j'accuse

Ryanair’s inauguration of its latest flight out of Malta is in the news today (Malta-Trapani). Also in the news was Ryanair’s increible offer of one million seats at €5. People still question whether this policy of Ryanair’s is reasonable (not sure there). They also wonder whether Ryanair should be more clear about the fact that €5 does not include taxes and whatsnot (they should). Commenting on an online newspaper someone also commented:

By no stretch of the imagination can the € 5 cover all the Government and Airport Taxes. This goes to show that Ryanair is being aided and abetted to act in breach of competition laws and being given an unfair advantage over legacy carriers like Air Malta who have to collect and pay Government and Airport taxes making their air fares artificially inflated.

The usual rant you would say. His is not the full picture though. Ryanair’s is a commercial gamble – it has not got much to do with breach of competition of laws as it has with the defiance of costs, supply and demand. To an ignoramus like me the reason Ryanair can afford cheap flights is precisely because it cannot. Nobody can really. They are underpriced because Ryanair is gambling on slicing into huge parts of the market. It tries to get customers dependent on the “cheap” idea then runs up the ‘collateral damage’ – or extra costs.

There’s the amount of luggage, the weight of the luggage, the price of food on board, the transport to and from the airports of choice and more. Contrary to popular perception, Ryanair is not “doing well”. Rather it’s recent losses inspired newspaper titles such as “Ryanair got it wrong”. Their Shannon base in Ireland is about to have 400 jobs cut off in order to minimise losses.

The latest setback for Ryanair was during negotiations to order 400 new planes. It tried the usual tactic of bullying with numbers trying to provoke a price war between Airbus and Boeing. Airbus’ answer was simply:

We are not in discussions with Ryanair about aircraft. That is on the record. We don’t have plans to enter a sales campaign with Ryanair, which would be very expensive and very time-consuming.

Clearly Airbus sees this as nothing more than a ploy to negotiate with Boeing, and acknowledging Ryanair was likely never going to place an order with the company. The outlook is not so bad for the airline of the Harp. Despite gross incompetence over the past year with regard to hedging contracts for the price of fuel Ryanair is expected to recover though their plan for transatlantic flights might have to be shelved for now.

Next time you are on a Ryanair flight with your knees rammed firmly into the neck of the passenger seated in front of you do bear in mind that your “cheap” trip is a result of a gambit that relies on numbers, numbers and more numbers. When you realise that the costs for your flight plus collaterals cost you much more than that €5 ad you saw don’t complain… just go “baaaaa”

After all the choice is yours… and that’s what matters really.

This video is an amateur video filmed in the picturesque fishing village of Zurrieq in the south of Malta. It was posted in 2007 and the scenes it depicts are becoming very common in Malta. A group of youngsters, probably waiting for the sun to set while sunbathing, end up being witnesses of yet another landing of a boatload of immigrants who must have set off days before from the North African coast.

The immigrants look disoriented and find it hard to shake off the dizziness which is due to the many days at sea. Once ashore their first aim is to run inland and ditch the boats. The crude comments of the youths only serve to enhance the spine chilling feeling of the scene and moment. A female voice is heard off camera asking “What have they come here for?” in not too kind a tone. One other female wonders whether they are in danger – them being the youths not the immigrants.  The guy filming discusses with an off cam friend whether they should go for the engine of the boat that is about to be ditched because it would be such a waste.

At one point a female voice is heard urging the group to call the “whotsitsname” and inform them that a group of “whotstheirnames” have arrived. That’s my best translation from Maltese. She cannot even remember the words army or immigrants. Scenes like this are the beginning of much anger and frustration in the small island of Malta. The swarms of immigrants arriving on boats come rain or shine are the reason of justified and unjustified worry. Politicians grudingly venture into this realm and normally only after being scolded by international organisations for atrocious conditions.

Solidarity from fellow European states has been slow in coming. The US has taken on a few of the floods of immigrants. Malta’s catholic shell has long cracked and the words tolerance and solidarity now sound less musical and holy than “send them back” and “crusade“. Will the European parliament elections have immigration on the agenda? Do the candidates have concrete plans on how to use their place in Parliament to get more action… more words from the EU? The Maltese might expect something. The stranglehold of the two main parties on this kind of non-politics seems to promise otherwise.

Meanwhile more boats are arriving.

It never rains but it pours. With guys like Pierre you’d hope that posts on his blog did more of the latter than the former. His blog, once a regularly updated landmark on the Maltese blogosphere witnessed a slowdown in productivity as Pierre shifted slowly to the printed medium. In fact he did develop a knack of making his audience twist and turn with anticipation before regaling them with stories that are written as finely and as carefully as Gozitan lace.

I read Pierre’s last book “Rih Isfel” with a feeling of relaxed contentment that could only be had by the pleasure of a revival of multiple memories and familiar landscapes safely entwined within a fertile vocabulary that immediately brings the reader close to home. (see, that’s the kind of off-putting long sentence that puts people off books – but then again how do you translate wens, hedla, sliem and saudade?)

And home is of course Gozo. There is something that binds all of us who in one way or another can call the Island of Calypso and free range marijuana fields (under the watchful eye of the police) home. Without Gozo there would be no Pierre, no Rih Isfel, and probably…. no Xita.

But this is not meant to be a eulogy for Ogygia that lapses into the one thousand and one clichéed descriptions of the island where time stood still. Rather it is a post that is meant to tickle your interest into reading the product of the new blood that left the island and immersed itself in the middle of Bruxelles La Moche, there to inspire newfound stories that blend the old and the new, the sacred and the profane.

Comparisons are odious, I know, but if I were to tag Pierre I’d think of France’s Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. I am still not sure whether it is the author’s style or some of his characters that inspire the comparison. Characters is what Pierre does best as in the short story Diabolus where he playfully keeps your curiosity on tenterhooks until the final twist.

Short stories flowed out of his blog. Now you can own them in this new book “Qed nistenniek niezla max-Xita“. Given my reputation for rubbishing hopeless blurbs I can tell you that I have seen the one on this book and it rocks… a guy from the end of the blogosphere has a lot to vouch for that.

So. I cannot tell you what’s in it. I can only honestly say that I would definitely stake a high bet on what’s in it being good.

This is not a review… it is a biased participation in book marketing by someone who has already been genuinely captivated by the previous works of the young author from Nadur. For more marketing ploys (re: book launch, etc) I suggest you check out these sites:

The Author’s Site: Pierre J. Mejlak

The Facebook Event with Launch Info

Happy reading!

Bruxelles la Moche

Brussels and I have a love/hate relationship in the sense that I love to hate it and whenever I get a chance to visit Europe’s bureaucratic capital this love-to-hate-you relationship is rekindled. I’ve tried long and hard to give the city a chance but it has just about as much charm as a village lady all dolled up for festa night. More often than not I get to town by train…it’s as though a guided tour of the human body were to start from the backside. You travel through the entrails and uglier sides of the city quietly hoping that it will, at some point, get better. Little do you know that that’s it… a sort of railroad WISYWIG tour before you hit the streets. You should have known it after all – this is the town whose main highlights are a pissing boy, a giant monument of an atom and of course a square that gets covered in flowers every now and then.

Yet tourists hit Brussels in droves. The cram every nook and cranny of the garish streets shopping for hideous souvenirs, stuffing themselves with chocolates and downing the beer. It’s not Ibiza because there’s no sun and there’s no sea. There’s grey building after grey building, badly signed roads (don’t think of driving in this mess) and unhelpful citizens with a chip on their shoulder about the other half of their country depending one whether you meet a Flemish or a Walloon.

I should have warned you that I am biased because there is a sort of rivalry among the Maltese expats living in Luxembourg and those of Brussels. We cannot take the stink and they cannot take the boredom. Anyways, last weekend was one of those rare weekends when I boarded the train to Brussels on what I may call blogging business…

81 Bloggers – Ego-Party

The business in question, as I mentioned the other week, was the launching of a pan-European blogging competition organised by the European Journalism Centre. The EJC came up with this brilliant idea of getting bloggers from all the member states and inspiring them to blog about the European Parliament elections for the coming five months until the day Europe goes to the polls. The result was a fizzing buzz of exciting young and old blogging freaks full of enthusiasm meeting in one place.

If there’s one thing you should know about bloggers is that they invariably possess an ego the size of your average elephant… and I ain’t talking pygmy. Yes, I am fully aware that the description in the last sentence includes the undersigned but hey… if you had not noticed J’accuse’s ego-tripping personality by now then you’ve really been reading our articles in the wrong spirit. It’s not just the ego that made this motley crue of Eurobloggers stick out like a Czech sculpture in a European institution but rather their absolute addiction to all things technological. The Geeker-counter needles went berserk as we waddled around conference room after conference room in search of a socket to plug into and a Wi-Fi password to type in.

When we do finally settle down and the podium speakers strut their stuff about how to be both EU Savvy and Blog Sexy at the same time you tend to notice that the attention span of your average blogger is one click short of that of a barbary macaque on ecstacy. It’s incredible. Just sit behind any blogger who has just switched on his or her baby and you will notice that the apparatus currently warming her laps is not intended for note taking. Before you can say Tim Berners-Lee the blogger has done the equivalent of “Around the Net in 80 nanoseconds” and has facebooked, twittered, linkedinned, aggregated, searched, miniblogged and googled on a million different pages. It’s not a presence on the internet that we are talking about … it’s more like the demi-gods of the 20th century – they’re everywhere … and trust me… it’s hard to keep up.

European Party Politics

Thankfully the competition business has nothing to do with nimbleness, dexterity and propensity to jump from web page to web page like some New Age Tarzan because I would be worried that I would fare badly and disappoint my compatriots in a Eurovision pie in the face kind of way. Nope. What we will be “competing” about is the business of getting news about the EP to our blogs and believe you me there’s loads of that going around. Brussels may be an ugly host but in a way it allows you to appreciate the hubbub of the goings on in the institutions even more clearly. You have no time to waste at the West End or round Montmartre in Brussels… so you get to dig deeper into matters European.

One of the problems of European Union politics is that it is very self-referential. What ultimately classifies as pure EU politics material is a bunch of matters that are of interest solely within the stinky confines of the Quartier Européen in Bruxelles la Moche. The moment such matters manage to evade the smog smothered borders of the city that should have a shower at night it begins to morph into 27 types of political stories… one for each state which is affected by it.

It’s the same story you will hear no matter what time you decide to jump on the EU train and learn more about what it has to offer. I’ve been following and specialising in EU matters for over twelve years now and the same old story seems to be stuck in a loop. You tend to reach a bizarre conclusion – that in the end it is not that the people are confused about what the European Union is about but rather that the wrong end of the EU is being shown to the people.

The people, that slippery demos that is oft conned into believing that the EU is a seven eyed monster that wants to gobble their souls, are given an EU picture by their national governments (eager to blame the latest ills on the gravy train guys in BXL), another by the media (more often than not to jump on the “let’s bash the EU inefficiency” bandwagon) and a final one by the disparate institutions of the EU themselves each of which has hitherto demonstrated an utter inability to explain the most minor of details in a user friendly manner.

Hitherto (Let’s Get the Party Started)

That “hitherto” in the last sentence is quite telling though. There seems to be a genuine effort from both the establishment as well as from the galaxy of EU related NGOs to invest a lot of energy into repackaging and reselling the EU. It might be their reaction to the latest round of Nyets and to the strange forebodings about the sick economy but I saw a lot of kinetic energy and what I saw seems to be good. The Parliament is abuzz and dying to reach out, the Commission is supportive and busy telling everyone “What has the EU done for you” and the NGOs? Well the NGO’s are active in droves… thanks also to the Commission’s support.

Conspiracy theorists, those who cannot help but imagine a modern day 1984, will assimilate any educational campaign to Stalinist propaganda. They might even confuse moderation with censorship and will play Barroso’s unfortunate comparison of the EU to an Empire on an infinite loop. Meanwhile the 27 realities that make up the European Union gear-up for another round of universal suffrage in the hope that it will not be a repat of universal apathy.

That there are 27 realities is partly the reason, as I was saying earlier on, that it is so difficult to put a finger on the demos of this democracy. It’s not just that really. During the conference we spoke to representatives of the major umbrella formations that go by the name of European Parties and asked them a few questions. I must confess to a gleeful feeling when the EPP rep got stumped by my question as to how on earth he would imagine the hodge-podge of parties in his formation agreeing on a coherent European Strategy for a single European Campaign. The socialists, liberals and eurosceptics might have a headstart on that one. Umbrella parties… that’s a difficult one

It’s My Party and I Say What I Want To

There will be more about EU and Euroblogging in the articles in the months to come. For now let us veer onto this intriguing issue of Umbrella Parties because the question has not dies out just yet. Last week we got a taster of things to come with the Edward Demicoli question. The question remains: is the nationalist party a pro- or an anti- hunting party? Frankly I believe that you cannot be a bit of both. Right on cue the nationalist party is beginning to trumpet the diverse opinions that militate within it without any form of censorship.

There is of course a detail that they choose to ignore. Voters need to know how their vote will be used. It’s one thing having dissension of the JPO or Ninu Zammit kind in the matter of the St. John’s Plans it is alltogether another to say that your party can accomodate both pro- and anti- hunting sentiments. If that is not phishing for votes then tell me what is. And what do you do to distract attention from the blatant incongruencies in your own house? Easy… do what you do best and engage in opponent bashing – in this case bash the ones with the anti-hunting credentials through and through.

Is this the new wave of politicians the people need? Is the solution selecting them from a Pick’N’Mix at national level so that they can go to Europe and sit with a motley crue of ill-fitting polticians from disparate Pick’N’Mix parties? Ah well. So long as they are sitting with the “biggest party in Europe”. Which is sad really because it tends to reduce the validity of European representation to the same petty parochial politics of ours where Nationalists and Labourites claim a god-given right to representation and prefer to Variety Pack of Liquorice Allsorts with token representations of a cross-section of the population.

Party Invitation – Women Only

Speaking of token assortments and pick’n’mix issues the ECFHR seems to have a problem with the Maltese nominations for the next judge to sit at the Strasbourg Court. It seems that the all-male line up offends the fundamental principles of positive discrimination and that unless Malta coughs up the name of a token lady to go for the ride they will reject all the rest. Preposterous. How about asking the ECFHR which of the current nominess should be told to relenquish his potential seat and make way for a less qualified person who happens to fit better in the discriminatory requirements. Throw the ball in their court and see how they respond. How do you choose between the three? Toss a coin? No. Really.

Sites and Sounds

It’s self-plugging for the moment. J’accuse (the blog) is undergoing a revamp period and should be ready before Piano’s City gate. In the meantime http://themaltachronicle.wordpress.com remains the main brainstorming place for all things EP election related. You will also find useful links to certain sites that are intended to bring citizens together to debate the EU.

I’ve typed this article with Delibes’ Pizzicato from Sylvia playing in the background. It’s a sublime way to start the weekend. For those who care weather in the Duchy involves a crisp clear and sunny sky with close to freezing temperatures. It’s a wonderful winter calm with fresh air and the evergreen parks beckon for a nice walk followed by a lait rousse. If the weather holds up like this J’accuse could be in for a drive to Germany via the splendid wine route along the Moussel river hopefully stopping for a glass or two of Gewurztraminer. Eat your heart out Brussels!

Jacques is currently figuring out a switch to hosting http://jaccuse.wordpress.com on his own site. It’s still comments as usual though so feel free to come by and tell us what’s your choice out of the pick’n’mix!

I’m not saying that I’m not a liberal … I’m not saying that I am a liberal either. These confounded explanations cannot be helpful to a politician. It can be quite straightforward if you really try.Let’s take the example of a Christian Democrat of the typewho find their inspiration straight from papal encyclicals and whose past political stances really show it…it would be difficult for such a person to twist and turn within this self-imposed straightjacket and try to claim the unclaimable simply in order to fit into a party that still tries to kid itself that it is an “Umbrella Party”.

Since we love metaphors,let us think of the PN as a big big fat man (1) who owns a very very thin and small mirror. Every glance he gets at the mirror he only sees a part of the whole since the whole picture cannot be reflected (2) . He is pleased with what he sees because he cannot see the big picture and how unpleasant it is to the naked eye. So lives on, comfortable in his mind that all is well and that a couple more visits to McDonald’s will do no harm (3).

Here’s Tonio Borg’s letter to the Times (4) that inspired this quick post:

With reference to the article titled PN Is Not Liberal (January 26) I would like to correct the reported facts.

At no instance during the dialogue held at the Balzan Nationalist Party office on Sunday, January 25, did I make a reference to same sex marriages or cohabiting couples. It must be stated that I made no reference to the “conservative ideology” governing the values of the Nationalist Party (7). To the contrary, I said that the PN’s principles are not based on liberalism but on sound Christian Democratic principles. This implies that the Nationalist Party is not governed through a laissez-faire attitude but one where state regulation ensures the protection of those citizens in most need of protection and assistance. (5)

Furthermore, in Parliament, I stated that it would be unjust for the landlord to be forced to acknowledge at his expense the transfer by inheritance of a lease to relationships beyond the current ones protected by law. (6)

(1) Yes this MIGHT sound politically incorrect but the size is an essential part of the metaphor.

(2) Unless he holds the mirror very far away but then it would be too far to see the contents thereof (we’re talking women’s nosepowdering mirror) – that’s for the pedants among you.

(3) Not that I am implying that a couple of visits to McD could harm you. I love the vanilla milkshake – so long as they keep that shake messers NoGlobal can go taunt Burger King instead (incidentally BK have a good vanilla ice cream).

(4) One last footnote… why does Tonio Borg sign in this fashion: “Tonio Borg, Deputy Prime Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Valletta” when he is very evidently speaking in defence of his party and the principles he believes it holds dear? I mean this is not exactly Malta’s policy on Gaza is it?

(5) Ok one more. Does the last sentence really and truly mean that the PN will care for the rights of poofs? Yep … I’m in politically incorrect mode. If you don’t like it… bite me. In case you are still concentrating re: the last sentence the clue lies in the use of the phrase “in most need of assistance”. In fact it’s a bit like asking a Lowellian supporter to draft a list of criteria of which immigrants to save from the sea.

(6) This one is an appeal for clarity. Would the last paragraph be an attempt to befuddle the readers with a totally unrelated sentence? Or was Tonio’s Voice truncated by an ill-meaning liberal subversive working at Strickland House. Hmmm.

(7) Forget the order. Just noticed this one. The fact that he “made no reference” to something does not mean that it does not exist. Is it a denial or an affirmation? God knows? And in this case god seems to be the Deputy Prime Minister speaking on party affairs.

All references to size and weight in this post are purely metaphorical and fictitious. The weight mentioned in this story has no connection to any weight in real life (neither do the words “poof “or “Lowellian”). Eat at least five fruits a day to remain healthy and never (never ever) be rude to a homosexual or far right loonie (even when this turns out to be the same person). J’accuse supports homosexual rights, the freedom of expression and the right of McDonalds to sell milkshakes within the laissez-faire free market. It even supports the right of Tonio Borg to be a conservative Christian Democrat.

This has been J’accuse… outing non-liberals so that you don’t have to!

Only last week the world of vlogging seemed aeons away. Vlogging or “video blogging” involved investing extra time and money in setting up to be able to add videos to posts. You would need a camera, a program to edit the films you took and more. There was little or no incentive. Enter the Flip Camera. As early as March 2008 the New York Times was hailing this little machine as the most significant electronic products of the year.

It was, and it still is, even though progress towards the old continent is still slow and you would have to order your flip camera from the US (go ahead… take advantage of the weak dollar). At under 200 dollars a pop the camera is within most bloggers’ reach. It’s inbuilt USB key gives it a weird look but it also means that from shoot to youtube the steps are embarassingly simple. Quality of both sound and vision is incredibly good… if you don’t believe me here’s a video filmed by eux.tv at the Th!inkaboutit conference.