Bread and butter issues

I have long been fascinated by the thought processes that lead people - I was about to say 'ordinary people' but I checked myself in time - to present themselves as official spokespersons for things that they do not in any way represent, and in some cases do not even remotely understand.

More fascinating still is the way they inevitably pose as independent contributors to any given debate - no matter how blatantly obvious it is to everyone else which side their bread is buttered on... or indeed, how much butter has been obscenely plastered all over their slice of the pie.

And as a certain Carpenter once famously put it - refer to attached image for further details, as any amplification on my part will only lead to a long and unavoidable digression about shoes, ships, cabbages, kings, etc. - "the butter's spread too thick".

The butter's spread too thick. It could almost be a motto for so much that is wrong with the way things get handled here. So many people have become so utterly dependant on (not to mention gluttonous for) political patronage, that it is debatable whether they even have any will of their own left in what they say or write... not to mention when and how they say or write it.

And to my perpetual amazement, they seem to be genuinely unaware of how utterly transparent their hidden motives are to the rest of us down here on planet Earth (or as Jim Morrison might have put it, "out here on the perimeter, where there are no government retainers").

Either that, or they are have reached a stage where they are so thoroughly jaded that they quite frankly no longer give a toss how blatant obvious their agenda has become to everyone else. It reminds me of another classic rock anthem. What was it again? Ah yes: 'Nothing Else Matters'.

And while it is tempting to just laugh this phenomenon off as one of the more risible aspects of Malta's bizarrely potty (and quite frankly embarrassingly adolescent) teenage crush on partisan politics - alongside the hero-worship/demon-slaying style of news reporting we have come to associate with political news media; or the sickening, puke-inducing crowd adulation we all occasionally witnesses at party general conferences - the truth is that things have now gotten too far out of hand to be even remotely amusing any more.

What worries me is that we appear to have lost our ability to actually discuss issues on their own merits. OK, I admit that 99% of the time the things we actually discuss tend to have little intrinsic merit of their own. But then, every once in a while, along comes a great big issue of paramount importance - you know, something that may actually have a lasting effect on the way individuals conduct their own affairs... here and there varying to their state of health, or the freedoms they may or may not enjoy in future - and sure enough, lo and behold, bugger me backwards and all manner of corresponding idioms... the same goddamn thing happens, over and over again.

What passes for national 'debate' is pre-emptively poisoned by an orchestrated chorus of obscenely biased voices, and whose interests have nothing to do with the matter at hand, and everything to do with preserving the status quo for their own, exclusive benefit.

We had a graphic illustration of this pattern of behaviour when it came to the parliamentary discussions on the award of the Delimara power station extension. I honestly believe that future generations will look back at that particular decision - and above all, at how a patently vitiated procurement process was allowed to go ahead, despite the sheer stink of gross corruption that permeated its every single aspect - and be positively aghast at how we all sat back and just allowed it to happen.

You will surely remember the details, but bear with me wile I go over a couple of the smellier ones here. How, for instance, a decision had been taken to raise emissions levels (that's right, RAISE emission levels) in order to accommodate one technology that would otherwise have been automatically disqualified... this at a time when all the rest of Europe was desperately trying to slash their own emissions to within Commission directive guidelines; and even more poignantly, when Malta already boasted the highest levels of respiratory problems among children.

And yet the island nation that claims to love children so very dearly (at least, for the nine or so months until they are actually born) collectively looked the other way while its government effectively increased their chances of developing chronic respiratory illness... among other side effects of the BWSC mess, such as an overspill of toxic waste that now has to be somehow dealt with, bang on the doorstep of a heavily populated town.

Why, I (don't) hear you ask? Oh, I don't know. At one point they actually pretended to bother justifying this decision: issuing a meaningless and irrelevant statement that the upwardly revised emission levels were 'still within parameters acceptable to the EU' (as if this came even close to answering the question). As for the rest, it was clear that no justification was going to be needed, because - and herein lies the rub - the same decision-takers know that public perception can always be moulded to their advantage by means of a few simple (but remarkably effective) tricks. 

Anyway: I could go on boring you with more (and more, and more, and more, and MORE) details of this sordid, stinking mess. For instance, I could cite clear evidence of government infiltration by BWSC officials, implicit in that tell-tale quote (from an email exchange between tenderer and local wheeler-dealer) that: "you have to tap higher up the political hierarchy" [please note use of comparative form, and all it implies. Higher than what, exactly? Let's see now...].

Alternatively I could quote from the damning report by the National Auditor (which was duly ignored by government, pooh-poohed in the press and eventually forgotten.

But what on earth would be the point? In what has been become a standard hallmark of the way public discussion is routinely manipulated, diverted and ultimately defeated in this dreary land - and by literally just a handful of people, too - any mention of the BWSC contract is now greeted by a general yawn and an undisguised impatience to move on. Which of course, is to everyone's benefit but the vast majority whose interests have been abundantly defecated upon.

The upshot? Quite simply, really. It means that the stage is now set for even bigger scandals to be glossed over and swept under the carpet... only for the general public to just keep yawning happily away, presumably because that's what they've been told is the 'correct' reaction to such news (any other reaction automatically makes you a Laburist and a hamallu, or exposes your family to the danger of being immersed in an ocean of vomit, etc)

The same pattern repeated itself to the letter when it came to a programme of reform, put on the table (rather clumsily, I admit) by Franco Debono. Regular as clockwork, the same three or four gluttons - sensing a potential threat to the status quo that has (let's face it) served them so very well until that point - put aside their thickly buttered slices of the pie, burped, and then got down to the business of heaping filth and venom on every aspect of what was (and still is) an otherwise valid and urgently needed programme of change.

And everybody fell for it. Suddenly it became 'madness' to suggest that government needs to be more transparent (not difficult to see why, either: if government became more transparent, we would see through the crusty exterior of Christian Democrat hypocrisy, and discern the wires and strings  connecting Castille directly to Bidnija and wherever the Billy Bunter of Blogs calls home).

And of course we are now seeing it again (as we will see it in future, endlessly repeated, ad nauseam) in the so-called 'discussion' currently taking place over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

I suppose that, in the case of ACTA at least, we should be grateful that our government now suddenly wants to discuss things with the people whose interests it is supposed to represent. A little late in the day, I would have thought, seeing as they've already signed the agreement on the dotted line. But still: government's reaction when faced with a hiss of disbelief and a murmur of resentment was to finally acknowledge - for the first time in as long as I've been looking, to tell you the truth - that such a thing as "the people" even exists.

This surely has to count for something... and it probably would, too, if they weren't simultaneously already putting into effect the usual strategy to distort, divert and ultimately defeat any popular opposition to what is, effectively, a done and dusted deal. 

No prizes for guessing what form the strategy will take: it is the same strategy we have always seen whenever the present administration finds itself under any form of attack.

Immediately - in what is probably a knee-jerk reaction, such is the political sickness running through this county's veins at the moment - the battle-lines were drawn upon purely partisan lines, despite the fact that this is NOT, by definition, a partisan issue.

But you know how it goes: the Nationalist government signed the agreement, and is therefore clearly on board with the entire programme. And so, true to the formula that has always worked so well in the past, ACTA is deliberately channelled into a purely 'us against them' mentality: if you're against ACTA you're a loonie Labour-leaning conspiracy theorist; if you're in favour, you are 'sugar and spice and all things nice'.

And thus have we once again condemned ourselves to the eternal mediocrity of partisan mindlessness; and so it was, and so it is, and so it shall always be... until the end of our liberties, Amen.