Anyone who has stuck with this column over the last two years cannot have failed to note my political persuasion. I have no regard for socialism as either an economic or social solution to anything. I am convinced that it is an idealistic theory that ignores human nature and tends to be supported by either well meaning imbeciles or those whose minds are crippled by envy and greed and an addiction to hypocritical corruption as a means of sleazy advancement.
Not only are the extreme administrations of the left across the globe a good example of this, but the Blair and Brown governments of the last dozen years in the once Great Britain also wonderfully demonstrate how the politics of bureaucratic soviet incompetence, dishonesty, arrogance and hideous corruption can damage a country both economically and socially to a point that perhaps is almost beyond repair.
When there was last an election in Malta I, as a resident, had already become well aware of the deep roots of Maltese governmental corruption. Nevertheless, the thought of the Labour Party winning in March 2008 was so repugnant to me that I took myself off to stay in the Nationalist haven of the Ta’ Cenc Hotel in Gozo to avoid seeing the jubilant Labour supporters celebrating what would have been a dreadful mistake by the electorate in my opinion.
I didn’t expect Dr Lawrence Gonzi to win. When he did, I wrote in this newspaper that he should thank God for this unexpected second chance and grab it with both hands by dealing with the serious issues of corruption in his government, as indeed he had promised to do during the election campaign. I still believed that his corrupt but capable government was better than an incompetent and no doubt just as corrupt Labour opposition.
Now, 18 months later, I realise that either the Prime Minister has no intention of addressing this evil or is just incapable of doing so. Last month I exposed the appalling story of how Svetlana Pogorska was being persecuted unfairly and ridiculously by the Valletta police despite having done absolutely nothing wrong, while more powerful bodies like the band clubs and the Roman Catholic Church got away with fuelling illegal gambling. I asked many questions of Tonio Fenech, Joseph Borg as well as the police – all of which were ignored with their usual contempt and natural arrogance.
If this wasn’t bad enough, I was then surprised to find that I did not receive a bag full of mail from outraged readers demanding to know how the police could behave so badly and apparently get away with it. Isn’t this Malta I thought – a country with a keen desire to be a civilised, fair and totally European democratic state?
So I wandered about over the next fortnight asking all my great and good Maltese friends, who are not in government, why the public response was so muted?
Without exception they shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. They all told me that today, in Malta, corruption and governmental in-fighting were so deep rooted that they were as bad as in some African states. They went on that nobody was going to get too worked up about anything like the Pogorska case because they were so used to it and knew that to complain was pointless and even dangerous if one needed to deal with government ministers in the normal course of business life.
I love this island and its people, who I find, in the main, are genuine, honest, happy, good and kind folk. Nevertheless, just as God seems to have denied them that part of the brain that enables one to drive a car, he has also given them an ingrained ability to accept that corruption is merely a natural function of government.
I am saddened to be forced to finally realise that this is true and, as a result, can only recommend one solution that I never thought I would. The next time there is an election in Malta enough Nationalist supporters must either abstain or even vote Labour in order to throw this rump of a government out. I hate socialism but the failure of Dr Gonzi to eradicate the corruption associated with his government means that the Opposition now deserves its chance next time.
After all, ridding the country of corruption is more important than any political ideology or supporting a political party like one might a football team – just as many Maltese folk seem to. And therefore, it is perhaps that lack of floating voters that has allowed the Nationalist Party grandees to convince themselves, with wondrous complacency that they are now above the law.
And perhaps that is why I occasionally come across old Maltese folk who regret independence. “At least the British weren’t corrupt,” one told me. “Perhaps not then,” I sighed.
Oh well – perhaps corruption has become such a huge cancer everywhere that it is now impossible to eradicate. How depressing! Is the end nigh after all?
Would you like some dust on your steak sir?
I do what I can to support my favourite restaurants, such as San Giuliano, Barracuda and of course the exceptional Lord Nelson in Mosta among others, during these dark days of recession. I like to think that eating out each night is doing my bit to helping us through a recession, which will only get worse here this autumn when the island is left to contemplate the summer season’s disappointing tourist figures.
On one such recent trip to the excellent Malata restaurant, situated opposite the House of Representatives in Misrah San Gorg, I struggled to get there due to the renovation of the square.
Then, as I dined, the noise of forklift trucks racing around at ten at night drowned out the jazz band while coating my chateaubriand in dust.
I asked the owner’s son if this was having a serious effect on business. He said it was. They had been forced to close for lunch every day for weeks, had lost evening bookings and would have to close altogether for two weeks in August.
I’m all for the renovation of Valletta and have written as much many times here before now. But surely the government would be compensating these people or at least doing everything possible to the minimising of their loss. No, was his answer on both counts. Apparently, he had asked and had been told that the work was in the public good and that the government wasn’t interested in helping them even if the restaurant was threatened with closure as a result.
I nodded knowingly before asking him if he had ever thought of bribing someone across the road.
Pin-up boy of ‘Murder Monthly”?
Did you see the usual summer holiday shots of pint-sized mass murderer Vladimir Putin? The dwarf-like Russian President who is only second in the vanity stakes to the diminutive Cuban-heeled French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter, you will remember, has his press shots air-brushed to get rid of his ample love handles.
Tiny Putin seems only too keen each summer to expose his increasingly flabby torso in an attempt to be a poor man’s Russian answer to Daniel Craig. It is a sight that really doesn’t appeal to me but I suppose he could pose topless for Rupert Murdoch’s recently rumoured new publication Murder Monthly along with Hillary Clinton, Robert Mugabe and bin Laden I suppose.
Can novelists construct believable characters of the opposite sex?
It is a rare exception when a writer is really able to create a believable character of the opposite sex. Sidney Sheldon was a man who could do it regularly. He was so good at creating credible women that many people really believed that he was indeed a “she” using a pen name.
On the other hand, most excellent novelists of either sex, who seem to be able to create complex and yet consistent characters of their own gender, can only create two dimensional cardboard cut out characters of the opposite sex.
Even the excellent Agatha Christie when inventing that delicious Belgian detective named Hercule Poirot made him so wonderfully arrogant, vain and so obviously comically foreign, that he could only have been created by an English upper class woman of that very comfortable British Empire period between the two World Wars.
However, when comparing gender ability in general, it has become fashionable over the last decade or so to suggest that women, in today’s world, make intelligent, serene and sensitive men.
A good example of this being the recent and ridiculous statement from Harriet Harman, the Deputy leader of the British Labour Party, that there wouldn’t have been a world recession if women had been running its leading economies.
Additionally, it is continually suggested by prissy pseudo-intellectual women journalists from leftie newspapers like The Guardian, that men just remain uncouth and insensitive and completely at a loss to understand a higher breed which has been kept down historically by the use of brute force on the physically weaker sex until now.
While I’m in no way a friend of the Taliban, I’m afraid that I have to completely disagree with this exaggeration in most departments of life and especially in the field of writing.
When it comes to being a creator of opposite gender characters, most women novelists tend to only have four characters in their briefcases. There is the drunken husband, the dashing lover, the strong and kindly father and the weak and wasteful brother. Sounds familiar? Of course it does! Male writers’ attempts at creating women are often far from perfect too but they are generally more industrious, balanced and believable.
Most of the lightweight tripe written today in the west is penned by women and consumed by their sex. I believe totally in sexual equality but I also believe in telling the truth and until women can be judged on a level playing field and accept fair criticism like this, they will remain second best in this field, like many others in life, I’m afraid.
And talking of writers!
Following the success of my best-selling book Charles The Man Who Will Be King in the UK, it has been published in the US. However, in order to attract the American reader the name has been changed to The King and Di. Doesn’t that tell you a lot about the average Yank?
So how goes it in good old Albion?
Some readers think that this column gives far too many inches to the fate of the once Great Britain under the guidance of the Supreme Soviet Leader – Comrade George Brown, known apparently as ‘Badger’ to those close to him, due to his foul temper and slack personal hygiene.
As a result, I have given the criminal and bureaucratic capital of Europe a wide berth for the last couple of months, which has resulted in a few readers e-mailing me to request a UK update. So here goes.
The MPs expenses scandal was no surprise; nor was the resignation of half the Cabinet – including the completely incompetent Jacqui Smith from the Home Office; violent crime continues to soar; the prisons are still overflowing; murderers can expect to spend only a couple of years inside them as a result; the Bank of England continues to print ‘monopoly money’; the government is in huge debt and now uses 25 per cent of its annual budget on state hand-outs alone; Britain continues to top every despicable league table in the west; its people have more personal debt than the rest of Europe added together and their soldiers continue to be sent out to Afghanistan with faulty equipment and too few helicopters to do the job which is needlessly costing brave lives.
However, none of this is of course the fault of the Supreme Leader who has been too busy saving the world economy to worry about any of it. Oh well, it’s nice to know that nothing has changed then! I’ll let you know if it does but don’t hold your breath in the meantime.
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