Gone to the blogs

It must be such a hard life being a Member of Parliament these days. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they already enjoy full liberty to say whatever the hell they like in Parliament, about whomever they like, without facing any form of legal repercussion whatsoever… apparently, they are now so scared of ending up on ‘hate blogs’ that they can’t even go to the beach. 

I kid you not. This is how Nationalist MP Claudette Buttigieg, the Shadow Minister for Health, put it this week: “We have reached the extreme when Members of Parliament can’t even go swimming for fear that a photo might be taken. Thanks to a few individuals, we have become conditioned…”

Can you imagine? Those poor sods can’t even enjoy a swim on a relaxing, working weekday. And not for fear that some jellyfish might get entangled in their private parts, either (I mean, that’s the sort of phobia we can all relate to)… but for fear that they may be exposed to ridicule or malice on certain blogs. 

Honestly: the gross injustice of it all. I mean, what’s the point of even having a ‘summer recess’, if you can’t spend the entire day sunning yourself at Ghadira Bay with all the other tourists? It’s like schooldays without summer holidays. I can just imagine MPs like Claudette Buttigieg, on the edge of their Parliamentary seats with their eyes permanently fixed on the clock… only for the final bell to ring, whereupon everybody suddenly throws up laptops, Ipads and notebooks up in the air, and stampedes out of the building chanting: ‘No more English! No more French! No more sitting at a Pea-Green Desk…!’  

And then, the harsh reality. No more swimming in the sea, either… because big bad Glenn Bedingfield might be there with a hidden camera, ready to have a field day with your bikini-line. It almost reminds me of the release of ‘Jaws 2’, the film that ruined our collective summer way back in the 1980s. Remember? ‘Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water…’.

No, no, this is too much. Personally, I think we should start a petition so that MPs are given their own private beach – walled off from the rest of the public, and manned 24-7 by security personnel paid for by the State – to ensure that the most privileged members of our society can enjoy their summer holidays like everybody else…

Oops. Did I say everybody else? ‘Everybody else’ like… who, exactly? 

Ok, I suppose there are other categories that get their summers off. Teachers and academics automatically spring to mind… though their ‘recess’ also comes with a tonne of exams and assignments to grade, resit papers to draw up, and (unless things have changed drastically since my schooldays) private lessons to be given every day of the week.

Other categories might enjoy other summertime perks such as half-days. But the rest of us? We don’t experience much variation to our daily work schedules, just because the earth’s orbit has brought it marginally closer to the Sun. In fact, for the vast majority the summer months are actually a flaming nuisance. Ask the builders on any of the 16 building sites visible from my home (though you might have to take a crash course in Swahili or Bulgarian first). They have to get started before 7am, to get as much done before it gets too hot to work by around 10. Same goes for quarrymen, road repairs, plasterers and the Water Works maintenance unit. Unlike members of Parliament, these people can’t just take a dip whenever they feel like. The most they can do is wrap their head in a handkerchief.

Meanwhile it is not just blue-collar, manual labourers whose job necessitates constant exposure to the sun at the hottest times of the day. I can normally tell the postman’s arrived by the snail-like trail of freshly perspired sweat that marks his or her passage each morning. Traffic wardens have to be trained to write out tickets quickly; otherwise they just melt into a puddle on the road.  Estate agents, salesmen of all kinds, and all sorts of other ‘office’ employees spend most of their working life behind the wheel of a car or truck. So they either bake in the heat, or install air conditioning at their (or their company’s) expense. 

Either way, you pay… in euros, or in sweat. 

You can just imagine, therefore, how much sympathy and compassion Claudette Buttigieg engendered, when she complained so bitterly about the blogs which have ruined her summer holidays. How terribly unfair, that 69 (or 73, or however many there are now) members of parliament can’t get exactly the sort of suntan they want, without investing in an indoor sunbed... 

There are probably health repercussions, too. Apart from the psychological trauma of being ridiculed and exposed to contempt – more of which in a sec – Buttigieg will surely know, as shadow health minister, that a leading psychiatrist has confirmed cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder [‘SAD’] in Malta: a condition normally associated with Scandinavian countries, where ‘night-time’ can last anywhere up to six months. 

Well, people are now getting sick due to lack of exposure to natural sunlight in Malta, too; even if, so far, the condition has only affected those whose homes have been deprived of natural light by the sudden explosion of taller buildings.

I sure hope the epidemic doesn’t spread to the very people who made that building boom possible in the first place: through all the absurd planning policies they approved in Parliament, without giving even a second’s thought to the people who might be adversely affected. 

It would, let’s face it, be so unfair…

But no matter. What interests me more than the mind-boggling sense of entitlement and privilege, is the reason for our MPs’ sudden reluctance to partake in the revelry of their summer holidays. It seems the prospect of ‘ending up on a blog’ suddenly frightens them out of their wits. And yes, sure, I can understand – having ended up on a few in my time – but… why only now? And why only when the ‘victim’ happens to be themselves?

I don’t recall Claudette Buttigieg having much to say when Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Franco Debono, Jean Claude Farrugia and Jesmond Mugliett were all regular features on a certain blog… and they were all MPs, and Nationalist MPs to boot (at least, until two of them clearly had enough, and resigned from the party). Where was the concern with MPs being ‘conditioned’ by the way they were portrayed on social media sites back then?

Nor do I recall any corresponding concern when the same treatment – time and time again over the past six years – was meted out, not just to MPs (who are, after all, public figures)… but to family members, friends and just about anyone in any way associated with criticism of the PN under Gonzi.

It is not just MPs on the beach who have attracted the sort of paparazzi journalism Buttigieg complains about only now. People’s Facebook profiles have been plundered for embarrassing or compromising material, which has been liberally splashed out with no consideration to privacy issues at all. Among the targets there were even a few whose identity was mistaken for other, equally non-public persons. One particular 17-year-old fashion designer had her blog held up to public ridicule, on the assumption that it was the work of an older woman who happened to have the same name… and also happened to be the partner of the real target: a (former) Nationalist MP.

This is the sort of thing the rest of us out here have been exposed to since around 2008, you know. And the list of people who have been unfairly targeted – sometimes, as in the case of pre-European Parliamentary elections endorsements, for merely stating a political opinion in public – is practically endless.

I find it hard to believe that Claudette Buttigieg never noticed any of this at all… until another blog came along to target all the individuals who were previously ‘immune’ from attack. Far likelier that she was fully aware all along… but that she never actually saw anything wrong with it, so long as the victims were limited to her political adversaries.

But what does it matter? The important thing is that – no matter how late the realisation is in coming – Claudette Buttigieg does now realise that the use of personal hate blogs and online intimidation, as a political weapon, is completely out of order: regardless which side resorts to it. 

So what are we going to do about it, then? What action can we take, to make it safe for Claudette Buttigieg and her colleagues to enjoy their summers in the sun, like the good old days? 

Well, for starters I suggest that the party Claudette Buttigieg represents takes stock of the reality of the situation. Though it howls the loudest today, it is actually by far the worst of the two offenders. Labour still has a lot of catching up to do… though I must say, its efforts to date have been admirable. Who would have ever guessed that Glenn Bedingfield would be so effective a Daphne Caruana Galizia impersonator? I guess it says something about the sort of talent and skill that is actually required… 

But in any case: the bottom line, in case I didn’t spell it out enough already, is that there has to be bilateral disarmament if we are ever to extricate ourselves from this mess. 

That means both sides… including yours, Claudette.