The General Workers Union felt it necessary to release a press statement saying that it would boycott last Friday’s party thrown by the British High Commission to mark the Queen’s official birthday. All I could think of was that with Tony Zarb out of the picture, there would be more food for everybody else − unless the British High Commissioner, in these straitened times, seized the opportunity to cut down the catering order by 30

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The Opposition leader took a trip to one of Malta’s better-known manufacturers and took the opportunity to say to the press that he and his Labour Party hope that the government has dropped its plans for the Corporate Village in Mriehel, a rather attractive project designed by one of our more highly acclaimed architectural practices.

I had a few thoughts on the matter, the first being that if Muscat is so certain that he will be the government in just a few months, then why is he hoping that the government has dropped its plans in this regard? It’s more or less a case of l’etat c’est Joseph already, so what exactly is he on about here? If this government hasn’t dropped them, Joseph’s government can drop them in March, or whenever.

My next few thoughts were largely to do with irritation at the Labour Party in general and at its attitude to work, training and employment opportunities in general. This was because the reason the Opposition leader gave for hoping the Corporate Village would be thrown off the drawing-board (failing which, he will do it himself, presumably) is that Malta “doesn’t have space for factories” and so a “prime industrial site shouldn’t be used for offices”.

Factories versus offices, industry versus services, manufacturing versus added value: all of this pretty much sums up some very fundamental differences between the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party, and their outlook on education, employment, the economy, and so much more. I won’t say that it sums up the differences between the two parties’ policies, because we only have one party’s policies to go on and can only guess at the other’s through statements like Joseph’s when he visited the factory (“factories, good; offices, bad”) and when he spoke about guaranteeing jobs for recalcitrant 16-year-olds (“dead-end jobs for life, good; mittil-kless aspiration, also good but within limits”).

Joseph had another objection: that it does not make sense for “the government” (for which read, the state) to compete with the private sector in the provision of office space. Given that the business plan for that Corporate Village did not, as far as I can recall some months after last reading it, involve the government competing with the private sector but rather the reverse, this remark took me by surprise. Perhaps the Labour leader was motivated, when he made it, by his newfound passion – found on a dhow in Dubai, so I gather – for Smart City.

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This is the week when people traditionally dust off their air-conditioners and switch them on with trepidation, so the Labour leader thought it opportune to announce once more that his government will “reduce” water and electricity tariffs for business and pleasure, and domestic necessity too, of course.

He says once more that he will do it by “seeking savings”, like removing inefficiencies at Enemalta and “exploring the use of new technology”, including the carbon-capture proposal controversially made by Sargas and its very enthusiastic backer and former paid consultant, EU Commissioner John Dalli (wearing one of his other hats, it goes without saying).

Well, I don’t know – it all sounds much like Sant’s VAT/CET madness to me, but with added complications thrown in for bad measure. Those much-touted inefficiencies at Enemalta are largely to do with massive over-employment and under-utilisation of resources. I can just imagine how great Labour’s and its GWU’s commitment to reducing those particular inefficiencies is truly going to be. As for Sargas, by the time its amazing floating power-station at Delimara has gone through the planning and approvals and environmental impact assessment and public consultation process – or does Labour plan to skip this? – and then built, put into operation and making those all-efficient savings, another general election will have come and gone.

Disingenuous Joseph is holding out the promise of overnight savings with his election, via a power station that has yet to be built. And what reassurances do we have that grasping Yana Bland, her sister Anna McKenna, and their avaricious father Dom Mintoff will not once more burden the taxpayer with yet another claim for compensation for having their glorious personal haven turned once more into, to quote Mrs Bland, Smellymara?

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