It’s a blog. Not a professional newspaper. We “opinionate”, we rarely (if ever) “report”. We blogcomb and we recycle with an input of opinions. That is why when summer comes – the silly season – the blog tends to aestivate in its own way. Travels and trips and holidays mean that notwithstanding advanced technology that could allow us to blog from anywhere we prefer to lay back and recharge the mental battery. It’s not like the summer season helps much anyway. Not with the kind of news it tends to throw at us. Were it not for DimechGate this summer would have gone by without much of a squeak.
The becalmed waters of somniferous summer have now been whipped up into a veritable storm. We enjoyed the magnetic calm last week as we could feel the storm coming. From the rekindled divorce discourse, to the faith vs reason, to fireworks and local councils we are now once again pressed for blogging time. As the first rains of the wet season began to fall on the Grand Duchy this morning we thought of that calm moment before the storm – and Gary Oldman‘s “Stansfield” in the ’94 movie “Léon” came to mind:
Stansfield: I like these calm little moments before the storm. It reminds me of Beethoven. Can you hear it? It’s like when you put your head to the grass and you can hear the growin’ and you can hear the insects. Do you like Beethoven?
Malky: I couldn’t really say.
Apologies for the relative paucity of blogging but we have been affected by a rather irritating bout of the gastric. It was not nice and it has kept us away from the nicer side of blogging for over three days now. Just so you know, we are following the Great Divorce Debate at PN HQ with a rabid interest and are particularly intrigued (and vaguely suspicious) of Ranier’s speculation as to how PN will proceed with the gambit. Will the Gonzi clan really take the neither here nor there approach as advanced by Ranier as the final solution? Will they do their turn of “turiamoci il naso” and find a way to include the civil right while shoving a load of constitutional caveats in a slipshod manner? Short of doing a Re Baldovino (of the Belgian variety) it might be Gonzi’s way out to keeping his premiership period relatively Vatican approved.
Then there’s Minister Fenech’s spanking new document called pre-budget something in which we are told that the economy is shrinking and that one of the reasons (surprise, surprise) is that notwithstanding 20 odd years of nationalist direction we still have a relatively stupid population. By relatively stupid we mean that we still have an extremely high level of early school leavers. Which is not the best statistic to stand aside the glaringly obvious fact that our need to diversify the economy can only be satiated by improving on the quality of our workforce (and not the manual labour kind). Being competitive means also offering a relatively competitive wage system though at the same time the Blues at the Helm would love to tell us how our salaries have gradually approached EU27 averages over the past ten years (there’s a sweet straight line graph of steady growth somewhere in that document).
Surely the funniest pages in the doc must be the new buzzowrd of “creative works” or the monetarisation of creativity in order that it contribute towards the growth and happiness of this tiny nation. Find it and read how the government intends to become the champion of creativity (and don’t forget competitiveness). Correct me if I am wrong but if there is one place that is definitely an infertile ground for competitive development in the creative world (and pardon the heretical combination) then that is this tiny country of friends’ networks where the few IT and creative enterprises only exist because of a continued and sustained patronage from government contracts. Q.E.D.? I guess it’s more a case of tough shit.
Finally the image accompanying this post is my latest foray into the world of self-deprecation. It’s a tee I made with one of my favourite holiday images when I did my best impression of how I thought Adonis would pose (while floating on a boat near Comino). The captions read “MY BODY, MY TEMPLE” and “Our bodies are our gardens and our wills our gardeners – William Shakespeare. (My gardener sucks).” Who said Threadless tees are the only nice tees around? (this one’s from Vistaprint) I know, I know, it’s gym time for me… but at least I get some jest out of it.
P.S. Watch this video of the Sliema Council Meeting (take 2 – they found the keys and got the time right). You’ve got to love the eye contact that’s happening in the meeting. Video from Maltatoday.
I am not referring to Adam Sandler’s very pornographic parody of a song that is freely available on the net for anybody who is intelligent enough to search YouTube. I am referring, rather, to the very gradual unfolding of new posts on this blog. Believe me when I say that I have a 101 new subjects to post about and they vary from freedom of speech to constitutional discourse to sport to gadgetry and travel. What has happened of course is that having returned from ten days of gallivanting I have found a desk loaded with work and the little time I have to spare is spent obsessively following the unravelling of one of the best world cups in the last two decades. I know there are PR contracts to speak about, shameful re-marketing of poverty, church and state relations in the light of US court developments and more. It’s a shame really that such a gold mine that should be conducive to blogorrheic activity will go undiscovered for now. Unfortunately I have to pass on for a little more. In the meantime I take to bed with me the 82 page decision of the Maltese constitutional court. It’s my third and a half reading. Do bear with me before you get a nice long post about it all – from a new perspective I hope. And oh. Did I tell you? I bought a Macbook pro. We’re soon going to elope to Las Vegas and get married. Don’t tell my better half. She might get jealous. Over and out.t
Ten days (and a bit) out of action meant a good deal of recovery. By recovery I mean refocusing and redefining the perspectives. It helps to take a step back from the daily grind and there is no place like the US of A to hit you hard with the hammer of ginormous perspective. Heavy dinners, long long treks and an immersion into the hustle and bustle of the world’s great metropolis all served to recharge the J’accuse mental and physical batteries. Back on the island of milk, honey and power cuts we only had time to notice that MediaToday have a snazzy new portal for their main paper that promises to cut huge inroads on the Times monopoly of the online MSM fora. We like both the online version (well done Matthew) as well as the pay-per-view version of the paper from the stands. The theme for the next few months of summer posting will be “The Banana Republic” – viewed from a global, social networking scale and hopefully from outside the tiny box. Stuck (delayed) in JFK airport I browsed the bookstands at Barnes & Noble and I was sorely tempted to buy a copy of D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (screw the librarian and buy it now for 1.99)- if only to cook a snook at the imbecility I had left back at home. I opted not to – because some actions can be as useful as punching the wall when angry. Instead I bought an extremely engaging book called “Soccernomics” that has not let down my expectations until now. Yes we did visit an Apple store while in the Big Apple and I walked away without spending a penny. Discipline? Maybe. But I might be saving up for a bit of the iPhone OS4. I have not been brainwashed – only slightly readjusted the fulcrum of my mental perspectives. Which is why I cheered when Dempsey (of the 4-0 Fulham rout fame) scored the last minute goal for the US to pull through (ahead of the Old Enemy/Ally) and why I do believe there may be some truth in the American Dream.
Good night and good luck from j’accuse:thebananarepublic.
It’s not thanks to Delta Airlines but I’m back in Europe. Yes. Europe. There’s nothing better than a trip to the States to make “European” feel like more than a catchword. Where are you from? I’m European. That became my standard answer after giving up on explaining that Malta is not really that close to Papua New Guinea. (If you are wondering how it is that they know about Papua but not about Malta then join the club). I’m still sleeping off the jet lag after an extraordinarily long return trip (made long because we were “bumped” onto the next plane after some sorry excuse by the overbooking Delta guys – at least we got a first class upgrade for the hassle). “J’accuse – the banana republic” will be back by tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.
If you’re a shopowner and you’re reading this from your workplace while waiting for the first customers to walk into the shop on this public holiday then congrats for paying €700 for the right to display full confidence in the love of commerce of the average Maltese shopper. I wonder whether shopping centres such as Plaza, Bay Street or the Point get to pay €700 once for the whole establishment or whether each outlet in the centres has to pay individually.
If the pay once for a centre rule applies then I wonder if it would work for agglomerations of shops such as the one set up for shops in Republic Street. I’m still not convinced about all this fuss with shops opening on public holidays. As I have said before my only concern would be the employees – then again if replacements are found for Sundays and Public Holidays then blessed is the free market.
It’s the seventh june and there is not much to report from Luxembourg on this Maltese public holiday. Just a little note – I am ‘blaming’ our little post on Israel and Death in the Med for the sudden otherwise inexplicable hike in readership with over 2,500 readers per day for two consecutive days. Either that or Antoine Vella is desperate for reading material on the net given the partial demise of his pink read.
Blog readership is about to go into the notorious usual period of summer slump (probably exacerbated by the World Cup) – unless iphones and ipads at the beach give us a new surprise. Expect J’accuse to adapt accordingly.
Happy Sette Giugno to all you revellers out there…. and to Twanny V.
