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Cheap noodles and les nouveaux pauvres

Marie Louise Coleiro Preca II is not the name of a boat. It is the name of MLCP’s second facebook page that was started after the first one was oversubscribed. Marie Louise Coleiro Preca II shared a post with Marie Louise Coleiro Preca about a meeting that was held at the PL club in Fgura where the subject seems to have been the “energy poor” and someone liked this post today so it came to my attention. These are not, as you might presume, people who are experiencing strong withdrawal symptoms from their last intake of Red Bull but rather a newly defined class of poverty that has been created by… you guessed it… GonziPN’s exorbitant energy bills.

A woman with respiratory problems, who had an electrically-operated oxygen tank at home, ate cheap noodles every day to be able to afford her utility bill, Labour health spokesman Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said yesterday. (…) “There are people who are energy poor. I spoke to a woman from Cospicua last week. She needs an oxygen tank at home to live. She just about passes the means test, so she’s not entitled to the energy benefit. She told me she can only afford to eat noodles,” Ms Coleiro Preca said.

There is something surreal about this kind of presentation. It probably has a lot to do with Labour’s generally bungled way of public relations and transmission of information. You cannot help but wonder how comfortable Joseph Muscat, Anglu Farrugia and the other geezer from the triumvirate of oxymoronic progressives can be with having their mugshot plastered on the walls of Kazini under the ubiquitous torch like some latter day Stalinist cult. There under the pictures of the future saviours of the nation sat the survivors of a not too distant socialist government plugging the narrative of the “new poor” – les nouveaux pauvres.

Marie Louise Colerio Preca II was armed with stories of the quasi-poor who “just about pass their means test” (the rare kind of test one would rather fail) and therefore cannot claim any energy benefits. So the nouveaux pauvres are condemned to eating “cheap noodles”. Do they even realise what it is they are writing? Stop for a second and think. “Cheap noodles”. As against bloody what? Gourmet noodles? And why noodles? Does noodles sound poorer than pasta asciutta?

Cue the erstwhile troubador of great socialist lore Joe Debono Grech who, once the list of nouveaux pauvres esquisses was done, ” called on his party to reach out to people by teaching people about the history of the party that worked so hard to fight poverty”.

There is something plastic about all this. Which is not to say by far that the tough economic times have not hit the people where it hurts. It is not to say either that the noodle woman shares the same problems as, say, Times columnist Kenneth Zammit Tabona who recently also complained about the exorbitant figures that turn up on his utilities bill. It’s just that Labour seems to be willing a fantasy land of misery – a potemkin village in reverse. There under the watchful eyes of The Three Leaders Who Will Guide Us In The Battle Against Poverty, the stakhanovist socialists of yesteryear spun the narrative of les nouveaux pauvres creating the new oppressed who will need a new socialist, progressive spirit to lead them out of damnation.

Fgura election prospective candidate Charles Agius joins in with enthusiasm:

(he) said that during home visits he met families who had their electricity supply suspended because they did not pay the bill. They took their children to their neighbour’s house to use the computer.

See the concept of the bare essentials? Under a previous patch of “utility poverty” (still living memory for many) you would have said that following the latest water and electricity cut parents took to filling buckets of water from the sea and kids went to bed early in the dark. Nowadays the nouveaux pauvres first thought is where to get access to the closest working PC. Plus ca change.

This is not a post that denies the existence of hard up situations in our midst. It is a post that looks at the instrumentalisation of what might be desperate cases in order  to spin an opportunistic narrative with no solution in sight. Labour is doing its damned best to redefine the goalposts by creating this new social strata which we can define as the nouveaux pauvres. Forget the middle classes or the pepe – hamalli divide. The pigeon-holeing is now strictly concerned with the reclassification of the grumbling masses into a reversed potemkin village of nouveaux pauvres. It suits the whole narrative well enough so long as the gullible and partisan are the ones being targeted.

Still. Cheap noodles?

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11 replies on “Cheap noodles and les nouveaux pauvres”

What happened to kawlata being a food of the poor?

And what’s wrong with noodles? I used to live on them when I was studying for my finals (only 3 minutes to cook so I could cram more studying time)

What an obnoxious article! How dare you make fun of the less fortunate among us – you from your ivory tower in Luxembourg! I am no Labourite, believe me – couldn’t be further from that, actually – and I may not share MLCP’s political views, and yet I know how much she works for the poorest of the poor and frankly I have to tell you that in one day she makes a real difference in the lives of more people than you would ever hope to in your entire lifetime.

Perhaps it’s all the same to you, but if you hadn’t noticed, yes having access to a computer and the Internet has become a necessity, especially for children who’s academic and social lives are increasingly dependent on the web. To me it is not acceptable that even a single child is deprived of this resource because his parents cannot keep up with the bills. Neither is it acceptable that in his day and age people are forced into malnutrition because of said bills.

The current administration, while doing well in other areas, has neglected to take notice of the impending energy crisis when it would have made sense to do so. Adoption of alternative sources is still hopelessly inadequate, development of further energy capacity in the current power station unnecessarily shrouded in controversy, the interconnect cable project still pie in the sky with no clear milestones in sight yet.

Having an objective look at the whole picture of energy generation and consumption in Malta, it is easily seen that the situation couldn’t be much worse than it is – purely due to the lack of vision and the procrastination of the administration in this sector.

And ultimately who gets to foot the bill for this complacency? As usual the weaker members of society who have to make do with eating noodles every day, just to keep the lights on.

@Gakku
Kawlata, if you hadn’t noticed is not the food of the poor anymore, because making a good pot of kawlata will cost you a lot more than a supply of noodles. You ate noodles by choice – you would be blowing a very different trumpet if you found yourself having to eat noodles (or whatever) every day because you couldn’t afford anything else.

Oh please excuse me. I should have guessed you preferred the expensive “gourmet” brands.

“I am no Labourite believe me…”… I do I do I do…..

Lolol. If only you knew! Oh, and cheers for the stimulating debate, btw. Expected better than playschool comments. Ah well. So long then.

The mob mentality of a certain blog seems to be catching. If you can’t beat them, try to ridicule them ….

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