I will not be swayed to vote either one way or the other just because kids at school will be given a tablet or an iPad.

There are, however, many who would seriously consider any freebie before casting their vote and, conscious of this, both political parties have embarked on a battle over what technological aids they will be offering, at the taxpayers’ expense, to schoolchildren.

To be fair, the PN’s move is by and large linked to a strategy that has been in place for years, whereas Labour’s is more like a gift from the government just for the sake of it, reminiscent of the crumbs handed out in the Mintoff days. But I dislike both proposals, if anything for the fact that we continue to pamper our youngsters too much, leading them to grow up with the mentality that everything is provided for nothing – when they should be learning that they need to work hard to earn a living.

I am urging both my teenage kids to find a summer job after they finish their respective ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels in May to be able to finance the computers they want to buy, trying to instil in them the understanding that money does not grow on trees. What the PN and PL are proposing is cheap propaganda which will sadly continue to build on our ingrained Mintoffian frame of mind that the state is there to provide all we need.

Thankfully, my kids will not be getting this gift, regardless of who is elected. I would be tempted to throw the tablets away.

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Neither will I be swayed into voting one way or another by how much I pay for my water and electricity.

But, apparently, there are many who are, and this is why the energy battle has been going on for years now, and of late we have had the two parties jostling to propose the better reduction in rates.

In this matter, they have taken different roads, with the PL going as far as planning to build a new power station that would cost somewhere between €376 and €600 million to be able to reduce the rates, it says, by 25 per cent. The catch is that bills will not actually be reduced by a quarter, because the PL has said nothing about the service charge, so presumably this will remain the same. So those who now pay €200 will not be getting a bill for €150, as the PL is implying, but one in the €170-€180 range.

The PN, on the other hand, plans night tariffs that will bring down the bill by as much as 26 per cent in an eight-hour period starting at 10pm, once all households, industry and businesses have their smart meters installed. With the interconnector to Sicily scheduled to be ready by the end of year, this seems to be a more feasible and plausible proposition than that which the PL have in mind.

The difference, as I see it, in the proposals made by the two parties is that the PL’s encourages waste – since the rates will come down indiscriminately, people will tend to use more energy than is needed – whereas the PN’s is aimed at leading to a more disciplined lifestyle in which the use of electricity is spread out better and more efficiently.

But, I repeat, whether utility prices come down or not is not something that I care much about.

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I will not be swayed either by the proposed provision of free child-care centres or allowing parents to use their sick leave entitlement to stay at home with children who are unwell. If anything, these proposals tend to rub me up the wrong way.

Labour’s free child-care centre proposal is, once again, symptomatic of a socialist government that acts like a big daddy. The parental sick leave proposal put forward by the Nationalist Party is even more socialist.

We already have a situation where many employees take sick leave if they sneeze or have a headache – and I mean both men and women.

For many, sick leave entitlement is an extension of their annual vacation leave, and it is planned from year to year. Ask any employer and he or she will tell you that they have workers who take all their sick leave entitlement year after year, and sometimes go beyond that, too. And since many employers find it too expensive to employ a private doctor to go and check up on them, many employees take sick leave to paint their house and do some spring cleaning.

So what the Nationalist Party is proposing will lead to more abuse of the sick leave entitlement and, of course, a fall in productivity. It would have been much better had the government suggested that employers must give emergency vacation leave when a child is sick and the parent needs to stay home. But to allow sick leave in such circumstances is nonsensical, and also a slap in the face for employees who do not have kids.

The PN has said that parental sick leave is intended to encourage more women to work, but to me it will have the opposite effect, because employers will find yet another obstacle to employing women. Given a choice between a man and a woman with the same qualities and abilities, the probability that they will choose the man grows with a measure like this.

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It is a great pity that both parties are resorting to suggesting these goodies as a way of earning votes. It worries me even more that they feel the need to go for such initiatives because they know there are many people who will be choosing the party for which they vote depending on what they can get, rather than on the overall picture.

Few seem to realise that we will have to pay the consequences of these silly promises later on.

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