Post budget calculations are always the same: What are we getting from the government? What is the government relieving us of?
From this perspective, we really are in the best of times. Though public expenditures have continued to increase steeply, as of now the Finance Minister has been more than able to cope since revenues too continued to climb.
The major problem has become that of deciding how the government should allocate its outgo in order to let one and all enjoy some benefit. The occasions since Independence when a Maltese government found itself in this position were rare indeed.
So the tough challenge in this context is how to ensure that enough is being done with the ongoing outlays to prepare the basis which would allow future opportunities to be exploited.
To be sure, queries that follow this kind of analysis can be politically and even economically dangerous. They could flick attention away from concrete matters that concern citizens’ lives today, towards controversies about what best needs be done in the future.
On such issues, no matter how important they are, a tidy consensus will not be found soon. It is easier to decide about present day concerns than about matters that could come on stream tomorrow.
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Did I get it?
I might have read the relative news item too fast and remained with a mistaken impression. But among those who visited Malta last week to preach to us about how well or badly we treat the media and journalists, there were some who seemed quite eager to tell us about our great sins in this area.
So much so that this was carried to the point where we were told that the Prime Minister should be giving more press conferences.
The Maltese people should really feel ashamed that they are giving credence to this kind of cheeky exercise mounted by “well meaning” (?) outsiders – and the extent to which it is being taken. Should we accept that media freedom in this country is being eroded because the PM gives less not more press conferences?
To me that such a statement could have been made (and no matter who said it) is just another example of how all is permissible when it is a small country like Malta which need to be “criticised”. Why was not the same analysis made about how for instance the French President, and one might add others, have been running their communications policies?
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Brexit negotiations
Like everybody else, I hope that the Brexit negotiations are concluded positively. Such an outcome would need to cover arrangements that are beneficial (if that is a good word, given the circumstances) to both “Europeans” and Brits, as well as to third countries that will be affected by the coming break.
These past months, negotiations were mired in great confusion. Apart from the disarray in British ranks, a reason for this was also the negotiating method adopted by the EU side. They wanted first to reach agreement about how the UK would withdraw from the Union. Then, negotiations would deal with the future relationship between the two sides.
As if this second question was not the more important one. Much time was lost as a result and opinions got muddier.