A providential new year

I am not one for traditions, so this year I am blessed with a hundred and one excuses for staying in at home on New Year’s Eve with the two ladies and ...  for enjoyable dinner with some rather less fattening goodies.

But at the very end of the year, one either reminisces about the last 12 months or else looks ahead.

I have a feeling most people simply do not want to know what is going to happen next year. 

2010  has been a good year for me, at least on a personal level, but I am not too sure it has been for everyone.

My first thoughts are with a colleague of ours whose wife has been a coma.  He and his three children have had to live through these difficult moments.  No measure of empathy will make them feel any better.

Sadder is the fact that they have been living in Malta for eighteen years and they still have not been awarded their citizenship. Even though I know of many foreigner who have been awarded citizenship with far less attractive criteria.

A pity if you ask me, considering that all the children in this are Maltese speaking and the parents have given so much back to our society in terms of work and taxes.

Like this unfortunate family facing such a tragedy, there are others who suffer in silence.

And though most people want to be merry and distant from the suffering of others, there are many who still suffer.

Life is all about chance and providence, I know it may sound naff, but it is true.

In a recent chance encounter I had with entrepreneur Albert Mizzi, he reminisced of how lucky he had been and that business is most of the time all about luck.

It is no secret that there are many individuals who are capable and could reach the heavens, but they simply cannot do this because of  their unlucky status, linked to their financial and political status.

There is little doubt in my mind that some people would never get to places where it not for their political affiliations, the money that backs them and the families that push them.

Freemasonry, networks and money does not only make the world go round it also makes dreams come true.

We would traditionally argue that everyone has the same opportunities.  But this is a myth.

The myth that everyone has the same opportunities is completely false.

Beyond the personal luck of being healthy or not, there are other considerations.

Last week the conservative British newspaper The Daily Telegraph carried a title on its front page deriding the British Labour party’s view that there is such a thing as a Class divide in the UK.

Well, if the Anglo-Saxon model has done away with Class, Maltese society is returning to the Class system by burdening it with impossible sacrifices.  Sacrifices implemented by politicians who have suggested that they will not be standing next time round.

I suggest that we are entering a Class system with trepidation.

Years back I had ridiculed Joe Azzopardi for arguing that there was such a thing as Class in Malta.

Now, I am arguing that there is a Class issue and Joe or Peppi will probably argue the opposite stating that the Maltese have never had it so good.

Peppi is now of course more interested in promoting the notion that we have never been so good under the great man in Castille.  What do you expect?

The statistics and the studies reveal that just under 61,000 individuals are on the poverty line, that is not a joke, it is a reality.

Again we are going to be reminded by the same politician that we are better off than other countries.

Who cares if we are better off?

Are we better off than yesteryear?

The middle class is straggling close behind the new underclass.  Unable to pay its bills and wondering what is going to hit them next.

It is only a matter of time before we accept the fact that the middle class is slowly disappearing.

Those in the soup would very well hope their new year is not such a hapless one!