PN’s pre-budget doc: Truck, track… what the heck!

The Nationalist Party has just published its pre-budget document in which it tries to lay down its proposals in several sectors.

But the chunky document, which is 108 pages long, fails to convey any notion of professionalism which one would expect from a party wanting to be an alternative government.

At times, the document includes lock, stock and barrel proposals made by some of the social partners, making it hard to understand whether the PN has actually taken these on board, or whether these were included to fill up the pages.

But beyond the value of the actual content, the writing leaves much to be desired.

Using infantile language that is incoherent at times, the document is riddled with errors that range from spelling mistakes to poor sentence construction, unnecessary capitalisation of words and in some instances repetition of text.

We’ve trawled through the document and below are the more glaring mistakes that could not go unnoticed. Some examples are just plain funny and the result of wrongly used words, but other examples seriously put into question what the party really had in mind when writing down the convoluted sentence.

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Academic corner | You’d think this is a popular hangout for academics. But no, the PN’s pre-budget document uses these words to describe how research and development has so far been limited to university: “The R&D sector has, to date, been limited to an academic corner within the University of Malta.” Not much of a hangout, it seems. Page 16

Advance [of the light brigade] | You’d think a budget day attack of sorts is approaching when the PN documents says that “every year, when budget day advances, there is always the question: how much is COLA going to be?” It probably has to read: “…when budget day approaches.” But, alas, what’s in a word when it deals with the budget onslaught. Page 23

It’s all about the economy… stupid! | It’s to be expected that the economy will feature prominently in the budget. But the PN appears to have gone into overdrive by using economy twice in the same sentence. “The Government should not hold back from creating new economic sectors in our economy,” the document reads. ‘Our economy’ as opposed to whose economy, one may be tempted to ask. Page 23

Going the rounds | It’s ‘doing the rounds’ not ‘going the rounds’ but what the hell. After all this is just a pre-budget document meant to outline the Opposition’s vision. Why bother ‘doing’ the right thing? After all, as the document tells us… “one hears lots of opinion”. It’s the PN’s opinion we are interested in though, and that does not come across clearly. Page 26

Propaganda ‘wordings’ | The document reads: “We see several propaganda wordings noting that the current Government cares about its society.” One can expect the Opposition to hit out at government propaganda but what does ‘propaganda wordings’ actually mean? Page 34

The National Office | Malta has a National Statistics Office, known by its acronym, NSO. But the PN document gets funnily creative with the individual words – national, statistics, and office – by dropping them here and there in such a way that we end up with a “public statistic” and a “National Office”. Try and ignore the sentence construction and focus on the gist: “During the last few days, a public statistic was published by the National Office whereby it resulted that price of food skyrocketed.” Page 34

Appointing an LSE to Junior College? | In a section dedicated to “Helping families and its (sic) students”, the document has this proposal: “An LSE would be appointed to Junior College, MCAST, Higher and other post- secondary schools and would not end these services when these finish their education on a secondary level.” If you’re confused as to what this proposal is suggesting or to whom it is directed, don’t blame yourself. It probably meant to read: “LSE services should be available to students even in post-secondary schools, the Junior College, MCAST and higher education institutions.” Page 36

Pensions before 1062 | A sentence in the section dedicated to pensions reads: “The system distinguishes those who were born before January 1062 and those who were born later, and the difference is considerable.” And considerable it is… 960 years at least! This is obviously a typo where the ‘0’ key got in the way of its neighbour ‘9’ but it’s funny nonetheless. Page 38

Preventing ‘these’ diseases | We’ve all heard about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or sexually transmitted infections (STIs). But it seems, we now have ‘sexual health programmes’ that are diseases, according to the PN’s pre-budget document. The document states: “Sexual health programmes should aim for wider targets to prevent these diseases.” It probably should read: “Sexual health programmes should aim for wider audiences to prevent STIs from spreading.” Page 61

Who is the emergency of Mater Dei? | In its proposals on health, the document has the following statement: “An assessment is made of what services are supposed to be provided by primary care and who is the emergency of Mater Dei and a learning system is created where a patient is expected to attend when he has any symptoms of any disease.” The first thing this ‘learning system’ should do is organise the PN’s thoughts in a coherent and understandable way. Page 62

Ħal Far Truck | This is the cherry on the cake. You’d think the PN has budget proposals for truckers based in Ħal Far. But no. The proposal actually concerns the Ħal Far racetrack. Was it a case of mistakenly translating the Maltese word ‘trakka’ to ‘truck’? Read it yourself: “The PN expects that the promised and anticipated project of the Ħal Far Truck to be carried out immediately so that all the local motorsport enthusiasts, enthusiasts, (sic) and talents have an international racing circuit…” Page 64

Cutting anchors | The section dealing with proposals for the maritime sector goes poetic when describing how the maritime authority should be reconstituted as an independent entity. The document reads: “De-merger of the Maritime sector from Transport Malta and make it once again an independent authority that cuts the anchors that are currently not allowing it to expand to its true potential.” Page 74

Becoming teachers | There are “five teachers to become teachers of Mathematics”, the document tells us about those studying at university. Or is it about the number of lecturers who are teaching maths at university? Judge for yourself but try not to cringe: “The latest numbers confirm that in the MTL course at the University, there are five teachers to become teachers of Mathematics, 25 teachers of Maltese, 15 teachers of English and 93 to become primary school teachers.” Page 77

Engaging the engagers | In a section dealing with persons with disabilities, the document reads so: “Hence, either the Government employs more personnel to engage more professionals, or the Government enters into a PPP with the private sector such that the disabled person can still get the service for free.” It would appear that the PN is proposing that government ‘employ more personnel’, who in turn would ‘engage more professionals’. Did someone say the public sector is bloated? Page 84

Good governance, bad writing | Conduction in physics is the transfer of energy between different objects in contact with each other. But the PN document takes this to a new level by applying it to institutions that serve the artistic and cultural heritage sectors. Read it here: “To ensure that procedures of good governance are adhered to within institutions, in their daily conduction (sic) of duties to serve the Arts, Film, Culture, and National heritage.” Page 87

Read the PN pre-budget document below: