Perverse, you may think – and you would be wrong – to hark back to 2010 when all minds are concentrating on Budget 2012 which will be presented to the House tomorrow. So, makes sense to see where we were, where we are and where we are going unless, as Britain’s ferocious eurosceptics delight in telling eurozone countries, the end for this bloc is nigh, so nigh all else is folly.

Through his absurd decision to keep his cards so close to his chest, Muscat risks not being able to read them at all when the time comes

Sickly-dribbly in 2010, the eurozone turned sicklier-dribblier still in 2011 when the spectre of financial and economic Armageddon – let us not forget America’s contribution; remember Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac – Timothy Geithner and Barack Obama seem to have forgotten – came to haunt the world.

Much evidence points to further deterioration to come as the PIGS contingent shows sign that its various snouts are rummaging the bottom of the trough. In Italy and Greece two snouters have left the scene and in 22-per-cent-unemployment Spain the absurd José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will soon join them.

Throughout the cliff-hanging that characterised 2011 – market schizophrenia, unemployment, the Chaos of the Market, Occupy Wall Street demos copied in London and other cities, and for bad measure uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria – the government went about the business of implementing Budget 2011, tacking to port to tackle the deleterious effects of the Arab Spring, to starboard when the Greek maestral threatened to blow us all off course, still does, and filling up sail whenever a favourable wind showed up.

Ironically, and in the context of such high drama, it also had to deal with comparatively irritating irrelevancies that consumed the entire being of a Nationalist MP for the fifth district. C’est moi! Francois le Bon. I will say this seulement mille fois! Je m’abstiendrai avec beaucoup de panache on the opposition’s motion of no confidence in le not so bon – sacre bleu! – le mal Monsieur Gatt D’Ostin.

For it is I, in case it escaped your notice, it is I, seulement, le bon Bon qui comprends la democracie dans la plus belle isle du monde.

And so, this Budget

Be all that as it may, tomorrow Tonio Fenech will devote time to inform the country that in the worst of all possible worlds the aims of Budget 2011 were achieved, among them the successful reduction of the deficit to 2.8 per cent. A week tomorrow the Leader of the Opposition will disagree; the government has failed on any number of counts. It is well to listen carefully to both; here,for what they are worth, are my tuppence worth.

Recall. In his response to budget Speech 2010 Joseph Muscat predicted doom with predictable gloom. But in fact unemployment fell that year, tourist arrivals rose, overseas investment that was considered jeopardised by the Leader of the Opposition poured in, bonds were taken up with almost unseemly haste, share issues gobbled up, beleaguered industries received timely help – and went on to flourish.

Budget 2011 improved on that when most other countries’ economies were going through painful contractions, struggling to ride out the storm that has been so dreadful a feature of this year’s economic climate.

Education in Malta received a massive €330 million, the healthcare system a huge €332 million and substantial funds were provided to further upgrade the infrastructure and employment continued to rise.

And once Joseph Muscat enjoys repeating the mantra that this is a government absent vision, burdened by tons of incompetence and, latterly, by ‘surreal triumphalism’, Budget 2011 set its sights down the road to – Vision 2015. Myopic about 2011, it was clear Muscat would have difficulty recognising 2015 even with the aid of a magnifying glass.

And Sod’s Law operating the way it does, a Lisbon Council Study was quoted by Bloomberg on Budget Day last year. “Germany and Malta, the euro region’s largest and smallest economies (were) alone in boosting their competitiveness and fiscal sustainability in the past five years.”

Following in the footsteps of Budgets 2010 and 2011, Budget 2012 will emphasise once more that Gonzi’s government remains committed to growth and fiscal consolidation, a further reduction of the deficit to around 2.3 per cent – a courageous figure to aim at in these days of anything but plenty – and to the maintenance of an economic environment in which investment will grow, as willprofitable employment.

Take as an example the pharmaceutical industry. I only just learned, from reading columnist Joe Zahra in the Nazzjon, that this sector employs 1,000 employees and last year exported more than €200 million worth of products, four times the figure for 2005.

At bleeding last

One feature will set apart Fenech’s appraisal of what happened this year, and what his budget intends for 2012, from that of Muscat. This is the latter’s absurd decision to keep his cards so close to his chest he risks not being able to read them at all when the time comes.

Budget 2012, on the contrary, is an open plan and will deal with what is, develop what there is, improve on what there is, plan on top of what has happened, and acknowledge the perilous presence of misfortune’s slings and arrows.

A propos of which, a ray of sunlight crept into Muscat’s unknown shadow policies during last week’s government confidence motion.

If elected, he will reduce water and electricity tariffs but first he will wait, surprise, surprise, to see how the international situation develops.

From which we can come to an inescapable conclusion that may yet evade the Leader of the Opposition; specifically, that if the international situation regresses still further, and should energy prices shoot up as he dreams of mounting the steps to Castille, there will be, can be, no reduction of tariffs. At bleeding last.

Lawrence Gonzi never had the option of luxury time when those energy prices went bananas. He never had the luxury of being able to stand back to see how the international situation would develop. The cursed thing developed into something monstrous and he and his government got to grips with it. Nor was it only a considerable matter of soaring oil prices.

Much else was going bump in the unkindly light; things like Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, household mortgages and the horrendous sound of property markets bursting that had an effect on so much else. Cut! Action! Decision time – and the risk of getting things wrong if the decisions taken did not address a crisis that saw far stronger economies than ours implode. Gonzi did not get things wrong.

The Prime Minister has not got everything right, but given how many things he could have got wrong and did not, it is to his credit that he wrung out the maximum from the lousy hand he has been dealt these past three years. Nor was it done by mirrors; let his critics have the graciousness to concede that, at least.

Meanwhile, as Arriva settles down to a brighter future after a dismal past, northward, look! The land is strewn with obstacles; and southward, desert storms disperse and gather, gather and disperse.

For our part, we are in the eye of any storm that breaks; it is right and proper that we acknowledge the indelicacy of the situation around us, the perils that snap at our heels in the shape of a debt crisis the end of which is not in sight.

A victory for the human embryo

Just over a fortnight ago Fr Emmanuel Agius, Dean of the Faculty of Theology, praised the European Court of Justice which banned the commercial exploitation of human embryos destroyed for this purpose.

Prof. Oliver Brustle, who has been trying since 1997 to file a patent that involves such destruction (the German courts refused him), described the court’s decision as “an unbelievable setback for biomedical stem cell research”.

It was no such thing but notethe euphemism. It is becoming increasingly the case that thee-word preceding stem cell research is often left out by its practitioners.

Brustle was not the only enraged professor. One I read about, a Pete Coffey, blurted out: “This is adevastating decision which will stop stem cell therapies use in medicine.”

In fact it does no such thing. “The potential to treat disabling and life threatening diseases... using stem cells will not be realised in Europe”. Note the absence of the e-word.

Before some Flynnstone out there gets hot under the collar and brings religion into this – and one is perfectly entitled to do so, given the moral dimension of the subject – it bears remarking that the suit against Brustle was filed not by the Vatican but by Greenpeace. To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever suggested that this movement is an off-shoot of the Holy See. Significantly, Greens and pro-lifers are as one on this subject.

Point is, science is confirming that life begins at the time of fertilisation; as an article in Nature Magazine put it: “Your world was shaped in the first 24 hours after conception. Where your head and feet would sprout, and which side would form your back and your belly, were being defined in the minutes and hours after sperm and egg united.”

That a human being is formed at conception is confirmed by the fact that so far nobody has come forward to suggest that the tiny pinhead formed on collision between sperm and egg will become – a kitten, or a puppy, or for that matter a baby giraffe. From the start it becomes what God and the parents intended it to become – a human being.