It has been an eventful week, although I could think of better things to do.
It sounds repetitive and rather dreary to talk about bedridden patients who have not been moved out of their beds, but this morning as you dig deep into our buttered toast and milky coffee, just remember that hundreds of patients have not been moved for days on end and their bedsores are bigger and uglier.
I have been approached by relatives of the patients and elderly at Malta’s state hospitals and they are angry. They are not only angry at the General Workers Union, but also at the government for doing nothing to intervene.
Nursing aides and health assistants are obeying directives, and even when it comes to getting patients for urgent treatment, they look the other way and simply hope that no one is watching. If patients got cleaned, moved and helped – it was all due to the benevolence of nurses and the paramedics who had already been under the pressure of gross understaffing.
The nursing aides who get a month’s crash course to make them eligible for their job, want to have the same status as nurses. I guess it sounds very cavalier to make Maoist demands but this is not really advisable, I’m afraid.
It is high time we start looking at removing the Mintoffian attitude that the people most crucial to healthcare are the ones paid the least. If we want good healthcare we need to start paying the right remuneration to the specialists who make healthcare fundamentally better. As the back-page article states, more and more doctors are leaving our shores.
Yesterday, we heard the union lifted directives and would be having a cooling-off period. In reality the union has keeled over under pressure from angry relatives, and also from members who have been missing out on “overtime” and extra pay.
These strike directives have made the life of patients more difficult, but they may have also been the reason for the critical condition of many patients. And if that is not enough of a concern, then why don’t we all make it known that the GWU leadership should be held personally responsible for any of the physical hardships and pain? Yes, personally responsible.
Let’s hope that in three weeks’ time, the minister will have a solution to counter the union’s demands – if need be with a new set of nursing aides trained to look like the caring and state of the art care workers on the billboards promoting Mater Dei.
Maltese émigrés from Down Under have been offended by my sarcastic comments over the government’s decision to automatically grant Maltese citizenship to generations of emigrants’ descendants who have never even seen Malta in their lives. One Aussie had the gall to say he left Malta to make space for someone like me.
In truth, some were offended at my suggestion that they keep eating their kangaroo meat.
The fact is that we should object to opening citizenship simply to those who have a Maltese ancestor. Undoubtedly the PM’s return from Australia will catalyse the pressure to offer citizenship to all those Maltese who cannot tell the difference between a Jerusalem artichoke and a Maltese politician.
Since I am not a member of Viva Malta or one of Josie’s right-wing groupies, I believe citizenship should be something special and not linked to genetic lineage. Being Maltese has nothing to do with having a Maltese surname or a beauty spot that runs in the family. And this should be understood by everyone, including the Prime Minister.
A lot has been said about the Pharmacy Of Your Choice scheme. Needless to say, we have been entertained by the presence of Mario Debono, the man who will be remembered among other things for his kind emails to Joseph Muscat.
I hold no brief for Mr Muscat, but looking at the content of some these emails, I cannot understand how anyone can defend Debono. To say he has the backing of the GRTU members does not quite say anything. Mr Vincent Farrugia has said that the story is more bile than crime. Quite amusing!
But the bigger story is the Pharmacy Of Your Choice agreement. Here is a scheme that will cost more to the taxpayer and not reform the way free drugs and medicines are distributed to this hypochondriac country. It has done nothing to restructure our health bill.
This is a scheme that benefits the middleman, the retail outlets, and no one else. The argument that people can pick up the goods from pharmacies is just a pale excuse to justify this extravagance. So why do away with polyclinics and then introduce this new costly scheme?
It goes a step further, for it promulgates the idea that there will be no more new pharmacy outlets, a concept which we should all combat and oppose. In a world which talks of free enterprise, where no one determines how many clinics, private hospitals, discotheques, bars, video shops, pastizzerias or even newspapers open up, no one and nobody should dictate the number of pharmacy licences government issues.
And if the GRTU argue that pharmacies are different kinds of businesses, then how about some more social oriented pricing structures for medicines? If someone wants to take the risk of opening a pharmacy, then good luck; if he or she has the capital to invest then so be it.
The GRTU has on many occasions perpetuated a policy which promotes the status quo. When a floating bookstore entered the Grand Harbour, the GRTU unleashed a war of words claiming bookshops were under threat. The next thing we will hear is that we should order all our books from Maltese bookshops and not from Amazon.
The claim that no more new licences will be issued for the opening of pharmacies should be challenged in court and there is no doubt in my mind that anyone who dares take the government to court will win.
I even challenge the government to prove that the Pharmacy Of Your Choice will cost the taxpayer less than the medicine bill already has.
It won’t. It will only make people like Mario Debono better off.
The French embassy has said they will answer questions about Libya when they deem it appropriate. I love the French when they get all French.
You see, France is a wonderful country. Personally, I particularly adore the Bretons and Brittany. It is the only part of France which has kept nuclear power away and where the people have taken to the countryside and stopped Paris from allowing more nuclear plants.
If French cheese stinks, so does their press: it’s a conglomeration that is as tame as an inebriated house mouse, mostly conservative and inward-looking and, with the exception of Le Monde, Charlie Hebdo and two other satirical newspapers, the French press stands out for being parochial and boring.
Even the Maltese press can be more vibrant than the French. In France institutions do not expect the press to ask questions. They expect the press to be obedient and subservient.
So when Rives said he will only answer when he feels like it, one should not be too offended. But then, he surely should not be offended if we describe French tolerance to criticism as similar to their bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in the 1980s.
The latest news is that Libya is still the proud owner of 1,000 tonnes of uranium. Uranium is not exactly a product one uses in gelling hair or removing warts. It is a poisonous material utilised to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam Hussein, who back in the 1980s was considered a nice guy by the West, did not even have one nanogramme of uranium and yet he was accused of being behind some WMD programme.
I guess Michael Frendo and Leo Brincat will probably argue that Libya intends to use the uranium for some charitable cause.
French Ambassador Jean-Marc Rives will probably say that we are being too nosy and should shut up. And the US ambassador’s second-in-command has claimed the US has not seen the agreement between France and Libya. No, of course not.
The problem with the British, French and Americans is that they have it all organised for us: we are not supposed to hate or love or ignore anyone unless we are told what to do.
In 1981 they told us we should love Saddam Hussein even though he gassed the Kurds; in 1991 they asked us to hate him. In 1972 they asked us to love Pinochet even though he killed raped and tortured hundreds of his citizens. In 1982 they asked us to love the corrupt Nicaraguan junta, even though they turned a blind eye when Catholic nuns were raped and killed. In 1979 they asked us to support the radical movement that gave birth to the Taliban; in 2001 they asked us to relegate them to the status of bandits. In 1981 they pleaded with us to paint Libyans as terrorists and portrayed them as such in every Hollywood movie; now they are calling on us to embrace them.
Diplomats and politicians can play with words and change and choose friends according to commercial interests, but the disfranchised citizens of Europe have every right to ignore them and accuse them of crass hypocrisy.
