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J'accuse: Bad Romance (They've all gone Gaga for Xmas)

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This article and accompanying Bertoon were published on The Malta Independent on Sunday (20th December 2009).

The business of gifts is in full swing now as we approach the celebration of another saturnalia engulfed in the final, rushed and panicked search for presents. Have your shopping habits shifted to the net? Are you still running around from one shop to another in search of that final elusive gift that will definitely be to the liking of the receiver? Or do you, like Sheldon, subscribe to the theory that there is no such thing as giving “gifts” but rather the granting of “obligations”? Or, as he put it more concisely: “The essence of the custom is that I now have to go out and purchase for you a gift of commensurate value and representing the same perceived level of friendship as that represented by the gift you’ve given me. It’s no wonder suicide rates skyrocket this time of year.”

Well yes, Christmas is also about exchanging pleasantries and receiving those odd gifts that you will dispose of at the first opportunity. In politics it is a time of fraternal love and happiness – a welcome truce that allows the hardened men and women a deserved rest from the business of representation and government. A time in which to calmly share the spoils of the past year with party members and constituents without having to worry about anything more than who will be driving home tonight – unless of course you are a Nationalist MP.

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J'accuse: Worth

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My iPhone weather app predicted a bit of snow for Saturday. Due to my inability to break the laws of the space-time continuum, I am unable to tell you whether it did snow on Saturday or not because although by the time you read this article, Saturday will already have passed, it is still in the future for me at the time of writing. All I can say for now is that when I went to the shopping centre to allow myself to be conned by the con artist that is the framer of paintings, the weather still did not feel sufficiently crisp enough as to warrant any enthusiastic hope for the first falling of the flocons de neige.

The cosy, cuddly Yuletide feeling is already rather tangible for both pagans and believers alike and the snow would be the cherry on the cake (probably icing would be a more fitting vehicle for this metaphor) and a wonderful accompaniment to all the decorations that have sprung up around the Grand Duchy. The problem is though that the snow does not appear at our beck and call and it is highly likely that it will make its sudden grand appearance not over a weekend, when it can be most thoroughly enjoyed, but on a Monday morning – probably next Monday when most EU fonctionnaires will be striking away in order to get their additional 3.7 per cent.

EU employees will strike because of plans to derail the raise they were promised. They are striking because they believe that the worth of their salary is no longer what it was since life – and the cost of living it -– has increased and the fonctionnaires believe that they deserve a commensurate compensation. Be that as it may, such questions of worth tend to cause much discord at the discussion table, which is probably why the fonctionnaires have reached the point where they have to grasp the bull by its horns.

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J’accuse : Taste

This article and accompanying Bertoon appear in today’s edition of the Malta Independent on Sunday.

I type this article to the noises and sounds of the Carrer de Blai in the Poble Sec district of Barcelona as it wakes up to a new day. I’m renting an apartment for a few days in this bubbly multicultural city where paellas are served by Vietnamese waiters and blaugrana t-shirts are sold by persistent Indian shopkeepers. Thanks to one of Luxembourg’s rare national holidays I get a long weekend in a lovely Mediterranean environment with familiar sounds and smells (and mouth watering tastes). I may not have a deep enough pocket to visit El Bulli – the world’s best restaurant according to many – but I am determined to appease my taste buds with a few culinary expeditions… next stop the Mercat.

Of Familiarity and Contempt
The psychologist John Jost once noted that “many people who lived under feudalism, the Crusades, slavery, communism, apartheid, and the Taliban believed that their systems were imperfect but morally defensible and [even sometimes] better than the alternatives they could envision.” Psychologically we are much more likely to choose the familiar than the new unknown. This might be an adaptive trait we have received from our ancestors where creatures with a preference for the well known may have had more offspring than those with a fancy for the new. More than a case of “if it works then it ain’t needing fixing” this is more of a case of “if it’s in place then it must be working”.

Interestingly, conservative systems are best preserved when the individuals within that system possess a heightened need to manage uncertainty and threat. Individuals within that kind of system are more likely to opt for the known than the unknown, for the familiar than the potential change. Boy do some people know this. My brother has joined me on this Barcelona visit and so I got a rare chance to see the paid up adverts political parties have placed in our national newspapers. I was particularly humoured by the PN ad (yes it is a PN ad even though the maduma [marble] logo is hidden away in the bottom corner) that kicks off with the words “Oh,look. Here come Jason’s people”.

When I first saw those words I thought they reminded me of a particular style. Then it clicked. The nationalists have taken to copying Daphne’s style. Here I was being confronted by another example of cutting and pasting Stamperija style. It’s not just the introductory snipe at Jason Micallef though. It’s the wording of the whole ad. It’s a political ad mind you – as in an ad taken out by a political party that’s almost shy of its own logo – but it is about as politically engaging as a gossip magazine.

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