Termination of contract (the Wardija edition)

Daphne's gone on a bit of a rant about Joe Borg, who rightly expressed some reservations about the way the whole Maltese-EU commissioner nomination saga was (man)handled. She's probably a little peeved she didn't nab him first for an interview in Flair. I'll give her that; there can't be that many good Maltese commissioners about the place.

In any case, on to the rant. As expected, she's got little to say about the man's performance. The Economist beat her to it, and said he was good (and it wasn't even the obituaries page). Predictably enough, she hones in on the salary. Honestly, she must think it's the only consideration people attach to their job search these days. Forget the job satisfaction, the learning curve, and the prospect of doing it all again, only better, this time round. Scratch all that; why would Joey Cash care? Daphne seems to find it hysterical that he didn't talk about the payout in his interview to the Times. I can't fathom why he'd need to, given he could easily earn as much as he was making at the Commission, in a private sector job.

In any case, he's a total tosser anyway for thinking he deserved to be told in person he wasn't being considered for re-appointment. His was a five year-term, and at the end of it all he should have simply packed up and gone home. "Ilami Joe, ma qalulekx? Tiela Johnny ta'. Incempillek taxi xbin?" But what do I know about appointments and termination of contracts? Yours truly, a simple economist, reports to 3 different managers and files 4 performance reviews a year. When my contract runs out, I'll do it Wardija style: piss off and leave.
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But of course!

It's 1am, and I should be asleep. But I toss and turn, mulling over Austin Gatt's latest words of wisdom:

Dubai World is the property of the government of Dubai, while Dubai Investment, ultimate owner of SmartCity Malta, is the personal property of the Sheikh of Dubai. There is therefore "absolutely no relation" between the two. The recent events were therefore totally and officially separate, Minister Gatt continued.

Dubai is an absolute monarchy. And two and two make twenty two, right?
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Because 'no comment' is a comment in itself

The 36-year-old technician who fell off a cherry picker while working at Malta International Airport's main car park last Monday has died, the police said yesterday. The Żurrieq man was taken to Mater Dei Hospital after falling a height of around two storeys but succumbed to his injuries.

I'm loth to ask why incidents like this happen. In the direct aftermath, there's a risk of being insensitive to the family of the deceased. On a case by case basis, it's also not very wise to comment on an incident currently the subject a magisterial inquiry.

But I'll risk being called insensitive, if it means flagging up an ongoing tragedy which no one seems to be doing anything about. I'll also risk commenting on something which is currently under magisterial investigation. Given that your average Maltese magistrate is currently investigating roughly 150 inquiries at any single point in time (using 2008 statistics), I think it's a doable risk. And if it is completed soon enough for people to remember the accident, I fear it will add nothing new to the scores that have already been done.
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There was a wedding, in Cana...

There's a famous saying that the best parties are the ones in which the punch bowl is removed just as the party gets going. Pity, then that Maltese real estate has largely ignored that proposition. If parts of Malta resemble suburbs of Chonqging, rather than sun-blessed Mediterranean towns, it's because some developers - with added emphasis on some - have had their fill of the punch, drunk whatever was left, and left whole swathes of the country looking like a complete tip. Politicians have often made a cameo appearance, though thankfully enough, some of the more dangerous ones are as useless at getting permits as they are at passing legislation.

Back to the punch bowl, though. Faced with a party that was getting rapidly out of hand, the powers that be proposed putting MEPA in charge of distributing the drink. That failed miserably, though, when it was found out that the only change MEPA brought in was that people queued a bit longer for their drink, but made it a double once they got there. Then, out of the blue, someone proposed a change of venue: how about the Prime Minister's office? A case of same old, same old, argued the neighbours.

That was a year ago. Thankfully for the Prime Minister, turns out that the worst global recession since the Great Depression has succeeded in doing what no Maltese politician has ever done - bring the (real estate) party to a halt, albeit a temporary one.

In typical Cana wedding style, the guests are now lamenting the lack of drink. First to notice were the estate agents, the more organised face of the construction industry. You would expect them to speak up first; the contractors, I've been told, are currently in the UK, splashing their cash on used car imports. "The wine is over," they grumble.

Miracles aside, the Prime Minister would do well to offer some cold turkey.
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How's this for your next health and safety disaster?

No helmet, no harness, no common sense: a tragedy waiting to happen?

Quick zoom in:

Equipment: Cannon powershot, and enough photo opportunities to keep the OHSA busy for a year. Copies sent to The Times.

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Snippets from the weekend break...

Being at home is always great for taking stock: seeing who's doing what, what's new (a heck of a lot of empty apartment blocks, by the looks of it), and what's changed.

Not much, at least in the world of occupational health and safety. Case in point: Spinola Bay, round about 4pm: a worker on a construction site, wearning nothing more than a pair of jeans, on an exposed balcony, five storeys up. (OHSA, if you're reading this, the site is in Spinola Bay, right next to Saddles).

Somehow I feel I'm turning this into my very own personal crusade. Oh well.
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Nothing more than a statistic.

Mario Micallef, 58, of Siġġiewi, was working on the construction of a home in Carmel Street in St Julians. Mr Micallef was in the company of another worker when, at around 1.30 p.m., he lost his balance when he went to fetch a tool. As he was falling, he is understood to have tried to grasp onto a wall but the bricks gave way and fell on top of him. Sources said Mr Micallef did not die as a result of the fall but because of injuries caused by the falling bricks.

Cards on the table, gents. Do call my bluff, if you think I'm lying, but I'm ready to bet that there was no scaffolding on site, the worker was not wearing any protective gear, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority will do absolutely nothing about this, and tomorrow morning, a replacement hire will fill Mario's shoes, and work will go on as if nothing had happened.

Now that would make a killer story for The Times.

Will nobody ask 'why'?

The incident happened in a house in Howard Street, behind the Preluna Hotel where renovation work, including demolition of roofs, was being carried out. He was working on a wooden plank when he suddenly fell a height of two storeys.

I've written enough about Malta's third world health and safety record. I've also posted a fair bit about absolutely crap reporting. Put two and two together, and news reports such as this one do nothing but condone, rather than condemn the ridiculous work practices that put lives at risk, day in, day out. Keep up the good work, Mr. Editor.
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My home is not a place, it is a people.

London is a pretty vibrant place. There's lots to see, lots to do, and even more to shop. Surprise surprise, I hear you say. Before I start handing out bright yellow bags with Hamilton travel stickers, though, I'll elaborate the seemingly blooming obvious statement of fact.

I was never too keen on London. I don't shop much, I've done enough sightseeing, this is possibly the most expensive place to get a bike license, and I'm not that into big cities anyway. Work commitments aside (which is possibly London's overwhelming advantage over anywhere else this side of the US), I guess I've spent more than enough time in Malta to know where I want my kids to grow up. You get my drift: I like London, but I won't miss the sights when it's time to move on.

What I will be missing, however, is this little (big) community we're slowly building here: our own loose group of Maltesers chasing their dreams in Chiswick, Bank, Kilburn, Leicester Square, Angel, Turnpike Lane and wherever else they call their home away from home. As I type this, the living room I share with the other three maltesers I live with is hosting the weekly X-factor marathon, complete with your very own Maltese tea house brimming with loud, vocal, and highly opinionated southern Mediterranean folk, many of whom are now staple guests of this corner house in West London.

Their presence is made sweeter by the brief (or not so brief) appearance of the non-Londoners, who pop over every now and then for tea and timpana (when in stock). We've had Malteseres from Cambridge, Southampton, Brighton, Guildford, (plus Latvia and Sweden, if you're counting), and last but not least, a healthy dose of friends from back home, who bring more than their fair share of treats (and enough calories to keep us going for a couple of years).

All in all, it's become slightly easier to bump into friends on the tube, walk down the High Road and spot a friend, or look around you during mass on a Sunday morning and spot the Malteser sitting a couple of rows down the aisle.

I'm not exactly sure how to put this into words. I guess communities are amazingly amenable things, perhaps precisely so because they are also remarkably robust. Whenever friends pop over they bring a heck of a lot with them: past and present, dreams and failures, delusions and hopes. We share nothing but our differences, but that is more than enough to make us more alike than we think, and possibly more than the sum of our individual experiences.
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Couple of falling stars, tonight.

Claudio Grech, chief executive of Smart City Malta, has resigned. So has Jason Micallef, general secretary of the Malta Labour Party.

The internet is abuzz already: one particular facebook status thread is replete with people who 'like' Jason Micallef's resignation. I 'like' it too. Initially, I wondered whether Jason had simply swapped one powerful role for an equally influential, less visible one within the party. The head of Labour's TV production house must surely rank high up in the hierarchy, right?

Not really, when you think about it. Jason Micallef can preach to the converted all he wants; it helps that they're possibly the only ones who can stand him without having to rush off to the nearest lavatory. It also helps that they're the only people the PL can afford to ignore if it wants to win the next election.

On to Grech's resignation, now - the more interesting one, in my books. Firstly, it ups the ante on where exactly the whole Smart City project is going. Now don't get me wrong; I have no doubt in my mind that this project will see the light of day. But you will forgive me if I'm slightly cynical about our politicians counting their (oh not so smart) chickens before they hatch and elevating this project to the point where anyone asking questions about it is regarded as nothing short of a backstabbing traitor.

Whilst we're at it, Grech's letter asks some serious questions about politicians appointing former secretariat officials to head multi-million dollar projects backed by private money. Let's assume, for a second, that Grech was the perfect man for the job. In which case, the relevant minister should have no problem finding alternative $300million projects for him to run for a couple of months.
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Human Resources - Malta Style (continued...)

A year ago I wrote a blog article slating some Maltese employers for not supporting employees thinking about studying abroad.

I'd mostly forgotten about the whole affair, until it came up a few days ago over dinner with a good friend of mine who's just finished a year of graduate studies in the UK. Having worked for two years prior to his study break, he’d expected, on his last day at work, a friendly handshake and the possibility of returning to the firm following his studies.

Fat chance. The management verdict: guilty of being irresponsible enough to consider leaving the firm to pursue self-funded graduate studies, directly related to the firm's core functions (his words).

You'd think he'd be crying about it, but he's not. It’s mildly liberating, when you think about it: why would anyone want to return to a firm whose idea of learning and development is the annual company fenkata?
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And the winner is...

Well, definitely not Malta, according to the World Economic Forum. Its latest Global Competitiveness Report ranks Malta an unchanged 52 out of 133 countries. A bit pitiful, really.

I'll gloss over the oft-repeated statistic that Malta's roads rank less highly than Zimbabwe's. In any case, The Times has covered that already (using that despairing, quasi-comical tone of descriptive resignation that makes you cringe, whilst wishing it wasn't reporting it in the first place).

What did strike me, though - and what doesn't seem to have been picked up by the Times (somewhat surprisingly, since it's the headline chart) is this little gem:



The black line is the OECD average for GDP per capita (calculated by taking a country's national output and then dividing it by that country's population). The blue line is Malta. Between 1980 and 2000, Malta's line consistently crept closer to the OECD line. Since 2001, however, the lines have diverged - even as they have been increasing (which basically says that both Malta's and the OECD's living standards have improved since 2001, but the island has registered a slower rate of improvement, thus leading to a wider gap between the two).

Now let's not get ahead of ourselves. Malta has certainly come a long way since the 80s. But at the risk of repeating ourselves, there's always room for improvement. Fair enough, the difficulty with headline charts is that they give little indication of where to start from. But that shouldn't be a problem - we're spoilt for choice on this one. Fingers crossed, the road to excellence will prove less bumpy than most of the island's pot-hold cart ruts.

(Or roads, as they're known in Zimbabwe).
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Is-sabih tal-live....

In the words of a friend, "It's been ages since I've visited di-ve.com, and boy, I really haven't been missing much."
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Thank heavens for The Guardian....

The disaffected, heroin-addicted young men immortalised in Irvine Welsh's bestselling novel are now in their 40s. And, it emerged this week, they are dying fast.
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Shining indicators.... and some hazard lights.

It might be silly season for some, but definitely not for others. In between 10-12 hour days at work, and a house move in four days time, I've not had much time to blog. Apologies for that.

I'm very glad, however, that the smart lads (and ladies) at the Ministry of Finance also seem to have their hands full. In fact, they've just released a brand spanking new research document benchmarking different economic indicators for a number of EU countries, ranking - for each economic indicator - Malta's performance against that of its European counterparts.

I admit I've not read the report in full, but at first glance it looks like it does a pretty neat job of summarising where we rank against the continent. A word of note, though - a first on the rankings chart is not necessarily desirable. But more on that soon. Or else, just turn to page 9.....
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Why should I grumble, when people out there are getting beaten up?

Three very seemingly unconnected events, this past week: a cat is put down after someone glues its paws to the ground, and then jams a plastic pipe down its neck; a woman is fatally stabbed by her husband right outside her home; and the Maltese gay community marches to promote equality for all.

As expected, Malta's very own online hanut tat-te (thanks to Daphne for that one) comes alive with opinions. And, as happens very often in these situations, the discussion goes completely awry. As always, the ranking tables come out in a flash: violence against women is all around us, so gay people should remind themselves how lucky they are that the only abuse they get is limited to the non-physical. Cats should also consider themselves lucky. Homosexual tom cats are right in feeling ecstatic.

Let's step away from the moral high ground, for a second. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ranking abuse. A child stealing a pen deserves a different punishment to a bank robber, in much the same way that an employer who fires a gay employee on the basis of the employee's sexuality deserves a different punishment to a drug dealer caught outside the school gates.

The real problem comes up when one form of abuse is set against another, in a shallow bid to highlight the absolute gravity of the first. Using relative comparisons confuses things to a ridiculous - and very dangerous - degree. Violence against a women is a grave matter, but so is discrimination against homosexuals. Which is why animal rights groups tend to stick to animal rights, and gay pride parades do not usually feature banners condemning animal cruelty; because comparing gay rights with animal abuse or domestic violence borders on the very same crass ignorance that leads people to commit these types of abuse in the first place.
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What is there not to love about this island?

Saturday, 11th July 2009

A call from the heart

Allan Gatt, Birkirkara

To the muscular girl crossing Main Road, Ħamrun, last Wednesday at approximately 12 noon. You make me want to plant an olive grove and buy lavender soap. I would have stopped my car and asked you your name but I was too stunned by your sheer awesomeness to react in time. Please sms me on 7954 1969. I too am of the faith.

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Mixed environmental and political aims (MEPA)

My first reaction to the timesofmalta article on MEPA reform (I've not read the full report yet, so do forgive me if I go off on a tangent here).

The reform to the Development Control Commission (two instead of one, and full, rather than part time) is brilliant, and necessary (and about time too, whilst we're at it, but better have the obligatory bells and whistles accompanying the change in a couple of individual's work schedule, than not have that change in the first place).

The decision to transfer policy to the Office of the Prime Minister is a trickier one. In the immediate term, taking policy to Castille could inject some high-level thinking into what I consider to be our country's most pressing need: a coherent and sustainable planning and regulatory agenda. I'll emphasise this point: vision is sorely needed, and the Prime Minister is right in thinking that the OPM is the best place for that vision to be formulated. MEPA can be a regulator all it wants, but regulatory power without responsibility is like handing a chainsaw to a kid, and pointing to a clump of trees.

The Prime Minister is incorrect, however, if he thinks that the move out of MEPA should be a permanent one. I'm already hesitant about using the finance ministry as an example of the good that can come out of taking policy planning to Castille, because in my head economics and the environment have very different life cycles. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I'm perfectly fine with successive governments changing their economic policy agenda every five years. Having successive governments change our island's environmental planning priorities every so often, however, is a recipe for disaster.
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Too little has been learnt; too late.

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children,” Mr. McNamara recalled; some 900,000 Japanese civilians died in all. “LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals.”

“What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” he asked. He found the question impossible to answer.

My home is not a place, it is a people.

Think of fourteen close friends, thirteen of whom were classmates in Malta in 2003.

Six years later, the first, second, and third, are in London. The first spent a year in Coventry, whilst the second was touring the UK. The third is currently in Cairo, doing research. The fourth works in Cambridge. The fifth is about to move back to Brighton to finish university, having spent the first year there, and the second year in Singapore. The sixth also works in Cambridge. The seventh and the eight are moving to the UK in July. The other six are in Malta.

Most of them think that 'brain drain' is a horrible way of describing it all. Try 'a postman's worst nightmare': come September, the first five will have changed postcode three times in the past three years.
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