During the face to face encounter with Lawrence Gonzi on Xarabank last week, Joseph Muscat repeated his mantra of reducing utility rates because, according to him, people were on the breadline and could not make ends meet as they could not afford to buy food or heat their homes due to the high utility rates.

Now I tend to take sweeping statements made by politicians and used car salesmen with a pinch of salt, so I googled “how many mobile phones in Malta?” and I came across a report in another newspaper dated 5 June citing the Malta Communications Authority’s annual report that in Malta “there are one and a quarter mobile phones for every person”. According to the MCA, at the end of 2011 there were 521,748 subscribed mobile phones for a population of 410,000.  On average, each subscriber made 631 mobile calls translating to 943 minutes.

Then I googled “how many Facebook users in Malta?” and I found that 52.94 per cent (215,340 people) of the population use Facebook and that Facebook’s penetration of the online population is 89.5 per cent, ranking Malta at number 127 on the list. This means that 240,603 households have Internet access and computers.

Then I googled “how many cars in Malta” and learnt that at the end of March, there were 313,027 licensed vehicles in Malta and that 4,044 new licences were issued in the first quarter of 2012.

Now that’s not bad going for a country whose population, according to Dr Muscat is on the breadline and can’t afford to pay utility bills and make ends meet. Pity I couldn’t google how many women wear those awful false nails, how many women have had breast augmentation in the past 12 months and how much money is spent on colouring hair blonde or red or orange and all the other “capricci” they can’t really afford. Pity I can’t google how much money is spent on cigarettes and alcohol.

I appreciate that there are poor people, people who for some reason or other do not earn a decent wage or are unemployed and cannot find employment. However, for the rest of the population I believe that it’s a question of bad priorities and bad budgeting. People are living beyond their means and no matter how much money one has, if it is not well managed and wisely used it will eventually run out. And you can’t blame the government or high utility rates for that. Blame the guy who is promising to reduce your utility bills and giving you false hopes that if you vote for him, you’ll have more money to spend on your “capricci”. Dream on!

Alfred Formosa

SLIEMA