Mediawatch

There's no such thing as a free (Wi-Fi) lunch

“69  main squares and public gardens around Malta and Gozo will offer free wi-fi in the coming weeks, bringing the number of open spaces offering the service to 88.” That’s wonderful news and all those involved in this project should be lauded with more than a pat on the back. But is free Wi-Fi sustainable in the long term? Does this project fit in within a wider plan or is it just a play by ear routine?

MCA CEO Philip Micallef, PS Chris Said and Minister Gatt have all expressed their enthusiasm about this project “bridging the digital divide” and this is definitely the kind of idea that makes something like Vision 2015 less words and more action. We do not intend to be the wet blankets and killjoys here at J’accuse but it is important not to lose a sense of perspective. While it is true that this kind of service is “similar to what is offered in other countries” there is one missing bit of info in all of this.

Take Luxembourg. We had free Wi-Fi “Hot Spots” a couple of years back. The city center included well signed areas where you could access the public service. After a while though the public service became a paid service. You could  register and buy credit to access the wifi system. Free-riders could go to restaurants such as McDonald’s, Books and Beans (Pierre Meilak’s old haunt) and Urban for example. Like most European cities though the trend was more for paying for credit for public WiFi than for free availability.

Wi-Fi Alliance logo
Image via Wikipedia

When travelling in Europe you can buy credit with Wi-Fi providers like Orange, T-Mobile and others and use their many hotspots around the main towns. Sadly (for Europe) even most hotels require extra payment for the wi-fi service. Few (such as the Campanile chain) offer free wi-fi. The “free” element is excellent to get people used to the benefits of browsing when out but it costs money. My honest question is will the Maltese service be sustainable in the long run?

Lest you batter me with the anti-government critic baton I am genuinely asking whether there is a long term plan. It is all well and good to set up wi-fi hotspots and encourage their use but what will happen in a year or two when the accounts department starts to creak and austerity measures hit the service? I would strongly advise clear, up-front information – that the service will probably cost money in the future is highly probable (unless sponsors are found). Even in the case of wi-fi there is a cost… and government NEVER gives you anything for free.

Answers please.

Times Report

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Programmes People Watch (II)

Friday on Xarabank. Where’s Everybody discusses Where’s Everybody. Fresh from their appearance at PN’s Vision 2015+ (a conference for non-politicians – whatever that may mean) Peppi and Lou debate Lou. With a little help from their friends. Here’s the “synopsis” sent round by Xarabank:

Freedom of Expression: Where to draw the line? Where is the limit? Should television programmes give space to ideas such as those of Norman Lowell or should these be censored or even banned? Xarabank discusses. Amongst others in the panel, journalist Lou Bondi, media expert Fr Joe Borg, Chief Justice Emeritus Prof Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici and National Commission Persons with Disability chairman Joseph M Camilleri.

You’ve just got to love them. Can you imagine the dilemma at Xarabank’s production team? …

Do we get Lowell?

But would getting Lowell answer the question?

OK OK. So do we get Lou?

And if we have Lou we need a media expert.

Is there anyone we can think of?

I think I heard Lou mention a Fr Joe Borg.

Ok. So it’s Lou and Joe right?

Yes. But no. But but but but that would be a bit too much like the programme on Daphne’s Blog.

What programme on Daphne’s Blog?

You know the one where they talked about everything but the blog

… ah that one. So we’ll just get two more cameo appearances – is anyone else talking about it?

Hmm… not anyone worth inviting…

let’s just get JoJo and spomeone from the disabled community – sorry. persons with disability – and have them talk about how offensive Lowell is.

Should be a good programme – after all people love controversy and Lowell.

Lowell – programmes people watch.

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Say Cheese

The Spanish parliament has just made EUR 15b worth of budget cuts (by one vote) and Malta can afford to discuss communion to cohabitants, hypothetical coalitions, Daphne Caruana Galizia, Lou Bondi and whether secularism is a disease. Damned lucky country. – Fausto Majistral

Continue reading →

Sacred Rights

So cohabiting couples should strictly speaking not be allowed to take part in the sacrament of holy communion. We were reminded that recently and suddenly there is a furore, a raising of the metaphorical ruckus and more by an indignated part of the populace. What do our Bishops think they are doing? Don’t they know that there are people who traipse up the aisle and swallow the wafer who are much less deserving than the poor cohabiting couples whose only crime is to love each other?

Say what? I could not believe my eyes as more and more people jumped on the anti-church bandwagon once again. Suddenly people were pontificating on a virtual classification of “communion merit”. Soon enougha ritual of a specific denomination on the island was discussed in the same manner as one would a universal human right.

Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter by Pietro...

Image via Wikipedia

Have I got news for the pseudo-libertarians: there is no universal human right to communion. On a scale of human interpreted religious ritual – one that strongly believes that what the earthly representatives of a divinity say is truly inspired by the aforementioned divinity – whatever anyone else has to add is pure balderdash. Communion is a religious ritual that has quite possibly existed ever since the man from Nazareth chose to ask is apostles to break bread and eat it in his remembrance. True, at that point in time there were no postillae or qualifications as to who could partake of this commemorative meal whenever it happened (neither did Haysus mention anything about wheat intolerance – something the Catholic Church would only solve in early years of the 21st century) but we must perforce presume that he left such work to Peter “the Rock” and his followers.

That last presumption is also crucial since the Catholic Church is now the supreme authority of what is kosher in communion. Which is why the sudden jumping and yelling when it was made clear that cohabiting couples should stay put on their church seats while the purer folk go about their queuing and communing is all very out of order. And what is all this nonsense about the Church being picky and hypocritical when it spares the more obvious candidates from wafer deprivation? I do not recall the church or any pointy hatted representative say that liars, thieves etc CAN have communion while cohabiting couples CANNOT. The rules are quite clear for everybody and there is also a mechanism for the repentant and the contrite – it’s another ritual which involves a sort of skype with God via his earthly rep.

Do we really need to get into the ritualistic details of Roman Catholicity to understand the difference between a rite and a right? But, they protest, the Church also has a social role and is a social example. Bollocks. Let the church deal with its own contradictions in its own time. Let it explain to its flock how sex before marriage, cohabitation, adultery, theft and murder are all on the same level in the “Does Not Qualify for Communion” point system. What the church also does is something very sly. It does not police its aisles with lie detectors and identifiers of premarital fornicators – it simply and very calmly puts it on your own conscience. It does not need a reminder from Mario & Cremona for a good catholic to know that sins and contrition are all part of the mechanism of personal development. Religion and spiritual development is all about rites in this case – and about the relationship between you and God – should you believe in her of course.

It’s a rite, not a right so stop harassing the catholic flock and if you don’t like it just do not go in there.

The Times of Malta. Debate rages on communion to cohabiting couples.

Not Only in Malta. In Holland controversy over a priest who refused to give communion to a gay person.

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Failing with Grace

The better half organised a Eurovision party last night. Not that I needed an excuse to take a peek at the goings on in this year’s kitsch fest but a bit of party snacks and company for the dissing always helps. So we’re out – and a song that was never really destined to shoot through the charts makes a gracious exit (almost gracious bar the snipe at “neighbour votes”) from the world of euroglam and drug-free fantasia.

There’s something eerie about this Eurovision. Its thrown up the usual suspects from the weird to the tasteless to the musically undesirable but there is something more to it. There is almost (and I stress almost) a whiff of the political once again. It’s not all Plastic Bertrand if you know what I mean – there is a DNA of the economic depression that runs through most songs and – weirdly enough – a very unexpected common strand in what is generally considered a heathen festival of bugger-thy-neighbourdness (while getting his vote) is the constant appeal to religion and spirituality – a peak reached by the weepingly ungrammatical implorations to Mr God (was it Moldavia?).

Eurovision cds
Image via Wikipedia

Lithuania promise a musical solution to the depression on Thursday but Russia has already dug into the deeper and darker side of its soul providing with an incredibly melancholy outfit that reminds you of anything but music but that would also be a brilliant soundtrack to a Euro-Dollar exchange chart. In times of trouble we take refuge in the spiritual and phantasmagorical. What better place then for the expression of men with bulging crotches dressed as birds, butterflies gone wrong and trees that dance and sing Whoary-horny?

The festival will go on on Thursday and Saturday. The French have an Outre-Mer catchy football anthem featuring Brasil football gear while any intelligent bets would be on Ze German song- catchy and full of euro-pronounced English. Intelligence is not what wins the Eurovision though and given the usual betting shenanigans Deutschland and Merkel will be spared the expense of hosting the next edition of the travelling circus.

Back home we will probably revert to the usual suspects of accusations of waste and disquisitions as to whether the € spent on euromadness would have been best spent on something with more “kulcher”. We just don’t get it … c’est ça la culture … and even in this kitschfest of depressive depravity and soul-searching spirituality we exit early in a shower of self-commiseration, misguided xenophobic accusations and a renewed disgust at the failure of Greater Europe to give credit to this small island’s Dream.

***

ADDENDUM:

And even more Maltese kulchur unveiled. The PL HAD to have its say on the matter.

PL sends its congratulations

The Labour Party in a statement congratulated Thea Garrett and her team for an excellent performance and said that Thea should continue to pursue her dream in the music industry.

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Selective Defence is Bondi's Plus

J’accuse has received a copy of Lou Bondi‘s defence argument before the Broadcasting Authority. It makes for very very interesting reading. Much as we would like to enter the debate on the issue of whether or not Lowell should have been allowed on the programme (and elsewhere we have done just that), we are more intrigued by the manner in which this ‘apologia’ continues to expose Lou’s selective amnesia as well as double-standards with regards to the weight of public opinion.

You will find below a link to the full document presented by Lou Bondi to the BA and you might like to read through it with particular attention to point 12 – regarding public opinion. Two questions stand out: firstly that Lou is arguing a technical point based on the very public opinion he chose to minimise in the Delimara program (Programmes People Watch).

Then there is the blatant selective amnesia – such as has been displayed before on the occasion of the infamous Plategate Bondiplus programme. Just look at point 12 of Lou’s apologia: first he quotes media guru Joe Borg and then he quotes an article in the Times – referring to the comments section. Having thus exhausted (according to Lou) all instances where his programme was mentioned and criticised he concludes:

Jidher car li ftit hafna kienu dawk li argumentaw li l-programm ma’ kellux isir. Interessanti wkoll li hafna minn dawk li qalu li l-programm kellu jsir, jikkritikaw, anki bl-ahrax, lil NL.

Brilliant. But false. Lou would like everybody to believe it. He probably believes it himself but the problem is tha this very forum chronicled the response in the mainstream media for you in the post entitled Gurnalizmu fuq Kollox (The Sunday Quotes). Claire Bonello, Mikela Spiteri and Tanja Cilia – all on the Times – and the Indy in a report all mentioned and criticised Bondiplus without any qualms.

You will notice of course that this assessment of all that Lou left out does not include the boringly irrelevant reality of the “peclieqa” on blogs… still, even without that proof you can see how selective Lou has been.

If you want a wider assessment of public opinion then dive to the wiked site youropenbook.org and input “norman lowell”. J’accuse has done it for you just click here. Scroll down to the period on and after 3rd May and see for yourself.

The farce continues….

Click to open the “Risposta BA re: Lowell” file.

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