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Oh what a year! Hardly have twelve months passed since they promised us heaven on earth during the EU referendum that the music changed from a Beethoven sonata to a Mozart requiem. I have entitled my last opinion for the year 2004 ‘Mince Pies’ because it was truly a year where words were minced, pies were made, and many attempts were made to make mincemeat out of us all.
I remember at the beginning of the year when the editor of MaltaToday invited me to take part in one of his programmes which dealt with our expectations for 2004 and I immediately told him without mincing my words that this was not going to be a good year for Malta and the Maltese.
I was not prophesizing anything: I was simply being realistic. Malta’s membership in the European Union was not complimented by the structural modifications that had to be made in order to ensure that membership runs as smoothly as possible. So what happened was that the Government was ill-equipped, unprepared and in the red and the changes were introduced very abruptly.
Gone and fore lone is the dialogue and instead, we are being faced with a take-it-or-leave it attitude. Thanks to the European Union, the Government can no longer mince its words on the deficit facing our country. So the budget measures were a natural consequence of our compliance to EU regulations. However, it is not paying taxes that irks us but the way our taxes are spent (and sometimes they are foolishly and lavishly spent) and the way that certain people are not brought to book for spending our tax money unwisely or for not paying what is due or for avoiding or evading tax and duty. The RJ’s story at Air Malta is one example. The contraband of diesel at the Mediterranean Offshore Bunkering Centre (MOBC) is another. In the latter case, instead of collecting what is lawfully hers from the persons who bought the diesel duty-free, it resorted to us to help it come to terms with the deficit.
The way I see it is that there is no distinction between the ‘I-want-it-now attitude’ of our people and of our government. In my career as a lawyer, many marriages are breaking down because we have instilled in our people the attitude that if you want something there is the plastic money that can pay for it for you. There is no longer the attitude that you save money and buy when you have enough money to do so.
Take our sixteen-year olds who are being lured into the plastic money vicious circle at such a young age. We are not doing them any good by moulding their mentality so that they can have whatever they want now. In effect, this is causing broken marriages in that more time is devoted to the plastic money than to dialogue and it is also causing an increase in suicide and drug problems because we are not training our people to accept the fact that there are things in life that money cannot buy.
This reminds us of a study that was conducted a year ago by Dr Margo Wilson and Dr Martin Daly from Mc Master University in Hamilton, Ontario. Their study showed that when men were showed pictures of pretty women they were ready to discount the future to pay for the present. In order words, the men who participated in the study, in the first round preferred a higher sum of money to be paid at a specified future date, than a low sum to be paid out the next day.
However, when they were shown pictures of attractive women, of non-lookers and of beautiful cars, the same men opted for a low sum to be paid out the next day. Dr Wilson and Dr Daly’s interpretation of this is that men speculate that the simple act of looking at beautiful women is able to engage and manipulate the male brain’s reward centres. This idea is supported by earlier brain-scanning studies which showed that looking at beautiful women, but not plain ones, arouses a man’s nuclear acumens, the part of the brain that evaluates rewards. That structure, in turn, is tightly linked to the orbit frontal cortex, which has been shown to be activated by monetary rewards.
For your information, the women who participated in the study opted for beautiful cars, synonymous with wealth.
As Dr Wilson puts it, it was as though a special “I-want- that-now” pathway had been activated in their brains. And the money might come in handy immediately.
Sometimes I get the impression that our government belongs to the group of men who is showed pictures of beautiful women, of onlookers and of expensive cars all the time. This is because most of the measures that it took or attempted to take this year are not rewarding in the long run. Take the ban on staff Christmas parties - what did the country gain out of that? Had the ban been on the abuse of sick leave and of truancy it would have made more sense. Take the introduction of the imposed mediation in family matters - it has not managed to control the number of separation cases. Take the setting up of the Malta Enterprise instead of the Malta Development Corporation and IPSE and METCO – same people, same ideas, same output, no outcome.
Take the measure introduced in the last budget regarding the vacation leave - is it possible that the government had to go for confrontation and not start by changing the law so that most of our public holidays will fall on a Monday.
It is a simple measure but which will help the industry enourmously as the output of the workers is always the slowest on a Monday and on a Friday and it reaches its peak on Wednesdays. But industry, and especially the Federation of Industry and the Chamber of Commerce, was very hasty in commending the government for the measures it has taken and neglecting the increasing costs that many of its members have to endure because of the sharp rise in kerosene and the surcharge in the electricity rates. I have actually always wondered when these organizations scold will the government for not being able to bring an iota of investment to this country for the past fifteen years? How many more years do we still have to wait until they do so?
Other issues have come to the surface this year. The far-right did well in the elections for the EU Parliament. They have voiced the thoughts of many of us regarding illegal and legal immigration, asylum seekers and refugees. They managed through, Norman Lowell, to bring the issue of racial discrimination to the surface. They also reminded us, without mincing their words, that the boat people who land here are a vice and not a virtue. The situation will soon get out of control and it is not surprising that the Government is organizing a national conference on the issue.
If last year was a year of arrogance, the following year will be none the less with the government riding roughshod over our Constitution by ratifying the EU Constitution in Parliament. Only this time it will not mince its words but will make a mince pie of our Constitution. We will wait and see as to how President Fenech Adami, as the guardian of the Constitution, will react to all this – these are pleasures yet to come!
In the meantime indulge and have a Happy Christmas and a Happy and Peaceful New Year.
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