Marketing strategy

This is a suggested marketing strategy for Malta and Gozo.

• The island of cheap alcoholic drinks, paradise for youth.

• The island of wild parties.

• The island that never sleeps and does not allow others to sleep.

• The island where to go for cannabis and ‘recreational’ drugs.

• The island to go and do as you please, where you please, with whom you please, with no morals, no inhibitions and no limits. 

Malta: the island that never sleeps. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

One can roam around the promenades and streets almost bare naked. No law! No worries! No police!

Maybe our best tourist marketing strategy should be: the island of Adam and Eve – the most progressive in the world. Everybody is welcome. 

Compliance – my left foot.

Respect is not part our dictionary.

Josie Muscat – Sliema

Eyes wide shut

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time”, apparently said by Abe Lincoln.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is an old English saying.

While both sayings are not exactly contradictory, they are neither exactly complementary to each other. 

Yet, both can be attributable to us as a nation.

We know that money is the root to all evil but we adore it; that we are being manipulated but many are on an IARFYJ joyride. For the uninitiated, that’s “I’m all right, f*** you Jack”.

So, as long as the people in power are ‘all right’ and their henchmen are ‘all right’, many plebeians on the periphery of this ‘social regime’ will clap and say thank you for the crumbs... and will keep the power hungry IARFYJs where they are... in power. 

If the mentality of the nation does not change and call a spade by its proper name... ‘a spade’, we might as well come up with a more modern saying that goes “you can fool everybody all the time, for there’s no shame in being a fool”.

A damning indictment of the collective national spirit, where short-term comfort is prioritised over long-term integrity and justice. Open your eyes, and you might not like what you see.

Ray Azzopardi – St Julian’s

The Doha talks

I wonder what the outcome of the talks in Doha is. It’s a small place with a global role.

They built churches for our Christian denominations, so they may well be able to get Sunni and Shiite to agree on wrapping up the WTO Doha round two decades late on zero world hunger and a common fund for world development from nuclear disarmament, as Pope St Paul VI prayed for in Populorum Progressio many decades ago. 

We can all join together in praying with the Mother of God that the Messiah, as the sacrificial lamb bound tightly to the cross, will in his death and resurrection attract enemies to the Holy Trinity through his holy Mother in simple practical terms across negotiations on ending hunger and war by agreeing to implement Pope St John Paul II’s suggestion to the UN for a new universally binding declaration on the inalienable rights of nations as a further guarantee for human rights in the global family of mankind.

This is an offering we can all share even in growing in frailty of body and mind and, yet, strength of spirit.

Peter Cassar Torreggiani – Balzan