It is not so easy for a comedian to draw smiles, let alone guffaws of laughter, from acting out a scene where no words are uttered, where verbal communication is inexistent, where the message is left to the audience to figure out.
Having a knack for this artistic style gets you places, and some past entertainers succeeded in doing that: Dave Allen, Benny Hill, Mac Ronay… I can go on, recalling the comics of my heydays that had me in stitches with their silent yet expressive sketches.
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As I write, I am reminded of one clip showing the actor as an elderly butler who, responding to his master’s request for some ice in his cocktail, dutifully trudges with difficulty to the ice seller’s shop across the road. He wears gloves.
On exiting, he is lugging a huge slab of ice and, dragging himself forward as if on leaden feet, he lumbers back to the mansion. The butler’s slow movements under a beating sun soon make the audience realise that the liquefying process of the glacial mass he is holding had started.
After a journey which seemed to last an eternity, the poor manservant returns in time to pour the few remaining ice granules in his grasp into his master’s cocktail – there you go, chilled to perfection though not so much in a timely fashion.
That our grey cells have a big say in how we behave is indisputable. As we get on in years, we become more and more aware of our growing limitations. We try to forestall the constraints that we know will be haunting us and will come lingering in our paths.
We seek protection: it is a time when ring-fencing is the ‘in’ thing to do. And as we seek to preserve and enhance our rights, we resort to support from the State and from those groupings that have the elderly’s well-being at heart.
Listen to the Fab Four wondering apprehensively what can happen as man approaches the finishing line of his life cycle:
“Give me an answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?”
(When I’m sixty-four – Lennon /McCartney).
Governments around the world created welfare systems to provide assistance for needy families and individuals spanning that stretch of time which, as common parlance would have it, takes you from the cradle to the grave.
Malta was no exception to the trend, and we have had social legislation for elderly persons on a stable footing since the 1950s. The laws enacted then had provided for a mandatory earnings-related scheme guaranteeing the payment of public pensions, supported by a means-tested (non-contributory) welfare programme, in a way that practically the whole population was covered under either a contributory or a non-contributory pension scheme.
Over the years, those early laws, which at the beginning stood freely on their own with little combination with each other, were consolidated, fused, expanded and attuned in so many ways that they eventually metamorphosed into one massive legal instrument, the Social Security Act – Cap 318, which first saw the light of a Maltese dawn on New Year’s Day of 1987 in order to:
“Establish a scheme of social security and to consolidate with amendments existing provisions concerning the payment of social insurance benefits, pensions and allowances, social and medical assistance, non-contributory pensions and the payment of social insurance contributions by employees, employers, self-employed and the State.”
Fast forward to the present time from that milestone in our social history, and yet here we are today with pensioners in Malta still grumbling and voicing concerns at the inequitable treatment being meted out to them.
Pensions have become a political punching ball recalling the bragging ditty from Irving Berlin’s Annie get your gun which proudly advocatedthat “anything you can do I can do better...”
The various add-ons over time peppering our social legislation have been bragged about as having provided monetary increases, but they have been also criticised as ‘more’ not necessarily equating with ‘enough’.
The cardinal principle of thinking ahead by contributing to a State fund that can see you through the rainy days that follow has become thwarted
Pension measures have been castigated for favouring some over others, for having retained insufficient pension levels for the elder of the elders, for stubbornly continuing to deny full State pensions to those who had regularly contributed for them over decades for the simple reason that a service pension was separately also being paid.
And while this last anomaly has been rectified for retiring parliamentarians, members of the judiciary and for other categories of workers, the vast majority of pensioners continue to see themselves short-changed by the State in this regard.
The cardinal principle of thinking ahead by contributing to a State fund that can see you through the rainy days that follow has become thwarted. Thus are acquired rights threatened while newer rights are ever harder to pick up.
We have been reading and listening in the news in past months about an AGE Platform Europe electoral manifesto that has been translated into Maltese by the National Association of Pensioners.
The document sets out what an optimal world for the elderly to lead their lives in dignity in could look like.
It cleverly steers away from the age-old political argument that you can make people’s problems disappear simply by just throwing money at them.
The manifesto spells out what rights senior citizens across Europe must strive for in order to be sure that both their present as well as their future remains on the State’s radar screens.
The National Association of Pensioners has been actively promoting this manifesto in Malta, and its provisions have been and continue being discussed with all parties who have shown an interest in the far-reaching results that can be achieved were there to be a united front among European parliamentarians to reach these ideals.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren – still full of verve as a near 70-year-young activist – firmly believes in strengthening the bedrock before proceeding with assembling the main structure. Quoting her: “A good education is a foundation for a better future”.
Thinking ahead and presaging the future renders what is to be more manageable. Using the tools that are available today makes this better future even more attainable.
The English poet and playwright Robert Browning confidently asserted in a thumbs up sign of self-determination by the older generation:
“Grow old with me:
the best is yet to be!”
Gaetan Naudi is a former senior civil servant and a former ambassador.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece