A friend of mine is once again in the grip of a cancer he had believed he was cured of. This time though he found in a European country a treatment designed to counter the problem that had reappeared.

He went for it and thought he was making progress. Medical tests confirmed this which gave him new hope. The treatment is not some form of homeopathy and is not carried out in Malta.  

He paid for the first, second and third phases of the treatment; but neither he nor his family can afford to continue paying for the rest.

He applied for help to agencies that exist for this purpose. Their medical boards disagreed that the treatment he is following should be given recognition. Despite the promises made to help him, he was left dangling.

This is not right. It’s a matter of life and death.

***

Foreigners

In conversation with a politician from a northern European country, he confessed how strange it seems to him, when at some restaurant back home, that he now frequently finds waiting staff who cannot communicate in the country’s language. He has to speak to them in English or in a garbled hotch potch of vocabularies. I listened to what he had to say...

Many people in his country are feeling marginalised and insecure when in the street where they live or at their place of work there are “too many” foreign people around.

The person I was with does not belong to the extreme right. To the contrary, he is a socialist who did house visits in the last European campaign. He has not changed a comma of his pro-European and “progressive” ideas but he did seem worried.

Which is to be expected. The European model for public management and social development has become too dependent on ideas that place at the same level cash flows, human labour, accumulated capital and the latest technological advances.  One seeks to maximize results by bringing together all these ingredients together “profitably”.

The problem is that one cannot consider people as if they are just factors of production. They are much more than that and in a very complicated manner.

***

Malta's PN and British Labour

The situation that the PN finds itself in today reminds one of what happened... is still happening... in the British Labour Party. There, party members chose Jeremy Corbyn as leader but the majority of MPs demurred. They considered that with Corbyn at the helm, they would not be able to retain their parliamentary seats or win elections. In their view, Corbyn is unelectable and cannot make it as PM. They made their objections public, although as in the case of the PN, many did so “anonymously”.

Now, there’s no better way of undermining a party’s electoral chances than by having an internal faction that publicly promotes such statements. It is a prophecy that by virtue of getting broadcast becomes self-fulfilling.

It is curious how divergences have been emerging in contemporary political parties – between the views of elected MPs and those of party members.