J'accuse : Ill Communication

Gareth Compton, Conservative councillor for Erdington in Birmingham (UK), was released on bail on the eve of Armistice Day after he was arrested for an offence under the Communications Act of 2003 on suspicion “of sending an offensive or indecent message”. Compton was questioned about the content of a Tweet of his which read: “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.”

Compton argued that this was “an ill-conceived attempt at humour in response to Alibhai-Brown saying on Radio 5 Live that no politician had the right to comment on human rights abuses – even the stoning of women in Iran”. Tories and Labourites in the West Midlands joined the chorus of disapproval aimed at Compton’s ill-judged tweet and the police moved in with the charge.

In another corner of the UK, Doncaster Crown Court rejected Paul Chambers’ appeal against a Magistrates Court decision that had found him guilty of “sending a menacing electronic communication”. Chambers’ case also involved a tweet. This time the tweet was angrily directed to nearby Robin Hood Airport. With the airport shut down because of snow and Chambers’ travel plans thus thwarted, the tweeter vented his frustration to his 600-odd followers on the micro-blogging site: “Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”

Tough Guy (now recant)

Judge Jacqueline Davies of the Crown Court was not impressed by the defendant’s argument of “just kidding”. In her words, “We find it impossible to accept that anyone living in this country, in the current climate of terrorist threats, would not be aware of the consequences of their actions in making such a statement.” Both Compton and Chambers tried to write off the relative weight of their statement by claiming that their actions were performed in jest. There might be a substantial difference between a politician inviting people to stone a journalist on the one hand and a private individual venting his frustration in a colourful manner in another, but at the end of the day the lesson to be learnt is to be very careful when venturing into the world of mass communication. That iPhone at your fingertips can land you in deep do-do indeed.

I get the impression that Malta is still not sufficiently hooked on Twitter to provide this kind of interesting legal twist. The chronicles of court affairs are choking with the facts of intra-familial battles raging from the ballistic nose-breaking prodigies of one husband, to the wife who claimed that her husband was obsessed with an Italian late-night show over 20 years after it had gone off air. There are no tweeting offences as yet and while the Plategate saga rolls on in the background of the trendier chronicles, the battles in communication are taking place in more conventional fora – such as The Times letter pages.

When I first heard of Prime Minister Gonzi’s foray into the murky waters of The Times letter pages correspondence, I thought I’d give it a miss. Egged on by others, I finally got round to reading the prime ministerial letter – signed by the Prime Minister himself. Apparently Dr Gonzi had not liked a particular missive by a certain Bonett Balzan (BB for short) that had appeared in the pages of His Master’s Voice the previous Saturday. Dr Gonzi seemed intent on making a couple of points: firstly that he is not an “ends justifies the means” kind of guy (so no Luxol Grounds last-minute backstab on political allies from him, I guess); and secondly, he issued what I describe on the blog as a sort of fatwa from the head of our constitutionally Catholic state.

Here are his words: “I condemn all hatred expressed in all circumstances and reiterate my appeal to all concerned to keep political language within the bounds of what should be acceptable in a mature democratic society.” The question everyone (not to be confused with Everybody) was asking was: What prompted this letter?

Sure Shot

(political communication)

And you couldn’t blame “everyone” in the end. After reading Dr Gonzi’s letter, I had to look for the letter that had triggered the reaction by the head of government. Dr Gonzi had quoted from the offending letter and specified what had caused him to take offence. The Prime Minister stated that he took particular offence at the phrase “taken of the law into his own hands with fatal consequences”. Prima facie it seemed like a rather harsh phrase – one that would have any spoudaios (Gk. – average man) rushing to his desk and typing a measured response.

It all went kind of sour when I read the context from which the phrase was lifted. There was nothing remotely injurious in fact. True, BB’s letter was astonishingly similar to much of the crap that passes for intelligent discussion on blog comment boards nowadays. It was an illustration of anything but the “enlightened times” that were referred to in the letter and its author is a perfect example of conservative, ignorant bigotry that has become common fare in most discussions.

Having said that, the whole bit about the taking of judicial matters into one’s own hands with dire consequences was actually part of a description of the habitual goings on among husbands and adulterers. Bonett Balzan was simply illustrating how adulterers would have been treated a while back, before the enlightened times of this government “ably led” by “the job-creating” Dr Gonzi (BB’s words). Yes, Bonett Balzan does come out as a fervent (never a more apt term) follower of the GonziPN creed – he is, in fact, appalled at the dilution of its values by upstarts such as JPO.

Put fairly and squarely, Bonett Balzan’s letter was no less of an abuse of the freedom of expression as that exercised by the myriad liberated voices that populate Internet comment boards every day of the week. Why then had the Gonzi-radar zoomed in on this particular manifestation of not-so-illuminated literary intervention in order to vent the prime ministerial fury? There was only one explanation. Dr Gonzi might be a professed anti-divorcist, but he will not take kindly to being automatically associated with the Maltese version of redneck backwaters. It was in such a spirit that the prime ministerial letter was penned and to such a letter was appended a glorious appendix.

For the Gonzi letter ended in a blanket condemnation of hatred expressed in all circumstances, as well as an appeal to maintain a decent level of political discourse. We’d have loved to applaud this noble initiative had it not jarred with the fact that the intervention (“scendere in campo” as Berlusconi is wont to say) was too isolated and seemed to ignore other more serious and more prominent offenders who have contributed to the general debasement of political discourse. The selective lifting of dubiously offensive quotations only served to water down the import of Dr Gonzi’s letter – leading to the incredulous reaction from the nation’s cognoscenti.

Get It Together (please)

Ill communication was not monopolised by the Office of the Prime Minister. It’s getting tiring to follow the concerted practice (that’s the second anti-trust term in this paragraph) of political acolytes of the Labourite persuasion in drumming their various stories home on the basis of “fairness”. “Mhux fjer” (not fair) has been translated into a political mantra and the Labour monks are busy exposing their hurts (“wegghat”) and the levels of unfairness with every political development on the political scene.

Chief Economist Muscat led the way last week with his budget reactions. This week we had the story of the 1,000 Air Malta employees declared surplus to requirements according to a report. Tony Zarb and most PL-leaning commentators were busy preparing wailing laments for the thousand family members on whose sweat, blood and tears the success story that is Air Malta had been created, only to be given a hint of the exit (and I am not talking Safety Exits here) at this moment of economic uncertainty.

“Mhux fjer” they yelled. Who will love their children? Which is OK for a trade union leader, but not OK for a political party that should be planning our way out of whatever mess they seem to be oh so keen to highlight. If there is a mess, and I am not saying that there isn’t, the role of an opposition party is not to highlight the problem but to confidently claim and prove that it has a solution at hand.

The communication lines of the new PL seem to be built with a very short-term goal in mind. They tend to ignore the fact that once in government the exposure of the ills, pains and injustices of society will not suffice, and that people will actually expect them to deliver the goods. I quizzed some Labour supporters, asking what they would do if they found themselves at the head of a government that had just been presented with the 1,000-surplus workers report. The first reply? Ah, we would commission a report to find out who is responsible for the overstaffing of the airline. Bravo indeed. Now THAT is a great solution. Get ready for a headless government that blames its shortfalls on the 2012 version of “il-hofra”. Progressive? Bah.

Sabotage (discrimination)

And then there was the communications cock-up, which was the announcement of the new bus fares once Arriva take over. What should have been the groundwork for a much-awaited new bus system ended up in bawling and exchanges on the media about the proposal to charge tourists a higher fare. Apart from this being the most pea-brained idea since Bush decided to publish his memoirs, the clumsy handling of the aftermath and backlash was mind-boggling.

We had a ministry spokesman (one of those) declaring that charging tourists more than the Maltese does not amount to discrimination. It was a case of knowing what he intended to say but also recognising what a cock-up the actual statement was. The whole point of discrimination is of creating criteria that turns like into unlike. Here was a ministry spokesman who was claiming that charging two rates for the same trip would not be discrimination. But it is, dear spokesman. The words he was looking for was justified discrimination because under EU law there are instances where discrimination can be justified if reasonably argued.

Which is where Minister Gatt piped in with the whole notion of resident v non-resident. Residents, it seems, are eligible for a subsidised fare because they pay taxes. Non-residents (tourists) don’t. Really? What was that tax increase in the last budget? Who pays it? Residents? Or tourists? There’s no knowing when the politicians of this world will come up with the next blooper that’s the size of a BWSC contract investigation gone wrong. (Bravo Parliament incidentally).

All that the men at the Ministry of Transport had to do was look at public transport systems worldwide. Take London’s Oystercard. There is no discrimination on the basis of residence. The only discrimination is the usual justified discrimination in favour of seniors and students. Other than that you pay according to how much you use it. Most travel cards give you more benefits the longer the validity. This is based on the basic assumption that a resident (frequent user) will, more often than not, take long-term credit on his card (a one-year travel card) to benefit from the lower price that would ensue in normal offers on a normal market.

Tourists are not precluded from buying a one-year travel-card but it would not make sense economically. Instead they will probably opt for a seven- or three-day card. A resident could buy that card but it does not pay him as much as a yearly card. You see? No discrimination on the basis of residence or nationality that has to be justified on the basis of some spurious taxation excuse. Instead you have a scaled system of cards accessible to all but that actually makes sense for different categories – the only discrimination is in the consumer’s mind at the moment of purchase. Who am I kidding? I am sure the guys at Arriva know all this and will soon be showing the way on this matter.

Roots Down (travel)

Speaking of travel, I will be in Versailles this weekend – a birthday treat from my better half. In that palace lived a woman who never actually uttered the fabled words “Let them eat cake”. It’s just so unfair that sometimes it is the words that are unsaid that end up making the biggest noise.

www.akkuza.com From the Hall of Mirrors to Le Petit Trianon, all in a weekend’s work. Titles of this week’s article (barring brackets) brought to you courtesy of the great Beastie Boys album “Ill Communication” (1994).