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Showing posts from March, 2012

Dear Yana

I hope you realize that what you said this morning on TVAM is the complete opposite of what your current party-leader is claiming that your party represents. I have not yet watched the documentary about your father, though I surely intend to, so I will not comment on its contents or what it represents before having watched it myself. But your arguments and your line of thought are clearly a remnant of your father's out-dated philosophy of state-control. You claimed that the film is pure "PN propoganda". May I kindly remind you that in our current day and age, people are free to shoot movies without the need of obtaining any permission from the party in government. I know it's very different from what you were used to, but that's the way we've moved on. You say the film should not be screened because "many people from Valletta and elsewhere had seen the film and many had walked out in disgust". May I point out that a new draft law proposed by

More Big-Government

Monday evening I was listening to Parliament. Yes, if it's between Monday and Wednesday, between 6pm and 9pm, and I'm driving, I frequently happen to tune in to Parliament's transmission. I admit sometimes it's boring, sometimes it verges on the hilarious, but in any case, it's the best way you get to know what your representatives are discussing and what they really believe in. It's a much better way by which to judge them than by the way they dress and by how cute they look in their pre-election flyers. A particular exchange which caught my attention was between the Hon. Helena Dalli and Minister George Pullicino. From what I could understand, the Hon. Dalli was asking the Minister about the costs of a leaflet printed and circulated by the Environmental Landscapes Consortium Ltd (known as ELC). The Minister replied that this was not a governmental department, but a private company which had won a public tender for landscaping. He was neither aware nor in

Baby names and the 'immediate'

Reading the article which appeared in the Times today about baby names given last year, I couldn't help a smile. And also a worried thought. Not about the some of the names themselves, but about the mentality behind them. We live in the 'culture of the immediate'. All the information we need is accessible just one-click away, we grumble if a web-page takes more than four seconds to load, we live beyond our means because it's today they care about. We want results and we want them now. We don't have time for patience, we don't have time for thinking. Marketing corporations have also understood this type of thinking. They speak of "instant", "fast", "today", "have it all". "Life is now". These parents want to be original. Creative. Innovative. Something we probably don't have time to do in other areas of our life, so we're doing it with our babies' names. And it's only the immediate moment 

Our electoral system: why Mosta is not 1981

This article appeared in the Times issue of Thursday 29th March 2012. After the Mosta local council election ended up favouring a PN majority, with PL having had a 14-vote advantage in the first count (48.4% of votes, a relative majority), some have compared it to the perverse result of the 1981 general election. This clearly shows that most of us do not understand how the single-transferable-vote system works, and its advantages and disadvantages. This is very serious, because the vote is the means by which we elect our representatives and the means by which our democracy works. This ignorance is further instigated by the two 'big' parties and the most ardent of their supporters, in an attempt to keep voters under close control. Well, I prefer an informed voter who makes choices consciously than one who makes them under fear and misinformation, so here's a first article which uses this election as an example. The biggest advantage of the single-transferable-vo

Raising the minimum wage: creating the problems we attempt to solve

A recent study by Caritas has suggested raising the minimum wage from the current €158 to €180 per week in an attempt to help people living in poverty. Though I understand the good intentions of Caritas, a Church NGO which works with people in need, I strongly believe that such a measure will create more problems than it attempts to solve, and that the worst hit will be particularly the people we are supposedly trying to help. Every society will have a strata of unskilled workers. No matter how much we improve on our education, you'll always have 16-year olds who finish school without acquiring the necessary skills or qualifications for post-secondary education, the key to a higher-quality career. Though free vocational courses for such individuals are provided, you'll still have the ones who choose to immediately join the work-force. And in a free country, the choice is entirely theirs, as well as its consequences. The problem is that the only jobs such individuals will

Abusing a misinformed public

In a previous blog-post I highlighted the emptiness of Labour's promise for the local council elections , that of issuing public calls to select people to attend for local council meetings considering tender adjudications. Tomorrow, Thursday 22nd March 2012, the Gudja Local Council I form part of is meeting at 5.30pm. One of the topics on the agenda  (which may be accessed online): five tender adjudications related to road works, footpaths and gardens. As it has been required by law since the local council's inception in 1993, all the public is invited to attend. No public calls were issued, no personal inviations, no selection process to choose who can or cannot attend. I am mentioning this fact again because it irks me when politicians, aware of the fact that many people are ignorant of certain facts, instead of informing them of their rights abuse of this lack of awareness to make empty and inane promises. I am using the above case as an example, but this happens freq

Post-marathon reflections

As promised, this is a final blog-post on running and the marathon. These are some reflections from this experience which I have finally found the time to put to paper. To set the background, my first attempts at long-distance running started in October 2009, when I had to start doing a regular sports activity as a requirement for my President's Award. To cut a long story short, in a few months I was absorbed in the simple beauty of the sport, and the dream to one day run the marathon was born (and by the marathon, I mean THE marathon: the 42.195km run). I wanted to understand the aura and thrill surrounding the event, and I knew that I could only understand it by taking part in it. In the final weeks leading to the event, I started to write a series on my blog entitled "My Journey to the Marathon".  It was meant as a way to keep myself motivated, but it ended up helping me discover the positive effect running was having on my of life. I discovered that the mar

Keep local council elections LOCAL

Is anyone really understanding why are people not voting for local council elections? I tried to tackle the subject of absenteeism in my last blog-post, but after Franco Debono's reactions yesterday, it seems that no one is really understanding why 41% last Saturday stayed at home. It's because they DON'T WANT THEIR VOTE TO BE INTERPRETED AS A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE OR NO CONFIDENCE IN ANY PARTY! People are fed up of Labour trying to use the local council election result as a vote of confidence in Joseph Muscat. People are fed up of Gonzi trying to interpret the local council election result as a message from the electorate. People are fed up of Franco Debono trying to interpret the result as an approval that he is right. The people just want local council elections to be local council elections. The only interpretation they want is that it was a vote of confidence in Ian Borg, and not Joseph Muscat. That it was a message that you should have listened more to

The Non-Voters

Although it is obvious that the Labour Party achieved a landslide win in this round of local council elections, the biggest winner seems to be the non-voter. Almost half the people entitled to vote decided they'd rather not bother at all, and this is a big message in itself. The political class needs to do a serious evaluation of the reasons for this very low turn-out. Some points to think about: If we leave out the usual opportunists (those who by not voting expect to threat the party in government to be given a job, promotion, or whatever else they dream is their right to get), it seems that an increasing big chunk of voters is getting disillusioned by the political class. For these voters, neither of the two main parties is offering anything new. They feel caught between a rock and a hard place, caught in between two parties who keep acting as reactive followers of public trends instead of pro-active leaders who persuade followers that their philosophy is the best option.

Labour's local council election promises

There are two main points which seem to be common in Labour's manifesto for the upcoming local council elections for all localities: environmental initiatives and "transparency and openness". "Dr Muscat said the councils would promote environmental initiatives and, wherever possible, council offices would be made energy self-sufficient through the installation of renewable energy systems." The government already introduced several schemes to encourage councils to install renewable energy systems on their buildings. Most have already done so. The ones that didn't, are the ones that chose not to. And mostly are yes, Labour-led. It seems they've realized it's about time they catch up. Praise the Lord! "Dr Muscat said a Labour-led council which still has to be selected would launch a pilot project where a number of people from the locality would be invited to sit in at council meetings when tender submissions were considered before contrac

My Marathon series

Now that the marathon is over and done with, I would like to thank all those who supported me on this journey, especially those who did so through a donation to Inspire. A total of €241.50 where collected on my behalf for this NGO, which though not much still made my run much more meaningful. In particular, I thank my parents, girlfriend, friends, and the Vodafone Foundation for their support. For those who missed any one of my blog-posts on running and the marathon, you can find the links to all of them below. My Journey to the Marathon (1): The Dream My Journey to the Marathon (2): The Runner and the Consumerist Society My Journey to the Marathon (3): The Charitable Cause My Journey to the Marathon (4): The Runner's Spirituality My Journey to the Marathon (5): The Distance My Journey to the Marathon (6): The Runner's Political Philosophy My Journey to the Marathon (7): My Longest Run My Journey to the Marathon (8): Time to Taper My Journey to the Marat