the law.

Are sisters just more law-abiding or are they simply more discreet?

Baby mama

At first, the news of octuplets born to a woman in Los Angeles caused a flurry of excitement with reactions ranging from “God help her” to “how cute”. Now that more facts are starting to emerge however, the 33-year-old woman has provoked a wave of outrage.

To start off with she is an unemployed single mother who already has six children – yes, you read that right – all under the age of seven, one of whom is autistic. The previous six were also conceived through IVF, all from the same sperm donor. According to reports, there were frozen embryos left over from her previous pregnancies that she didn’t want destroyed.

In this last pregnancy, doctors injected four embryos which then split into eight.

Her parents help her out but are not exactly well off; in fact from what I have read they have sacrificed a lot to raise their daughter’s brood. The one question everyone is asking is: why did doctors agree to use in vitro fertilisation on a woman who is already a mother of six? The doctors are now facing an inquest. Fertility experts have also pointed to a lack of regulation in the field and called for professional organisations to put stricter rules in place for doctors and clinics.

People are angry on many different levels, with the ethical issue of whether science should dabble with human reproduction in this way at the top of their list. Some have questioned how she can afford this very expensive treatment (one report quotes her as saying she was paid to do it), and others are demanding to know how she will support 14 children. “We the taxpayers are going to pay for them, that’s who!” Calling her irresponsible for having all these children with no father figure in sight, public opinion has completely swerved from sympathy to something verging on disgust.

TV talk shows are openly debating whether the woman needs therapy, pointing to what looks like an obsession with having children. What is even more telling is that suppliers of nappies, baby food and other items, who are usually quite happy to supply mothers who have had multiple births with free stuff in exchange for the publicity, have stayed away. They are distancing themselves from this woman deliberately.

Maybe the mother in this case was banking on this kind of support. After all, the parents of the McCaughey septuplets born in Iowa in 1997 were given a large house, a big van, baby food and a lifetime supply of nappies.

Life can be cruelly unfair. There are undoubtedly countless couples out there who resort to IVF because they are longing desperately for just one baby, but it doesn’t happen – and here is this woman popping babies out as if she were a rabbit.

What I find intriguing is how society has changed in the way it perceives women who desire so many children. It seems strange and bizarre to us, whereas in our grandparents’ day it was not that uncommon to hear of women having such large families (albeit not in one go). But that was back in the day when women didn’t have much say in the matte; their only role in life was motherhood, and they obeyed the Church’s teachings that intercourse should always be open to life. The older children helped bring up the younger ones, everyone wore hand-me-downs and expectations were few.

By the time it came to my mother’s generation, women were more educated and with education came more aspirations. Couples quietly practised birth control and you stopped seeing so many families with rows of children born a year apart.

Today, anyone having more than three children is asked whether they belong to the komunità (a Neo-Catechumenal prayer group which encourages large families).

Celebrities like Angelina Jolie, now a mother of six (three are adopted) who is reportedly planning to get pregnant again, and Mia Farrow who has raised 15 children (11 were adopted), are viewed with baffled looks. They say they enjoy being mothers but society cannot seem to accept this natural explanation and instead pokes around trying to find out what’s “wrong”.

I guess it’s a reflection of how our priorities have changed that a woman deliberately having a large number of children is considered weird.

Arrest me

Thank God I am not doing my Maltese ‘A’ level now because I probably wouldn’t pass. Every time I see English words for which we have no Maltese equivalent and which have been wrestled phonetically into a Maltese spelling, I find myself grinding my teeth.

I have lots of pet hates, “mowbajl”, “studjo” and just recently “downuts”. No, no, no, I refuse to spell mobile, studio and doughnuts this way when I’m writing in Maltese, and no language police can force me to do so.

Unfortunately, schools have brainwashed children into adopting this kind of spelling, thus creating two problems. First, children probably now think these words are part of the Maltese language when they are patently not. In fact, we still retain the use of the English plural “s” even in the Maltese spelling, which, grammatically, makes no sense. These are merely borrowed words, just like cul-de-sac is borrowed from French but which is still used in its original form. It has never been tampered with and has been left sensibly alone. Secondly, how will children know how to spell the words correctly when writing in English? Parents have told me that children are just downright confused, and I am not surprised.

This spelling is not doing either language any favours. English words are being rendered almost meaningless while we massacre the Maltese language at the same time.

Meanwhile, I see this contrived spelling all around me in newspapers, on television and signs and keep clenching my jaw.

I’m going to have to visit my dentist soon.

That was quick

Last week I mentioned the atrocious state of the road behind the Mosta football ground. On Wednesday it was being patched up. Gosh, if I knew that was all it took I would have said something sooner.

Now if they would only lay down some tarmac – preferably not during rush hour though.

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