|
The people have seen what’s on offer from both the PN and the MLP. Will they opt for more of the same?
“The People” – a daily English language newspaper opened with a splash in June 1997. It was Malta’s first tabloid with short, catchy news snippets, puns galore and Page Three girls pushed a little further back to page nineteen (they were actually very pretty wholesome bikini-babe contestants for the Miss Maltese Islands Contest). The editorial board was made up of several contributors to this newspaper, including ex-Nationalist Minister Michael Falzon freshly bumped out of parliament by the electorate.
Fittingly enough, the newspaper’s slogan was “For The People, By The People, About The People” – a new sort of medium for the man in the street to read about things which entertained or interested him or her, and to be able to voice opinions about such matters. It was evidently not meant to be a forum for the publication of lengthy articles of an intellectual nature or philosophical treatises.
The paper was rather blokey in that there were quite a few pages dedicated to girls with long legs framed by captions like those you’d find in The Sun. “Ravishing Rachel from Rabat” and “Lovely Lara from Lija” were strewn all over Malta’s first red-top (I made those two up, but you get the gist). For the sake of gender equality and a tiny nod towards political correctness, the little ladies were given their own cookery page.
Apparently Maltese women were not too put out by the lads at the news desk and got on with their life very happily without Gorgeous Gavin from Gzira being included as a male pin-up. “The People” was supposed to have the common touch with down-on-the ground reporting showing readers what other normal people thought and felt.
In view of this, I thought it would be interesting to see what “the people” were up to nine years ago. I was curious to see what the issues of the day were and what “the people” were saying about them. Apart from the big hair and bigger mobile phones, how different were we barely a decade ago? Not very much, I’m afraid.
Take the 9 June edition for starters. A massive caption asked “Where Would You Go?’ asking readers to compare the merits of two competing tourism posters. The Spanish one showed a sunny, wide curve of beach complete with waves and sun-worshippers. “Spain by Sun”, the blurb read, “sand, sea and passion, for taking life one beach at a time.” The ad for Malta showed a knight’s suit of armour silhouetted against a backdrop of sea and fortifications. “Where can you find the most wicked knight-life? The * (Maltese Cross) marks the spot”.
Having a weakness for puns of all types, I thought that the Maltese ad was much wittier and preferred it. However, I’d be the first to admit that it was directed at a certain market segment – the culture buff. The reference to (k)night-life was there, but it was the picture that caught your eye. It was not one which made you think of wild nights out on the town or days lazing about on the beach. All of which was very well, if we had made up our minds about what sort of tourists we were directing our promotional campaign at.
Even then, it seemed that we were in two minds about the issue – whether we should go for high-spending tourists or target the mass market. From the vox pop underlying the two ads, it seemed that the general consensus was that we weren’t up to the top-tourist grade and that we should be enforcing far more stringent standards within the industry. Does that sound familiar? It is actually. It’s been the topic “de rigeur” this summer with letter-writers calling upon the authorities to see that tourist establishments offered the amenities they advertised and weren’t stingy with their air-conditioning, lights, food and service. In fact this is what Karmenu Vella was after when he thought of the Malta Tourism Authority. Read all about it in the 30 July edition of “The People” with front page headlines telling us about a “White Paper For Tourism Blues”.
Incidentally around about that time, Karmenu Vella who was the Minister for Tourism had stated that “Tourists have no interest whatsoever in having a break in a degraded environment.”
The environment – what about it in 1997? Well, the Labour government of the day was “actively promoting the recycling of construction waste and interested quarry owners were asked to contact the Planning Authority” (7 June, 1997). This week’s news item about thousands of tons of building debris being dumped off the Freeport showed us how that little scheme worked out. Simply put, it’s goes something like this: Quarry owner gets tender from government to receive payment for dumping of building debris in his quarry. Quarry is full. No more money to be made from quarry. Solution – dump debris in sea from Freeport (secure area?).
On to brighter tidings. The 19 June edition happily announced that the “Delimara peninsula will be turned into Malta’s first country park.” Sounds very much like the PN’s promise of a country park right before the national council elections. I don’t know what became of that promise. In the meantime, people from Marsascala are still having to swim in fish faeces from the farms, park or no park.
Talk about swimming up shit creek without a paddle. This summer we had reports of drainage overflow into the sea at Bugibba so bathers had to be called out of the water. In June 1997, there was a recurrent “Drainage, no drainage” saga being played out every day. That happened in St Julians. Then, as now, petards let off during the festa were annoying people. In August two children suffered facial burns from fireworks debris when playing on the beach in Marsaxlokk. Tourists were being ripped off in 1997 too. An 18 June feature entitled “Overcharging – a national malaise” described how a local reporter was charged 80 cents for a packet of dried apricots, whereas a tourist was charged Lm1.80 for the same item.
As I thumbed through these back issues of the newspaper I couldn’t help remarking about how nothing much had changed. There we were agonising about whether to target five-star tourists or not, bleating on about environmental standards and national parks while drainage spewed out into the sea and building waste accumulated. There were all the usual complaints – loud petards, overcharging, inefficient bus service, construction industry gone mad…. And here we are nine years down the line, repeating the same things, insisting that we have to preserve the precious little bit of our heritage which is of cultural and aesthetic value, and saying that we’ve got to enforce standards. All those pithy editorials about the authorities having to pull their socks up (if they’ve been being pulled up all this time they should be at navel-height by now).
Despite the newspaper’s claim that “The prettiest girls are in the People” and its cheeky, irreverent tone was cheerful, reading those back issues made one thing perfectly clear – “The People” (and it’s not the newspaper, I’m referring to here but ordinary citizens) might have been able to voice their concerns over all these years, they’re still doing it now. However those concerns have been ignored and not heeded to by both the parties in government.
The people have seen what’s on offer from both the PN and the MLP. Will they opt for more of the same? The prospect of reading a future version of “The People” beckons… it’s not an attractive one. Front-page headlines of the June 2017 issue “Sea of Sewage as quarry owner dumps building waste at sea and damages outflow pipe…”
I can’t wait.
I gather that some people are annoyed at having the George Cross displayed on the Maltese flag because they consider it be a symbol of foreign power foisted upon them against their will.
I find absolutely nothing wrong with displaying an award which was given to whole nation for gallantry, however if so many people object to the George Cross simply because it was awarded to us by the British, I can suggest a local replacement.
Why not rip off the George Cross and replace it with the logo of the Polidano Group of Companies? Nothing could be more apt. It would be a reminder of who really rules the roost in this country. We could look at the national flag fluttering above Castile and remember that while the great majority of us would be nabbed and fined by some over-zealous warden for leaving our car lights on outside a tunnel, others get to use the sea as their own private dustbin while the authorities mutter madly about non-existent permits.
The new flag would be the most fitting image of what we have become – a country where a small group of people are beyond the reach of the law, courted by spineless politicians who prefer to chuckle with them over canapés instead of condemning them, a country where the construction magnates have become the government’s exclusive constituency.
Tear off the cross and replace it with the logo – it would correspond perfectly with the Maltese reality – and it’s local. We can give an award for gallantry to the person who stands up to arrogance and lawlessness instead of embracing it on all possible occasions.
|
