Saviour Balzan | Sunday, 25 January 2009

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Unfair play... just about

I was about to put to paper my reactions to the €7,000 fine MediaToday Company Ltd gracefully received last Friday. No, it was not a libel settlement. It had to do with the unbelievable pettiness, when Joe Zammit Maempelwas Chairman of the Gaming Authority, regarding a little article scripted by the late Julian Manduca.
Appearing in the culture section, the article made a fleeting reference to the presence of slot machines in a restaurant. Appeals Court Judge Giannino Caruana Demajo overruled Magistrate Silvio Meli’s original judgement, arguing that the miniscule restaurant review was an advert for gambling and therefore contravened the Gaming Act.
The fine for unlawful advertising of gambling is €232,000 or/and two years imprisonment.
Never mind that Greek company Maltco can advertise as they please and that the whole friggin’ island is awash with gambling shops.
And please let us not make a fuss over the horde of foreign gambling companies that have set up base in Malta – taking advantage of a minimal 5% tax regime on their profits – in order to do what they do best: take money from stupid people.
Next Sunday I will recount the whole story. Just now I am too furious to write a story of how the political class headed by the Gonzi boys wish to do away with MaltaToday.
As a taste of things to come, I have taken the liberty of asking our photographer to reproduce some pictures of some of the latest gambling places in Malta.
And just in case the Attorney General Silvio Camilleri thinks that this is an advert – may I declare no money has been passed on to us or the photographer. These gambling places are a tribute to the crass hypocrisy of the Fenech Adami and Gonzi administrations. They are a homage to the two political leaders who continue to sermonise about their politics of values but do nothing to halt the consumerism and gambling industry.
Before passing over the most favourite subject this week, may I raise my rather whopping forefinger to anyone who might suggest that I ask Fenech Adami for a presidential pardon to reduce the €7,000 fine.
I’d rather spend two years at Kordin then beg Fenech Adami for a pardon.

Austin’s roads

When you think about it, you really have to hand it to them: this Gonzi administration can really make your life hell.
But you do not have to be an editor of a newspaper to get a feel of what life means under Lawrence Gonzi. Let us for a moment forget all about nepotism, the networks, the new freemasonry and the jobs for the boys, the incompetence and the arrogance and more importantly, the waste of public funds. These, after all, are habits that persist with every political establishment.
My only concern is that after 22 years it has got worse, not better. It is almost a perfect repeat of the Mintoffian times.
To tell you the very truth, if the Gonzi doctrine allows blue-eyed boys and girls to be happy and rich and leave the rest of the world to function in peace and prosperity, we would probably practice what the rest of the world does, accept life as it is and get on with it.
But when the little things become serious or a health hazard, then really we should start to ask ourselves: what the hell is this all about?
If you do not mind, I am going to discuss driving in a car in Gozo and Malta. Or better still, getting stuck in a pothole with a puncture in pouring rain. Or waiting for your tow truck to arrive and no one around to help.
Now, just for the record, roads in Malta are the responsibility of Austin Gatt. True, there were other road ministers before him. But it has been nearly 10 months since he took the reins in his hands, and he has got nothing to show for it.
Now Gatt, of course, will shrug off any criticism on the roads. He shrugs off his own colleagues, so why should we expect him to be considerate with the rest of us?
He would probably answer in his brusque and rude way, so vulgar that not even I could repeat it in this column. But surely he must know that the roads in Malta are in such a bad state that if he even dares to go ahead with Gonzi’s idea to accept Piano’s City Gate project, I would be the first one to accuse him and Gonzi of being irresponsible.
Yes, irresponsible.
Now read my lips: I said Austin and Gonzi, because todaythe government is effectively run by Gonzi and Austin and the three underlings who get to know what is happening as a matter of course – the three underlings being Tonio Fenech, Tonio Borg and il-Poodle’s great buddy, the one and only George Pullicino.
Pullicino being all for climate change, but not exactly in favour of any dramatic change in political direction at the top.
It is bad enough for us that Austin will not divulge how much we are losing with this irresponsible hedging agreement. But if my information is correct, we are losing millions.
Gatt, with Gonzi’s blessing, introduced the most ridiculous electricity and water tariffs the world over. Now he wants to use €80 million of public funds (and that is an gross underestimate) to build a monument to ensure that Dr Gonzi will have a shrine that will archive his name in all the dusty history books.
Now, not only do we encounter problems taking our car down the side roads, but this government of ours does not even have the decency to send out a band of workmen to mark life-threatening potholes in the centre of our towns and villages. Instead, it increases the number of speed cameras... little realising that, with the roads the way they are, people dare not speed for fear of smashing their cars’ suspension.
Gaza, I am sure, has better roads than us.
Austin Gatt will probably find ways of blaming the state of our roads on Labour.
Most probably when the roads turn into Emmenthal look-alikes, he will broker the suggestion that Labour supporters are going out in the middle of the night to damage the roads. Who knows?
Perhaps we have not quite grasped that the state of our roads is a reflection of the state of our government. It gives us an insight to the health rating of the Gonzi administration: old, suffering from fatigue, megalomaniac, self-centred and in denial.
This is a government that may wish to give the semblance of change, but in reality it is entrenched in the old appendages of Mintoffianism. Power for power’s sake, promulgating inefficiencies, and feeding the sychophants.

Ajma, JPO is back
Before Labour issued a press release yesterday, one newspaper website was already publicising that Muscat had announced in a parliamentary group meeting that he would be pushing forward a motion on the plans to dig up a grotesque hole at St John’s Co-Cathedral.
That is the crude way of putting it. The hole has stirred a hornet’s nest, Astrid and Co. are up in arms, and their ally is none other the man who wanted to rent out Mistra for a open-air nightclub.
Well as we all know Mr JPO, the Nationalist MP who will not be re-elected next time round is firmly against the project.
Why? Well apart from all the environmental and conservation considerations, it seems the reason has got a lot to do with the presence of Richard Cachia Caruana, the Cardinal, in the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation. Nothing, of course, is being said of the cost of this project.
We should all be very aware that these two men do not actually see eye to eye. It appears that JPO has an axe to grind with the Cardinal. And let us face it, the Cardinal, with his bad habit of using his spin doctors to hit out at his opponents, is not the kind of living item you would want in an aquarium, let alone in the Cabinet.
Yesterday JPO was asked by an MT journalist how he would vote on the PL motion: a perfectly justified question, unless you are not a journalist in North Korea or Sudan.
JPO, in his typical impetuous fashion, threatened the journalist that if he persisted in the question he would raise a breach of privilege against the journalist.
Ma, x’biza!
Now, not only do we have the courts and archaic laws to concern ourselves with, we also have a kangaroo court run by parliamentarians.
The last time a journalist was reported for a breach of privilege was under Duminku Mintoff, and the lucky chap was Charles Demicoli.
And Mr Demicoli, a colourful and sly character with many rough edges, was good enough to take his case to Strasbourg.
Grow up, Mr JPO, and really. if you do not want to tell us how you are going to vote it does not really matter.
What really matters just now… is that I am running late and I still have to pick up my blessed spare wheel from...

sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt

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