Vince Farrugia, who once flattered me in an SMS calling me “unique” and soon after suing me for libel, has said that the works at the Manwel Dimech bridge have led to a serious crisis in the entertainment industry in Paceville.
It is of course an exaggeration to believe our youngsters are being deterred from driving their speeding cars to enjoy the beauty and spectacle of Paceville because of the amoeba-like progress on the Manwel Dimech bridge. Colleagues who have nothing to do with their lives and visited Paceville this week could not notice any marked demographic drop in the number of yobs and chavs that visit Paceville; but then Mr Farrugia and I have different sources.
Having said this, Jason Micallef’s Rise-Up party in Paceville was, I am told, a rousing success. I guess all the guests must have arrived either by helicopter, sea or probably underground through the sewers.
Mr Farrugia does not take criticism lightly, and yet he fires Katyusha rockets with the ease of a livid artillery general; when anyone dares wave a silly water pistol at him, they are literally greeted by an unbelievable salvo of flak.
There is little doubt in my mind that Jesmond Mugliett is not up for the job and his exploits on Manwel Dimech are perhaps just the cherry on the cake. But the sinister thing about Vince’s kind of politics is that he always jumps on the bandwagon of discontent. It is his forte and because of this, the politicians continue to treat him with kid gloves.
Farrugia’s latest foray in Katyusha politics is his comment on the buffalo craze over the Super Five lottery and the great stampede by the Maltese to buy Super Five tickets. He is perfectly right in worrying about the stampede; but he is wrongly placed to voice this opinion.
If customers suddenly went insane and decided to spend all their savings in Paceville, would Farrugia complain? He wouldn’t. In the free market one does not oblige people how and when to spend their money.
Well there is no statistical proof of this, but it is very clear to me that the vast majority of those who buy Super Five lottery tickets are probably at the lower end of the salaried class, although you might say anyone tries their luck at the lottery. My good friend tells me his father calls it the tax on the ignorant; patronising surely, but undoubtedly a truism.
But the idea of controlling gambling and telling people to stop throwing away their money is anathema to the freedoms that come with the aptly named free market. And gambling, like prostitution, is something that will never be routed out.
What is surely quite hypocritical is that on one side of the coin we have Vince Farrugia, the crusader for free market politics, demanding that we curb the gambling spree, a plea which comes with the usual spicy Farrugia commentary best suited for this column.
And on the other side we have the insistence by this administration that their kind of politics and way forward must be accompanied by VALURI – values… values they say are at the heart of their political philosophy,
It is of course a whole load of utter bullshit. None of the parties have any special philosophy other than the one simple un-Confucian thinking that they should win the next election, at all costs.
The gambling companies that have opened in Malta thanks to our tax friendly regime, and the foreign companies that set base in Malta to service the credit payments for thousands of pornographic websites are embraced by none other than this administration. And I would agree: why should we suffer from a bad bout of conscience if our economy can only live by the direct investment we attract on the strength of our tax haven status?
But while the credit cards are being debited off the accounts of frustrated men from all over the world who pay for downloading the most unbelievably lewd films – money from which our government taxes to pump up our revenues and economic forecasts – the State continues to impose a McCarthy-style of politics, where Maltese nationals must be over 25 to enter a casino (but not if you’re Chinese, Jamaican or a Sicilian Mafioso, where the age limit is merely 18).
So back to Super Five. I have no problem living in a country where my next door neighbours buy 100 Super Five tickets. What I do have a problem with is listening to politicians speak to me about VALURI.
This administration has removed the capping of Super Five and this will mean more money for the Greeks and more tax for the government. So far, so good.
But it does not stop here. In the days of John Dalli, a legal framework was created that allowed for a monopoly for Maltco (the privatised, now foreign-operated lottery enterprise) making it also illegal to write about any other form of gambling in a newspaper, magazine or audiovisual medium for local consumption.
So, as was to be expected, this newspaper is still in the Criminal Appeals court facing the possibility of a gargantuan fine because it carried a simple story about the Dragonara brasserie and fleetingly made reference to the fact that there were gambling machines around.
Needless to say, the Lotteries and Gaming Authority – through its politically appointed chairman Dr Joseph Zammit Maempel – asked the police to prosecute.
And so, as the whole flipping island was literally awash in a gambling frenzy from grandmothers to budding teenagers or university students cashing in their first stipends, d-o-c-t-o-r Joe Zammit Maempel saw red with a 7cm-column article written by the late Julian Manduca about the Dragonara brasserie!
It is okay to say the country is peppered with lotto outlets; but one cannot write about and/or advertise any other form of gambling. Except – hear this – if it is published in a magazine, or medium that is restricted to the precinct of a hotel, airport, airplane or any other territory reserved to tourists. Well, well, well…
This is a confused country, where values, argumentation and points of view are bandied around according to the narrow-minded interests of the interested party. Vince Farrugia has long fitted into this noble role.
In 1996, as generalissimo of the armed brigade of irate cash register self-employed, he took the government to task. Angry and relieved shop owners unilaterally then took their cash registers, hung them from trucks and some torpedoed them against the doors of Nationalist party clubs. His opposition to VAT was based solely on his members’ abhorrence of letting people know what tax they were paying and what sellers would be obliged to pay the government.
Today, no one wishes to be taken back to those moments, but Vince, one must remember, did send the Nationalists back into the opposition benches for two years until Duminku Mintoff reappeared and very kindly, sort of arranged for their swift return.
And since then the Nationalists have treated Mr Farrugia with silky kid gloves.
Farrugia has spent all these years championing the cause of the self-employed but instead of looking at the bigger picture, he has served as their union leader – and union leaders tend to become very parochial and blinkered.
So when years back a cruise ship with a floating bookshop arrived in Malta, Vince was all over the place saying that this was a direct threat to other shops in Valletta. It was yet another case of the free market principle being bent and rattled to suit the moment.
On other matters he is right. His recent stand on credit cards is a laudable stance. It is true the charges the banks withhold on credit cards are unacceptable. And there is little doubt that at the end of the day, their percentage charge on the use of credit cards is not on.
In countries such as France and Germany the use of credit cards replaces the use of paper money and chequebooks. The carte bleu system is something that has yet to enter the Anglo Saxon profit-driven banking system.
On this Vince is perfectly right. So correct, that many retail outlets insist that they will give a discount if the customer pays by cash and not by credit card.
There again, that must be the reason why this credit card commission is such a nuisance to most of Vince’s members!
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
