Roamer's column

I wonder if the new Rector at the University has seen or read Alan Bennet's The History Boys, a play that received rave reviews in London where it first opened and which is currently receiving similar accolades in Broadway.

Bennett's play is about a group of English schoolboys being prepared for entry into Oxbridge. Two of the teachers helping them in their preparation adopt different attitudes. One of them lays great store by "useless knowledge", education for its own sake; the other urges the boys to wow judges by adopting a cynical attitude towards conventional wisdom. Bury the old; ring in the new. But what is the new and which of the old, if any, is to be laid out for burial?

The question will exercise the mind of Professor Juanito Camilleri who has, to use current terminology, kicked off well with a formal visit to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. He will be following this up with meetings with the Archbishop, the Leader of the Opposition and representatives of the wealth-creating sector in Malta. The latter's role as the economic kingpin of the country, as well as its potential for sponsorships in projects that integrate learning with research and the market-place, are self-evident.

Professor Camilleri strikes me as being interested in opening up the University to new ideas and to the relevance demanded by a society that is slowly, sometimes painfully, acknowledging that the social, economic and cultural life of Malta requires fresh approaches. It may help him considerably to relate professionally with an entrepreneurial and services environment that our forefathers never dreamed would delineate a new Malta. This does not preclude the obvious responsibility of retaining all that is good and vital in the identity of Malta, its values and humanities.

Clearly, he will have to talk earnestly and listen as diligently to the various 'commanders' under his strategic direction (and discover their strengths and weaknesses). He may be interested in discovering, first, the state of the cohorts attending as students, the space available to them to learn, the resources he has at his disposal to move forward without having to look over his shoulders to see whether his commanders and troops are facing and, indeed, travelling in the right direction. The selection of that direction is, awesomely enough, his. Presumably he will not select it until the process of intense familiarisation has been completed, after he has best understood what the University delivers at this moment in time and what he determines to see it delivering in two, three years' time.

I imagine he does not belong to the same school of thought to which Fran Lebowitz paid homage who advised students to "stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra" (a favourite disposition on my part many winters ago). "In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra." I can vouch for that but then I am not sure I could recognise algebra if I met it. Perhaps he prefers another piece of less destructive advice from the same man: "If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don't teach him to subtract - teach him to deduct".

He favours the latter, I know, because when he visited the President he stressed that the University must continue to establish itself as a centre of learning (deduction, as opposed to learning by rote) and research in the Mediterranean, as well as to create services for the commercial and industrial community; and all this in a global context. Plucked from his job as CEO to Melita Cable, Professor Camilleri understands that context full well.

It is clear that the Maltese, in particular the Maltese students, need to refine rather than redefine their identity within a global context, their values and their vision. The University exists to produce the new specialists that are needed in the information world without forgetting that its primary responsibility is to create an educated man; which is not necessarily the same thing. Carpe novos dies!

Whatever happened to arbitration?

It looks as if the General Workers Union does not have a monopoly on cussedness. Take a bow the GRTU, which held Malta's industry and commerce hostage, last week, until Friday morning when it called off its action, as it had to do before talks could be held with the Prime Minister. Up till then, the GRTU had not made the slightest effort to refer its case to arbitration. This must rank as gross irresponsibility.

It is all very well, if pathetic, for the GRTU to claim that it has no quarrel with Government as if only quarrels with Government can harm the nation. Strike action by road hauliers over two issues that could be resolved by using other methods of persuasion and which endangered trade and industry is reprehensible. The Malta Employers Association, the Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Industry were infuriated that the GRTU had not submitted its differences to arbitration. At stake, after all, was the national interest not as seen by Government but as it is reflected where it matters most - employers, employees and the public in general.

The issues that caused the GRTU to act the way it has done are secondary to this. When you come to examine them you find that a change in the locality of the payments office is one of them (hardly the stuff for heroic struggle) and new tariffs that one side claims will increase as a result of port reforms, the other says will decrease. Only one party can be correct on the latter. Tariffs cannot go up and down in parallel and simultaneously, at least not this side of sanity. That leaves the momentousness of a change of location.

Grown men could resolve neither issue. And once unresolved, grown men at the GRTU decided not to take the matter elsewhere for resolution, as grown men should have done - until Friday morning. This raises the issue whether strike action without prior attempts at arbitration may be legally countenanced and this to avoid unnecessary damage to the economy at such a critical time. The very madness that midsummer proverbially provokes was not a pretty sight, last week. Except that somebody did conceive it, here was a situation that ought to have been inconceivable - to grown men.

While exporters clicked their heels...

More grown men were wasting time in Parliament on a motion of no confidence that the Prime Minister described as one that was based on "lies" and pointed, in support of his remark, at what the parliamentary records showed. In the light of the verbal melée that took place over ten dreary hours, Labour MP Silvio Parnis got it right when he was reported as saying that what people wanted was not debates where MPs insulted one another, but collective action to be taken by MPs to improve the people's lot. His plea fell for the most part on deaf ears.

The most egregious comment came from Dr Sant who indulged himself and us with a wearisome pun worked around that silly poster - "Vote George, Get Lorry". Wasn't it obvious, he chortled, that when one voted for George Pullicino one got Lawrence Gonzi? Tee-hee.

And while exporters clicked their heels, while Parliament wasted its time on a motion that did not even deserve an amendment by Government, the far more significant debate over illegal immigration proceeded. Some sounded as if they were grateful to God for Bob Geldof's remarks on the subject because these put some backbone into the foreign minister, Dr Michael Frendo. As Dr Frendo and Dr Borg have defended Malta's turf with commendable firmness and even a degree of aggression, with some success, let it be added, these home thoughts from home sounded as strained as Dr Sant's pun. Why are we forever dumbing ourselves down? The fact of the matter is that Malta is winning its case in Europe and whoever needs to set Frontex in motion is being shown up to be a trifle motionless. It is true that things cannot happen overnight but it is some months since Malta started to bang on about immigration, in Brussels. Initially all we received was an investigating group to tell us that we were not treating illegal immigrants humanely enough and not much in the way of help to prevent these from landing on our shores when they were bound for others.

There is a silver lining to all this. Imagine; just imagine how much worse our position would become if we were not members of the EU. It is not coming to our rescue with the proverbial speed of the US cavalry, granted, but like that body of men help is on its way.

And while grown men were behaving like kids, some of the delivered the final insult to Gozitans. Government's attempt to amend the Constitution, so that Gozo would forever be a district unto itself and not chopped up to allow any of its constituencies to attach themselves to Malta, did not receive the required two-thirds assent from Parliament. The Opposition voted against; not on principle, mind you. It was ready to vote in favour on condition, ah yes, that much loved conditional.

When English football and cricket (again) died

To say that it has not been a good summer for England is to indulge in understatement. First, England loses to Sri Lanka, making it look as if English cricket is on the verge of another cremation service and Freddie Trueman, the fastest bowler that ever lived, died. He passed away on the afternoon of the day when the life of English soccer ebbed away at Gelsenkirchen.

As it lay panting after it lost the quarter-final match against Portugal, we were constrained to witness a tearful £20 million-a-year Beckham - before you add the trifling sum of £1 million plus that he receives for playing football and, this year, an additional £300,000 for the World Cup had England slammed its way into the final - making a spectacle of himself. The following morning, while England was still in mourning, he oh so cleverly announced that he was bowing out of the captaincy (before his brand suffered permanent damage had he been thrown out, instead.). Having made "the most difficult decision of (his) career" the man went crying all the way to his branders.

Nor can one forget Mickey Rooney, who is reckoned by everybody except me, it seems, to be the best player in the world, but who never displayed the slightest sign of this pre-eminence - "and the ball goes to ROONEY! ROONEY HAS THE BALL!....And oh, dear..." As for that infamous penalty shootout...

If anybody deserved to win, last Monday, it was the English fans whose support was second to none. They lustily called on God to save the Queen, which He did, of course, but the Queen was not the England team. Rooney never petitions God to save his Queen; perhaps he cannot remember this prayer of petition this man who has been advanced £5 million to write five books! Likely titles may include: Me and My Metatarsal; Bruising Groins in Gelsinkirchen; Ronaldo's Betrayal Before Berlin; Breaking the Bank at Baden-Baden? And for a bit of sex, once he connects with groins so deftly, Colleen and Me - The Seed of Our Love.

The penultimate word must be about England's fighting and much-improved performance after Beckham and Rooney left the field. The fabled bulldog spirit hovered over Gelsenkirchen and the bulldog famously growled. The sad pity was the bulldog could not bite.

The last goes to a comment by Simon Heffer in a tribute he paid to Freddie Trueman in last Wednesday's Daily Telegraph: "He died on a day when hideously overpaid grown men wept having lost a game of football, and one of them assisted his side by engaging in the simian action of stamping on the private parts of a rival, and being sent off. They never did that in Fred's day". Worse than everything else for England fans in Malta, Italy, which never deserved to get into the semi-finals, convincingly whacked its way into today's finals match in Berlin against France. I can see my friends raising their hospitality red card in my direction and deleting my name from their guest list; but where will some of them find as fluent a fourth at bridge? Gotcha!

And yes, pretty Ronaldo was probably the greatest prima donna of the lot. By the time he started to cry (whatever happened to men?) he had learned how to act being fouled to a t; make that perfection.

Quote...

"What about the answers to our prayers of petition? How often have we prayed for something, and our prayer has been ignored, or so it would seem?... Is there such a thing as unanswered prayer? I am not able to give an answer that convinces me completely. The Gospel passage about asking is clear enough.

"I am helped by two things... just outside Fribourg in Switzerland there is an ancient shrine to Our Lady... The walls are covered with expressions of gratitude for answers to prayers said in that chapel. One plaque caught my eye especially. It said: 'Thank you for not answering my prayer'. What had that person in mind? Did he or she realise how the answer required might have turned out to be harmful? Did that person realise that God's way of handling the problem was wiser and better? I do not know, but that prayer... was, for me at any rate, an important lesson. God's ways are not mine. I do not know His plans; I often do not understand them. I must learn to trust... the prayer of petition must come from a heart that trusts, from the kind of faith that is strong enough to move mountains". (To Be a Pilgrim - a spiritual notebook; by Basil Hume, OSB, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster).