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Try phoning the enforcement agency at the Planning Authority or if you prefer MEPA.
“Hello, hee, x’ghandek bzonn?”
The man on the other side then proceeds to ask you that if you wish to remain anonymous - he will not inform you of the action taken and if you provide a name he explains that all the information taken will be relayed back to the complainant.
I comment that from my experience the enforcement officers traditionally divulge the name of the complainant so why this archaic procedure.
What happens after this, is too unruly to narrate.
Everyone agrees that this blessed nation of ours has a problem with etiquette.
Phone a ministry and a troglodyte gets to the phone and responds with his gruff voice, “Hello hee.”
Phone up a customer line and nine of ten times you want to break the phone in anger.
This “hee” business is just the tip of the iceberg. If you are an unidentifiable human being, you are always addressed with “hee.”
It is a relic of the Mintoffian times. The days when in a nationwide effort to align ourselves to a maxima of Marxist equality we decimated any shade of courtesy and replaced it with the language of the peasant.
And just in case in you are wondering why I do not like farmers, just see how they have converted rural Malta into a shanty jungle scape.
I always return to government when it comes to culpability. In a nation such as ours where government is everywhere, where government employs nearly everyone, where there are more ministers than police on the beat, government fails to set the example.
At a business breakfast organised by The Malta Financial & Business Times, the Professor of economics Lino Briguglio - his usual bubbly self - insisted that the best marketing for tourism in Malta was by word of mouth.
“Oh, yes I have been there and it is a wonderful place.”
If only it was that simple.
The other day, my German friends who never sent any Jews to concentration camps were hurled abused at and labelled ‘Nazis’ by aggressive trappers just off Ghajn Tuffieha. The trappers have taken over private and government land, made it their own and anyone who dares approach their sacred greenfinches in cages are treated as the enemy.
When a French friend complained in her limited English to a taxi driver that a fee of seven liri from St Julians to Ta’Xbiex was excessive, the burly, gorilla like taxi driver replied that this is Malta and if she did not like it she should f*** off.
Visit Malta and what do you find: a permanent building site.
Visit cute Malta and wake up to a cacophony of industrial noises. There is no corner in Malta that does not have a dusty side to it, a jigger and screaming builders screeching on Maltese franka.
With the new height limitation extension, the nightmare Sliema residents have been subjected to will now extend to the rest of the Island.
Tourists suffer continually, but if you want the see the best part try being a foreign journalist attempting to paint Malta as a nicer place.
Recently a US based journalist tried talking to Malta Enterprise but was told ‘off the record’ that the minister did not permit them to talk to the press. This is the same minister who years back told a journalist that he had not yet read her newspaper because he got to the newspaper in the afternoon while on the toilet (naqra l-gazzetta wara nofsinhar meta nkun qed inkakki).
Try talking to the ministers and their juniors if you happen to be a journalist with a leather jacket. They consider you to be a hippie. In the Office of the Prime Minister’s view, all reporters are supposed to be dressed like effeminate Armani models.
And I have still have to get to the restaurants and the roads.
There are some restaurants that think they are Michelin rated restaurants.
They are, but only when it comes to the prices.
Then what about the service in the shops.
You walk in and no one notices you.
You could streak in naked. They simply would not give a toss.
Most of the time I get this urge to shout at the top of my voice.
“Hello, I would like to do you all a favour, can I buy something?”
The reality is that we all know what the problems are but we cannot come to terms with solving them.
The harsh reality is that the politicians have to start eating some humble pie. All this waste of time abroad on EU trips debating topics that have no relevance to the day-to-day realities of us morons should stop. The same applies to all the civil servants visiting far off places international on conferences with little or no relevance to the 400,000 citizens of this rock.
Ministers have to be pragmatists and manage their policies - and not just pretend to. This is a town surrounded by a large stretch of water and Maltese ministers should realise that their intervention cannot be Tonio Borg like: a flurry of words and Italianate commentaries with no tangible follow-up to be seen. Or better still, resigned and in the background with no useful role in the cabinet as is the case with Health Minister Louis Deguara.
We need action. Be it the police on the beat, improvement in our customer service and ridding us once and for all from the scourge of the white taxi.
The Prime Minister will be in an upbeat mood this morning as he addresses his fellow councillors. It should not be the case.
After 17 years of Nationalist administration he is asking us to be grateful because government is in a road building frenzy. On Radio 101 he was boasting that Malta will be reconstructing roads of the distance from Malta to Sicily.
After an unofficial block-vote at the PN executive election, the dissident faction has been ostracised, but not before taking 34 per cent of the vote. Many of those representing the dissident block are not represented in the executive. Some no longer have a voice or an official position in the Nationalist party. Having no voice at all is a dangerous matter.
I do not believe that Dr Gonzi will try and mend fences with them. I have not seen him in the mood of hanging olive branches to his internal adversaries. If he continues to strengthen his base without caring for the ‘dissatisfied flank’ the end result will be the exact opposite of what his secretary general argued on Friday: that the PN will definitely win the next national election.
I wonder what Joe Saliba will say if the PN loses the next election?
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