Tax refunds and cash injections make a good sound bite but when you chew on it a bit you soon see that they are nothing more than a smoke-screen and done to prevent the correction of the real disease eating the economy - corruption and mis-appropriation of public funds.

On Thursday Prime Minister Robert Abela announced that workers and students will be receiving cheques worth €100, with pensioners and people on social benefits getting up to €200 as part of a cash injection to the economy.

This is over and above the tax refunds which the government announced today as well. 

The government’s total outlay in the form of the cash cheques and tax refunds will be €70 million, 380,000 people will benefit, as reported.

Abela, accompanied by Finance Minister Clyde Caruana, said the wage supplement scheme will be retained for as long as it is needed to ensure that the economy recovers quickly post-Covid.

This move follows on the much repeated claim that no new taxes were introduced in the last budget. 

Only if it were not for the fact that we can see Abela and his elves get that nervous twitch when they realise there is no way they can contradict the theft that has been going on with our energy bills.  Earlier this week, Miriam Dalli gave it the first spin when she announced that a revision in the way the bills are calculated will be made but it will not be retroactive and what has been over-charged to consumers will remain in the pockets of the company.  Remember when they had started their mandate with the propaganda about refunding the motor licence costs back in 2014?  As usual, two measures when it comes to their own skimming.

On top of that, clear evidence of the rising cost of living and prices for essential commodities has reached even the most ardent labour supporters but no clear measures have been taken by the government to ease the harmful effect in a meaningful way, whatever Caruana may claim.

Instead, as usual, they revert to our taxes, ignoring the huge deficit and debt of the country, and come out with a spending propaganda which serves their election campaign and not the good of the economy and the country.

I suppose the vouchers scheme is a bit tired now and after the whole mess that was created with Covid certificates to even stand at a café window and get a coffee, would not go down well.  Restaurants are fed up and exhausted by the continuous change in rules and the double standards. The Malta Film Awards saw a theatre of mostly mask-less audience whilst pensioners stand in the cold outside the bank, huddled together waiting to be let in.  A socially distanced queue indoors would be much better than exposing people to the elements and having them crowd together at the entrance. 

But, with Clyde Caruana who is normally occupied in calling a spade a spade when it comes to dealing with the need to address short funds, at his side, Abela strikes out to the opposite direction and grabs hold of more of our money to give us some of it back so we can spend a bit more, forgive him some of the fat salaries being paid to him, his cronies and persons of trust, running into the thousands and making millionaires out of them on our backs and send praises.

Did Abela take some of this money to throw about from his own fat account from all the consultancies he has raked in as consigliere to Muscat, the PA and so many other agencies?  Why hasn’t he published his own tax record?  Where did the €17,000 a month flow to?  Maybe to Ragusa.

He is lucky that many have no idea what is really going on in our nations and his finances otherwise it would be easily downloaded that that money he is giving out is not even actually there and it will only continue to add to the debt. 

Wasn’t Minister Caruana at a table trying to discuss the placements of the redundant staff from Air Malta?  What good is a tax rebate going to do to them? 

Haven’t we been sickened by the information that Stewards Health Care owes the Maltese economy €37 million in unpaid VAT? The company managing three of Malta's public hospitals through a concession worth €2.1 billion owes the government a staggering €37 million in unpaid VAT dues.  The company has taken the tax commissioner to court to dispute this bill.  Possibly on hypothetical advice from the consigliere?

These populist refunds and cash injections are the last resort for Abela to divert and distract from the odious and liberal spending that all the ministries, with some even more outrageous than others, that has been going on for years.  It is a puerile attempt to compensate for the millions he himself or his firm have sucked out of our children’s right to enjoy. 

It can no longer be hidden, therefore it can stand in plain sight whilst the people are trained to look in the opposite direction. 

To Labour, the only business that concerns them are the ones that put cash back into their accounts and party funding.  The clan of business elite that make up the agency of Maltese enterprise with special permits and status from the Labour organization are who matters to them.  The ordinary business person, striving in the face of all the costs and obligations, are treated like amateurs, a level up from an MCAST student.

What new industry or commerce has been generated under Joseph Muscat or Robert Abela other than the exploitation of wealth, land and human resources for the benefit of the above elite? They are so pre-occupied in building and looking at their own nest eggs that they have forgotten how GDP is actually grown and distributed for the good of all.

So, on the heels of the Malta Community Chest Fund, we have become a nation of charitable donations.  Abela’s cash injection is nothing more than a crowd-funding for votes and another form of tax-free charity.  Dignity of work and being able to earn a fair and good living from your own employment and the employment of others is an alien concept for those who have only received cheques that they didn’t work for. 

Clyde Caruana should decide what side he stands on.  He either has an identity crisis or his priorities are totally confused.  Edward Scicluna may have started out as enthusiastic as Caruana to bring some order to the fiscal policy only to have ended up excluded from the Kitchen Cabinet and quietly melted into a blub of useless putty.  Seems that it has not taken long for Caruana to transform into playdough.  we are still to see what Mizzi has to say to the questions from the Opposition benches

They take everyone for fools but results will speak for themselves when the injection will still not cure the disease.  Perhaps Abela is looking to compete with Fearne’s booster injections record.  Squabbles in the sand-pit are not what will save Labour from the endless greedy grabs they have done on the nation.