When are people going to grow up and stop treating everything in a partisan way? Reasoning is either overcooked or raw, but rarely well done.
How would not joining the EU have made a difference to the current situation? Some people are arguing that nothing can touch us as long as we are isolated. Others, on the other hand, think that nothing can affect us anyway.
Staunch Nationalists think the government should not be held responsible for job losses and high energy bills, and staunch Labourites believe that a Labour administration would have dealt with the crisis better and blames this administration for everything that goes wrong.
The situation could have been handled differently, better or exactly the same by an MLP administration. But that is neither here nor there.
The electorate voted this government in and this government is responsible for the way it governs. It has therefore to take stock and think of ways to minimise problems created by job losses and hardship because of high utility bills.
Sure, the credit crunch and the rest of the financial woes, including energy, are global. But that does not mean that the government is not responsible for the way the crisis is handled locally.
Whose responsibility is it otherwise? By the way, taking responsibility is not the same as taking the blame for an issue.
Many people seem not to understand that distinction. Of course the Maltese government is not to blame for the worldwide financial chaos, but it is responsible for tackling the way it affects us.
A few weeks ago financial experts pontificated on how our banks will weather the storm, and some implied that it is only people who have invested abroad who would suffer.
I opined (‘Double speak and quality of life’) that just because our banks are not going to fold does not mean that lives would not be affected by the global recession.
Bank loans would be harder to get, people would lose their jobs and the tourism industry, which generates most of our income, would suffer.
We are beginning to see this happen. Toly Products will be dismissing 84 of its 400 workers because of the global economic crisis. The government has reacted by saying it will phase out the capping on the power surcharge for large enterprises over three years instead of immediately, and that the proposed tariffs will also be revised so that revenue will be reduced, and the reduction will be spread over all consumers.
The way government is apportioning the burden for our energy needs is being questioned, and rightly so. Professor Edward Mallia has pointed out that the less you consume the more you pay; and the GRTU is complaining that the burden of the new electricity bills has been largely shifted from big industry to small businesses.
I suppose the government thinking is that there will be many more job losses from big companies than SMEs. But as so many seem to think that the government is not responsible for job losses, why is it bothering?

Guarded Smart City
So BPC’s aim to ask for a deposit of €2,300 from journalists wanting interviews regarding Smart City was not a joke!
Did BPC really think it could get away with it, in an EU member state? I know that we have a number of journalists who will submit copy for censorship, but they were not going to stomach having to pay for it! Besides, that is much more overt.
Now BPC is the agency that gives out awards for journalism. It makes you think, doesn’t it?
Are we meant to believe that this significant initiative was made without consulting such an important client? Which is what BPC is claiming in its back-pedalling.
The agency director claimed that the concept to charge a deposit was to prevent unfair or exploitative media coverage.
He also was reported as saying that the “majority” of news media operate according to journalistic ethics; “However, sometimes journalists request a face-to-face interview. Naturally, it is at the discretion of every client whether to accept the interview or not and under what terms of engagement.”
So journalists can be trusted with press releases but not with “face-to-face” interviews? Hence the deposit brainwave.
Surely a sophisticated project such as Smart City could handle unfair or exploitative media coverage without resorting to suppression, which is what the deposit would have entailed.
It has always stuck in my gullet that certain journalists submit their interviews for inspection by the interviewee before publication. An interview is meant to give the reader an honest view of spontaneous responses by whoever is being interviewed. If that person has second thoughts after the interview, tough luck.
If on the other hand a genuine mistake were made with statistics, for instance, then of course the journalist involved would be crass not to correct it.
If an interviewer misrepresents the interviewee’s responses, the injured party has the right of reply and s/he would quite rightly refuse to be interviewed by that journalist at any future date.
Which does not mean that interviews would only be granted to journalists who share the same views or political agenda, or those who are prepared to submit their copy for scrutiny.
Malta is a small place and people all know which journalists have an agenda. In fact, some ‘choose’ a specific journalist because either their underlying bias coincides with theirs, or the reporter is ‘soft’ or naive.
Why is Smart City scared of hard talk?

Get rid of the smells and mess
I have backed the government’s initiative on enforcement of the litter laws and the removal of furniture encroaching on pavements and other public places.
At least I feel that sometimes I do not go on and on in vain. Years of pestering have borne some positive results.
However, the café opposite the Sliema pitch is still monopolising the pavement with a structure forcing people to walk through cigarette smoke in order to reach the pedestrian crossing.
I also wish the authorities would clamp down on pigeon rearers and horse-drawn carriages (karozzini). As I left Valletta the other day the road along the bastions was littered with stinking horse manure. As much as I hate the sight of cigarette butts on the ground, at least their stink is not as pungent.
As for pigeons, it is ironic that the deplorable state of the car park right on Jason Azzopardi’s doorstep has not been attended to. Hasting Gardens has been upgraded, yet as soon as you drive down past the House of Four Winds, the place is a shambles. That is not a place for shantytown-type pigeon huts.
Come on Jason, you are doing such a good job. Clean up this corner, that still attracts tourists despite the Tigné Point monstrosity.

pamelapacehansen@gmail.com

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