I.M. Beck - quote unquote

Yes, I am back, which is why I sign this column I.M. Beck, which is what I write every time I go on holiday and which is why I assume E. Privitera Esq. is of the opinion that I am more suited to teaching English than being a political commentator, which is moderately insulting of English teachers.

We had a very nice time, thank you, of which more anon, assuming I leave myself space.

L'etat c'est nous

I can't turn my back on this place for more than a few minutes than people go around announcing budgets and such like thingies which would, in less happy times (i.e. when I'm not on holiday), have been grist to my mill.

Another thing that people get up to when I'm away is writing letters to the paper having a bit of a whine about my having a bit of a whine, though this time I didn't have the pleasure of missing it, having got back in time to see Mr Privitera's latest epistle.

He asked me, in his inimitable style, "how had Labour become a 'vassal state' of North Korea, pray tell us, Beck".

Well, to that all I can say is, if you're referring to Malta, if you don't know by now, sunshine, you'll never get it. Which bastion of democracy was it that armed and trained the shock-troopers of the regime when it was deemed politic to suppress the legitimate voice of the people? Answer that and you'll have gone some way to figuring it out.

But the thing is, Mr Privitera slipped up and badly in his question, presumably in his rush to expedite his missive. You might not have noticed it, but he asked little me (not so little after a holiday) how Labour had become a vassal state of North Korea.

Excuse me? Since when has the Malta Labour Party become a state? I know that when Dom the Almost (thankfully) Forgotten and Dr KMB where in charge, having the nerve to criticise the Party was tantamount to high treason and Heaven help you if you were caught, because you were held up to the world to be enemies of the state.

The MLP always did have this problem, confusing itself with the country, to which everyone owes loyalty, as opposed to a political party to which only those who choose owe loyalty.

Misery, pourquoi?

Part of the hot air that I have seen rising over the country since Mr Dalli did his thing with the briefcase has been constituted of cries of misery and the gnashing of teeth because the government is trying to make ends meet.

Now I'm not being presumptive enough to say that what Mr Dalli proposed for next year is perfectly acceptable to each and every one of us and nor am I going to say that he is perfectly right, that is exactly the medicine that we need. I am not an economist.

But what is really amusing about the hot air is the way the people who are spouting some of it (Doctor Alfred Sant and his Merry Men, step forward and take your applause) have been slipping in the thought that all this misery and teeth, gnashing thereof, is the fault of a government that knows not what to do now that it has got what it wants, i.e. getting us into the EU.

I see, trimming back the Black Hole that is the Dockyard is something that they're (actually, we're) only doing because of the EU. The fact that I and everyone else I know is sick and tired of paying money for nothing without even the chicks going free (Dire Straits, which is where we find ourselves, if the Doomsayers are to be believed) had absolutely nothing to do with it, of course.

And then there's the Social Security/Medical Service Sacred Cow that moves MLP spokes-folks to tears every time, guaranteed. Is it not obvious, even to a non-economist like me, that the system is unsustainable? In other words, more cash is needed and that has to come from somewhere, nothing to do with the EU.

To be going on, there's the national malady, uncompetitiveness, that has to be cured. The reasons for the malady, the way the public service was overloaded with Dr KMB's jobs-for-the-voters and the lame duck companies that were set up and the high wages and restrictive work practices that were strong-armed onto the private sector by the almighty union(s), are also nothing to do with the EU.

And someone has to pay for all this, folks; the Queen and her coffers are no longer available to us: money doesn't come from the sky. We are paying for it, and I'm sick of doing that and then having people turn around and tell me that it's all because of the EU and the incompetent government. Sure, the government isn't the bee's knees, but from the evidence, nor are the other lot, so stop whining.

Pick a percentage, any percentage

As soon as the Budget rolls along, along rolls a whole wave of percentages, at which point I tend to nod off. This time around, I wasn't here for some of it, so I can take a fresh look at it.

I will not go into the merits of Doctor Alfred Sant's claim that VAT has increased by 20 per cent: mathematically he is 100 per cent correct (see, even I can bandy percentages about) but being a fair man, I am sure he will forgive me if I point out that he is being a touch less than perfectly transparent, because he knows full well that the Great Unwashed are all stumbling about in the fog his party has created, wailing and caterwauling about the new 20 per cent VAT.

What struck me was the dear fellow's claim that the budgeted deficit does not have much to do with the fact that we have an unsustainable Social Security and Health system (see above).

Doctor Alfred Sant's proof for this, people, is that if one were to look at the increases in expenditure with respect to pensions (for example), this would be a meagre 2.piddling per cent while in the children's allowance, there's another x.meagre per cent increase and so on and so firth, while, say, that in the budget allocation for MCA there was a 66 per cent increase and for the MSA another 50-something per cent increase, shock horror.

This is what he was screaming in parliament on Monday, I am told, while I was winging my way back from London, having watched the Greatest Team in the World beat, trounce, hammer, annihilate and otherwise cream Man U.

And it was a penalty, the ref said so, so there.

But back to dear old Doctor Alfred Sant and his percentages, the good old boy failed to point out, lest he confuse his faithful, that a two per cent increase in the budget for pensions means quite a few zeroes after integer (is that the word for which I am groping in the miasma of my arithmetical fog?) while the 66 per cent or whatever in the MCA's budget doesn't have quite the same impact.

Oh well, at least we were spared the usual whine that the new hospital is too much for Malta. I am reliably informed that the MLP (not Doctor Alfred Sant, of course) had said exactly the same thing about St Luke's back in the 1930s.

Having fun

As you might have gathered, I and the Trouble were away last week, recharging the jolly old batteries, not having done that little thing over summer.

We had a rather good trip this year, with a couple of days in London (Woman in Black with a load of screaming teenagers, not brilliant but good all the same, and Lenny Henry being Lenny Henry, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant) and then a week in Spain, having got there by EasyJet for the princely sum of £150 for two, return.

I am glad to notice that Air Malta is getting on the cheap and cheerful bandwagon. I have to say that I was impressed with the EasyJet operation: you don't get useless tickets (you just turn up having booked and paid over the Net) you don't get cardboard food and you don't get any frills at all. What you do get is a cheap, comfortable, on-time flight, which is all you need.

Spain was an experience. I'd been before, but further South in the searing heat of summer - this time we drove along the Northern Coast, in the cool of autumn, on superb roads, taking in the scenery and the provender in equal measure and enjoying the whole thing enormously.

Go there and see what it's like to be in a European country, if you see what I mean.

After the value for money of Spain, it was back to the daylight robbery of London, for Tom Stoppard's Jumpers (very, very good) and watching the Greatest Team in the World creaming... oh, but you've heard that bit before.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt