Looks like the Department of Lousy Rotten Excuses has been busier than usual this week. Much busier. In fact, it’s not been since the Golden Age of Classical Greek Philosophy that so many extraordinary intellects have converged upon a single place, at a single time, to regale the world with such a mind-boggling quantity of unmitigated crap.
So here they are, for your delectation: the lousiest, cheekiest, rottenest and most maggot-ridden excuses known to man, all concocted by the department in the space of a few measly days... in reverse putrefaction order:
3. No subsidies, please, we’re the PN When it comes to justifying the unjusitfiable with rotten excuses, few have ever surpassed Tonio “it was only a football match” Fenech – minister for finance, energy, ethics, freebies and the occasional vexatious libel suit.
But in order to justify his government’s exorbitant utility tariffs in the face of mass protests last weekend, Fenech appears to have surpassed even himself, coming up with what must rank among the smelliest doo-dahs in history of dirty, rotten stinkeroonies.
“Unfortunately,” he tearfully said in a DOI press release last Tuesday, “it looks like the General Workers’ Union has yet again chosen to jump on the Opposition’s bandwagon, and to suggest to government that it continues subsidising waste.”
(Pause for echo: ‘continues subsidising waste’... continues subsidising waste... continues subsidising waste... etc.)
That’s right, Tonio, you show those pesky unions who’s boss! The Nationalist government? Subsidise waste? AS IF! We all know it would sooner drink its own tapwater than waste a single cent of Maltese taxpayers’ hard-earned cash on an undeserving cause. And as for that nice, tidy little €50+ million lump-sum paid out to the bus drivers’ cartel last December... well, that wasn’t exactly a ‘subsidy’, now was it? No siree. It was just a little bribe to keep them from driving their buses through the gates of Castille again, like they did in 2008.
And so what, if government spends another €200 million to convert Enemalta’s power station at Delimara to run of Heavy Fuel Oil, at a time when:
a) the government was citing rising oil prices to justify the new tariffs, and;
b) it was already committed to fully convert the same station to run on gas in just under three years’ time...
All it means is that the Scandinavian firm that won the contract needed the money more than pensioners who can’t afford to pay their utility bills, that’s all.
And, besides: so profound is the government’s deepseated antipathy towards State subsidies of all hues, that it has only just undertaken to finance 100% of teachers’ salaries in all schools owned by the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church (but, curiously, not any other schools in the private sector.)
Subsidise waste? The Nationalist government? Get out of here...
2. It’s not a lion – it’s a great big cat with a bushy mane! In second place comes that classic put-down (for it can hardly be called an ‘excuse’, though it is every bit as lousy and rotten as the best of them) supplied to this newspaper last Sunday by the executive director of the Malta Council for Culture and Arts, Davinia Galea, in reply to comments about a ‘censorship board’ by Labour MP Owen Bonnici.
“No censorship board exists,” Galea affirmed. “There is a Classification Board which however, in exceptional circumstances, has the right to censor...”
Really? How utterly fascinating. So let’s see if I’ve got this straight: a board which retains the right to censor (under ‘exceptional circumstances’, please note) cannot correctly be defined as a ‘censorship board’, because... it chose to call itself a ‘classification board’ instead.
My oh my, you learn something new every day. So by the same reasoning, I suppose it would be entirely incorrect to assert that there were such things as ‘concentration camps’ in Nazi Europe before 1945. Concentration camps? Don’t be silly. They were merely ‘hospitality facilities’, in which inordinately large numbers of people were ‘concentrated’ (under very exceptional circumstances indeed) shortly before being brutally murdered, that’s all...
Oh, and contrary to widespread international misconceptions – fuelled by such malicious organisations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – there is no such thing as ‘capital punishment’ in The People’s Republic of China, either. Nor for that matter in Burma, Libya, Zimbabwe, the United States of America.
No indeed. It’s just a misunderstanding that arose because the legal systems in these and other countries occasionally permit – always in ‘exceptional circumstances’, mind – that people are hanged, lethally injected, fried on an electric chair, or simply lined up against a wall and shot.
But in any case. Now that we have established that ‘censorship’ does not actually exist in Malta, and that the presence in our midst of a ‘censorship board’ has all along been a figment of our imagination – what remains to be clarified are the ‘exceptional circumstances’ under which plays may be... um... left entirely as they are.
Let’s see now. According to the non-existent censorship board, the stage-play Stitching (which was not ‘censored’, by the way – it was merely ‘prevented from being staged’) was objectionable because it contained ‘blasphemy’.
Ah yes, of course. That’s an extremely ‘exceptional circumstance’ here in Malta, isn’t it? In fact I have lived here for all of 38 years, and I have never, ever, ever, ever, EVER heard anyone take the name of our Lord in vain. Not once.
And thank God for that, too. I mean, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Angel Gabriel... can you just imagine what this country would come to, if all suddenly started breaking the Lord’s Second Commandent..?
1. I dreamed a dream in times gone by... But all of the above simply pales to insignificance compared to the smelliest, lousiest and most worm-infested excuse to have been excogitated over the past seven days... and quite possibly, the entire history of humankind to boot.
I refer to the extraordinary brainchild of those genius consultants who drew up the government’s ‘Project Description Statement’ for City Gate Project – you know, the one that attempted to justify Gonzi’s decision to betray the dreams of so many people by consigning Barry’s Opera House to oblivion forever.
So what’s their excuse, you might be asking? Couldn’t be simpler. According to these consultants, the idea to retain the Opera House ruins in their present form (with only minor modifications, including half a roof) represents “architectural proposals that are a reflection of the ambitions and aspirations of post-war Maltese society.”
[NOTE: We regret to interrupt this Sunday column to inform you all that its author has just received the grade ‘F’ in his latest exam – The Vocabularly of the English Language]
Oh dear, looks like words have failed me... again.
Where was I? Ah yes: “the ambitions and aspirations of post-war Maltese society”.
And what, pray tell, were these “ambitious and aspirations” to begin with?
Why, to rebuild the Opera House, of course.
And what better way to fulfil these ‘ambitions and aspirations’, than... by... NOT REBUILDING THE OPERA HOUSE AT ALL???!
Sheer genius, I’m sure you’ll agree. And it gets even better, too. For instead of rebuilding the Opera House of which we have dreamed and to which we have aspired for 70 whole years, the government will instead honour its memory by:
a) leaving the ruins pretty much as they are, and;
b) using the money to build a nice new House of Parliament for itself instead.
You know something? It’s a pity there isn’t a Nobel Prize category for Sheer Unmitigated and Earth-shattering Cheek, because it’s hard to imagine a likelier winner. Ever. And it almost makes me wish I had children of my own, so I could use the same awe-inspiring logic myself from time to time:
“So tell me, son: what would you like for Christmas this year? A bicycle? Oh, jolly good. Tell you what, then: I will honour and respect your ‘ambition and aspiration’ to own a bicycle... BY NOT BUYING YOU A BLOODY BICYCLE AT ALL! And what’s more, I will use the money I would have otherwise spent on your bicycle to pay for a nice little holiday for myself... and just to really rub your nose in your own insignificance, I will instead give you a small picture of the bicycle you never got for Christmas.
You know, just so that you can continue ruefully yearning after the ambition and aspiration that shall never be fulfilled.”
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