The Maltese Body Politic Prepares to Tighten the Belt
That means less words for the fair, fair price of exactly free
Oh hey, you there. Yes, you! Life got in the way of The Maltese Body Politic this week, and that means you’re getting all of a brief update from this land of milk and honey. Sounds cool? If you want more reading it turns out I’ve been doing some editing for my good pal Robert’s blog, so by all means go ahead and check it out. It features good stuff about popular culture, a topic far more fun than Maltese politics, so you’ll have a great time there! Ok? Ok.
The main issue here in lovely ol’ Malta was tightening the belt, as finance minister Clyde Caruana was busy scratching his gigantic tuber of a head in order to find ways through which to cut his government’s expediture. €100 million reportedly slashed, €100 million to go! One way to save a few pennies involves reducing the University of Malta’s budget by a full €1.1 million, or around 1% of its full annual budget. Well, considering salaries make 85% of the university’s budget and 10% goes to “essential services,” that cut will go to whatever research takes place - unless the powers that be decide pay junior and visiting lecturers even less. Did the academics themselves have anything to say about these cuts? Well I’ve seen some personally complain about the matter on social media, but officially the lecturers’ union simply stated that the cuts need to be carried out “intelligently,” which… great fucking job you guys. What leadership, what a tremendous and in no way compromised way through which to open your argument. Well, all’s hunky dory so long your salaries aren’t touched, right? Make sure you vote Labour again like you have in 2013 and 2017 and 2022 you absolute fucking dolts!
But how does one even begin pinching pennies from a government budget? Maybe by capping, if not outright reducing, the overinflated salaries handed to agency CEOs and the various parasites of the “persons of trust” variety? Hahaha of course not you imbecile, you fucking moron. What you instead do is have the CEO of Transport Malta - the brigadier Jeffrey Curmi, a good pal of former heinously corrupt prime minister Joseph Muscat who now enjoys a cool €115,000 salary for his doing whatever a CEO does - stop the free milk provided for his employees. Sorry Transport Malta dolts, you have to drink coffee and tea as black as the brigadier turned CEO’s soul! Then again at least chunk of the 400 or so employed at Transport Malta are somehow, somehow, from ex-transport minister Ian Borg’s electoral constituencies of Rabat and Dingli so you know, fuck ‘em. The ministru ain’t here to help you now, as he’s been replaced by someone who doesn’t need your votes! But do expect similar stories of Scrooge-esque behaviour taking place in various government agencies in the near future - for instance at Identity Malta, whose current CEO - another former armed forces guy, Labour darling colonel Mark Mallia - enjoys a salary package worth no less than €100,000. Well, no one has ever said that life is in any way fair, right?
Let’s cast all talk of budgets and belt tightening as we instead cast our minds on how spend a country’s money well. For instance, you can take your parliamentary secretary for “innovation” to California in order to visit the headquarters of SpaceX, where he can then hand an invitation to Elon Musk to address a Maltese “space” “conference”! Wouldn’t that be grand? Elon Musk, a man who is definitely not a charlatan and a weirdo, visiting the land to do something, anything about the Maltese National Space Strategy! A document that is definitely worth more than, I don’t know, a drawing of a rocket a particularly slow child did using their own faeces. While in California the parliamentary secretary whose name I can’t be bothered to look up also got to visit NASA, where he get to got to look at some rockets as he surely drummed up some investment in the island, as opposed to have us, the idiot hog taxpayers, pay for his fancy holiday. That, and I’m sure the documents he handed didn’t immediately find their way in a paper shredder once the man stepped out of the building. Cool shit all round, I love to see all of this money not go to waste.
Told you I’m keeping this week’s edition of The Maltese Body Politic short and sweet! I’ve had a lot going on lately, even if I still found the time to check out the latest Dragon Ball movie, Super Super Hero. Yes the word “super” is in the name twice, as it denotes this film is super super good! Well, at least if you’re a fan of a particular breed of muscular anime men with a tendency of screaming at each other. Which I am, and would you if you had any culture or taste.