Really. I can no longer stand the groans and grumbling. The new chorus is now emanating from the university lecturers. They say they have had it with their low salaries.
But really and truly, the lecturers should blame themselves for their abysmal situation. Over the years they have stood by this government, excusing it for treating them like pariahs.
Let us face it, in another country, the university lecturers would be out in the streets burning effigies of the education minister and asking their rector to stand up and be counted. Here in Malta the lecturers are predominantly pro-government, so they feel reluctant to embarrass their party or the rector, a political appointee.
The best that rector Juanito Camilleri could do this week was to refuse an interview with MaltaToday. I guess someone with a salary exceeding €120,000 a year is justified in refusing to talk to the press.
The increase in salary by the university lecturers runs into millions. According to government, €140 million over the next six years. When you think of the extensive overspending and the blatant wastage in government, you can understand why the lecturers want more.
But the lecturers simply do not have the balls to tell Gonzi that if he really wants education to be a priority, he will have to raise their standards and salaries.
You see, most lecturers (despite their claim to intellect) cannot quite understand that Gonzi talks far too much and sometimes does not realise that he cannot implement most of the things he talks about. Remember all his talk of the opera house and wind farms? Needless to say another one of those windswept political promises.
I am not too sure if the university lecturers will offer anything extra if their salary is incremented. Some lecturers have so many private interests that it is very unlikely that this will change, while some of them do little or no research and have a ridiculous low number of contact hours.
According to the government propaganda machine, the salary demands by the lecturers will cost the Maltese taxpayer €140 million. Now such a bill will never be footed by those illustrious Maltese businessmen who set up companies in the Isle of Man or who always declare a loss in their yearly accounts.
Because the demands, if acceded to, will certainly make our lecturers happy but definitely will mean more taxes from the middle classes. Every time we talk of salary increments, it is the middle class that foots the bill.
Tonio Fenech, the finance minister who gives the impression that he knows it all but really has the biggest crisis on his hands, finds it very difficult to accept the university lecturers' demands. But he should have done the same when it came to the building of the horrendous and ludicrousy huge and lavish Malta Maritime Authority headquarters, the extravagant and unnecessary Mgarr sea terminal, or worse still, the spending spree at Mater Dei.
Fenech, together with the PM’s personal assistant Edgar Galea Curmi, are to be blamed for the excesses at Mater Dei, which run into millions monthly and will cost us dearly. Just take a small segment of the hospital: there are 45 dental chairs for the price of €18,000 each, even though there are only 23 full-time dentists. Sweet.
But that is not the only example of wastage at Mater Dei. This hospital reads like a never-ending shopping list of mismanagement that is being financed by yours truly, the middle class. From cardiac stretchers to X-ray machines to unused space and unmanned theatres, this hospital’s bill is pretty much bleeding your pockets.
Throughout the last year, Fenech has been applauded as the bright finance minister, but in reality he should be taken to task for raising expectations to an unbelievably high level when all the wind vanes were pointing south. Fenech went on to reverse the policy on children’s allowance, definitely the electoral ploy that has come to cost the taxpayer dearly.
The Prime Minister insists that people must pay for parking at Mater Dei but finds no fault with children’s allowance for all. It did not stop there. In their pursuit of investing in the politics of political apartheid, boards and agencies funded by taxpayers have provided recruitment for party boys and girls as directors, when in reality the operation of these agencies could easily have been realised with a professional, non-political CEO.
Tell me which agency needs both a chairman and a CEO? If Austin Walker can act as executive chairman, then why should we have the same at ADT and all the other agencies. And why do we need all these yes-men and women on boards when in reality their input is zilch?
Or take agencies which already had their in-house legal teams, such as Malta Enterprise and MEPA. There the government is paying private legal companies to outsource legal work when this was not necessary because these agencies have their own legal division.
Across the board, ministries have recruited small private companies to either manage their public relations or run their projects. They are usually the same PR companies of course.
From small jobs to big road construction, the spending budgets have been usually costed wrongly, and invariably spending has exceeded the budget detailed for the job and yet it seems no one was responsible. From the roads in Gozo to the bridge at St Julian’s, the costings have gone way out of budget.
The same with the dockyard where the management have worked the wrong quotes for mammoth projects and no one seems to be responsible for the cock-up.
This government is a specialist when it comes to spending money that does not belong to it. Money, as we were told over and over again, was and is no problem at all.
Yet the most serious accusation for Tonio Fenech is the spending spree before the elections with the singular aim of bringing in more votes. Over the last years, other projects which were deemed to be a waste of money, namely the dockyard, were continued and captained by both Gonzi and Austin Gatt with the resultant siphoning of millions of euros of taxpayers’ money.
And if this is not enough, the message from the Auditor General of how public funds are managed and unaccounted for in most ministries when it comes to travelling makes for interesting reading.
Surely a university lecturer who has been on the same salary scale for the last five years and reads this would be compelled to take a dynamite belt and blow themselves up next time someone comes to collect anHonoris Causa.

Badmouthing Vince
The front-page story reporting the government’s badmouthing of Vince Farrugia is rather typical. There is no love lost between me and Vince but on his pre-electoral request to extend the surcharge exemption to all businesses, I have to say he has my full support.
That his complaint to the EU hastened the end to capping is of course significant. But it does nothing to change our impression, or rather my impression, that the finance ministry is being run by a bunch of boy scouts.
Why should a hotel have its surcharge capped but a small business not? Everyone has a business to run.
And why is it that the finance minister was not alerted that this capping business was illegal? Where were RCC, Simon Busuttil and of course my good friend David Casa? Why did they not sound the alarm – most especially Cachia Caruana who is surrounded by a regiment of advisors in his mega embassy in Brussels?
According to the previous capping offer, some businesses seem to have had a God-given right to receive subsidies and subventions and advantages and that is when I ask myself: is this Europe and the free market or are we a bit of this and a bit of that? Why should a restaurant in a hotel have the advantage of a surcharge exemption but the restaurant that is not in a hotel complex pay the full tariff?
Having said this, the government cannot allow the new tariffs to come into place. If it allows this to happen many businesses will simply collapse. If Austin Gatt does not see this, if Gonzi’s Cabinet allows this to happen, then I am afraid that really and truly the Nationalists do not deserve to continue governing this country.
And to hell with all this scaremongering about Jason Micallef and Alex Sceberras Trigona and Toni Abela and Anglu Farrugia. In a choice between mediocrity and losing a business or your job, anyone, even those with a pea brain, will opt for mediocrity. In a choice between prejudices and a salary at the end of the month, anyone with a modicum of intelligence would take the right decision. It definitely is no longer a question of TASTE.

Ban hunting outright
The autumn season has proven that hunting in Malta is simply carried out for the shooting down of protected species. There are hardly any game species to be shot at and what has happened is that most hunters have simply vented their frustrations and expended all their lead on any living creature that passes before them.
Which brings me to the next campaign that should kick off: the campaign to abolish hunting from Malta and Gozo.
The FKNK, that is the hunter’s federation, is not in a position to control its members. It is incapable of telling its members what to do or what not to do. The police do not have the time to parade around the countryside and the minister responsible for hunting is Dr Gonzi, and he is too preoccupied with the bigger picture.
The solution is simple: ban hunting in Malta now. And anyone who agrees should write in and join me in a campaign that starts from today.

Maltese in secondary schools
Has anyone looked at the list of books for Maltese in secondary school? The number of poems that students are being asked to learn and study is absurd. Thirteen and fourteen-year-olds need to read relevant and enticing stuff, not stuffy outdated poetry that never gets sold at a bookshop and has a limited audience.
If Maltese examiners want Maltese youngsters with limited Maltese to learn Maltese they should also be introduced to newspapers, books, programmes and radio shows. It is true that the quality of media articles is not always high but I am sure there are some good features that could be used. Stop blaming children with problems in speaking Maltese simply because their parents prefer to talk to their children in English. And let us start to understand that there is a problem and that it needs to be addressed.