Both the pro- and anti-divorce movements are in favour of marriage. The pro-divorce movement has announced its logo. It’s negatively atrocious – and sends out all forms of wrong signals. The only positive was the emphasis that even a pro-divorce movement is in favour of strong marriages. We’re all set for the Grand Debate of 2011 in Malta: Divorce pro or con?
All that is left is to understand whether it will be a referendum, a law, none or both that will represent the culmination point of this latest chance to take sides. Don’t know why but with the announcement of the logo for the pro-divorce movement I could only think of this song as interpreted by Johnny Cash.
Addendum: I remembered why. It’s the Maltese phrase “Kullhadd ghandu alla tieghu” (Everyone’s got his own god). Très Depeche Mode. Let’s all reach out touch faith.
Come to think of it even this version is very apt:
This photo has been making the rounds on Facebook and email. It is a snapshot of a particular corner of Paceville circa 1982. It’s an incredible photo that threw me back to my childhood. I was a seven year old Pacevillian there and Paul’s Punch Bowl was the place that served great pizza’s (if I remember well it was the calzone that rocked). The restaurant grew and grew – as did the rest of Paceville – and would soon incorporate one of the first nightclubs and gamesroom in that road: the Ace of Clubs.
At this time Paceville was not so much the hedonist den of sin that we know today. Opposite the Punch Bowl you can see a the house with the green door. I remember the people who lived in that house. I remember the fruit and veg man who would sell his wares right beside that wall. This was a Paceville that had lost its residents from the forces (Mintoff, remember?) and had gradually surrendered large parts of its terrain to a Libyan community of sorts that used to terrorise the likes of myself and my brother on our errands to the Queen’s and London stores (Ball and Paceville Streets respectively).
You could still stroll through the back parts of the Hilton and enjoy public land all the way to the sea. Saint George’s Bay was a rough gap between the new buildings on the Dragonara promontory and the Sunday football paradise that was the area just below Pembroke. You could count the shops on Saint George’s Road between Wembley and Paul’s Punch Bowl on one hand. There was Bonello Store (grocer – now a kitsch jewellery shop next to Maxims) and there was the Scotsman. I’m not sure whether Peppermint Bar existed as yet. My memory fails me on that account.
Back to the photo. The snapshot is taken from a position that would place the photographer close to the steps of what is now Burger King (corner of Saint George’s and Wilga) – to be more exact it is probably taken from just outside what used to be the Gelateria Lungomare. Paul’s Punch Bowl is now mainly Stiletto’s (until some time ago Rock Cafe). The white wall is now Plush and I am not sure what the vegetable vendor would make of all the shishas though I am sure the Libyans of Ball Street would not have minded.
Paceville 1982Photo Probably taken from far right of this imagerockCafe - before the gentlemen came
I cannot remember which article I was reading. It must have been the one about the new California Governor who will succeed Schwarzenegger. Apparently he was already governor 36 years ago. That’s a long time ago isn’t it? By my calculation it is one year over my whole lifespan. But that is not the first calculation that comes to mind. It’s just that – the calculation we automatically make when we read the phrase “years ago”. Somehow in my mind there is an automatic conversion system that still plants the phrase “30 years ago” firmly between the 50s and 60s.
I noticed this phenomenon when I actually tried to calculate the last time when Brown (Arnie‘s replacement) was actually Governor. It turns out that 36 years ago is 1974 (obviously – since I was born in 1975 – vide supra). What jarred was that my original “calculation” as I skimmed through the article placed Brown firmly in the Kennedy era. The minds’ automatic association for the phrase “35 years ago” is circa 1960. Ditto for “25 years ago” circa 1970) and a little less for closer approximations.
I wonder whether this happens to anyone else. Do you associate specific phrases with specific dates or is it just my brain being lazy?
P.S. Turns out that the article I read might have actually been wrong about how long ago Brown was governor. But that is not really the point here is it.
A great report on MaltaToday about the work of CABS monitors in the Maltese countryside merits as much attention as possible. Private individuals attempt to fill the administrative lacunae and shortcomings by providing valuable assistance to the ALE officers. “Raphael Vassallo spends an afternoon with BirdLife and CABS monitors in the Maltese countryside looking for that very elusive of species: poachers.” (MaltaToday)
Fausto wonders why I am fascinated by the internal workings of a party I (presumably) don’t vote for and of which I am not a member. Pedants like Majistral have a habit of acting extremely naive in such circumstances and ignoring the basic fact that a political party and its mechanisms are fair game for political punditry whether or not one favours them – which is why J’accuse took as much of an interest in the Labour leadership developments as it does in the paradoxical convolutions of PN Executive Committee conclaves. Even worse than the naiveté on the matter of scrutiny of party works is the apparent surprise with which Fausto greeted the link between a budget document and social policies of a government. Of course a budget is not a do or die element in whether or not we get our divorce law but we all know how the strings of the treasury are often used in order to incentivise the strengthening of social units such as for example the family. Compartmentalising budget talk (ideas, vision, discussion) from other principled talk would mean accepting a party of ambivalences. A party has to be able to stand up and be judged for the totality of its actions – including statements thrown in to pep up its budget act.
Which is where Marthese Portelli comes in. This is yet another “politician” caught in the trawler net of “anything goes” by the party proletariat at the time of elections and which tends to hang on afterwards having mistaken the opportunistic gambit made by the schemers at Dar Centrali as some sort of faith in her political nous. Sadly multiplying votes in the Gozo district (or any other district for that matter) does not automatically transfrom a “mother and lawyer” (as Marthese reminds us in her leaflets and PR) into a politician. Having enjoyed the electoral limelight and reaped some reward for running on the ticket of one of the two parties that tend to get votes (most PLPN candidates would fare hopelessly were they to run on an AD ticket – it’s not the person, it’s the party that gets the vote and up yours Mr Constitution) Portelli starts to think like many others of her ilk – she believes that whatever she pens down counts – whether it makes sense or not.
For some reason I cannot fathom, the Indy seems to have a new love affair with Portelli. Last week Stephen Calleja gave us an example of investigative journalism at its Lou Bondi best (smell the irony). A one page interview that told us absolutely nothing about Portelli apart from the fact that even though she has moved to Saint Helen’s parish she is still in love with the people who voted for her and has come up with an idea – Jobs for the Boys and Girls in Gozo. Gee that’s new. How come nobody came up with that one before. Eager to carry on the spin Portelli has an article of her own this week. 569 words about the new Belgian Presidencyof the EU. Which would have been spiffing. Had there been one inkling of original thought in it that is. Instead it turns out that a one liner link to this document called the “Programme of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council” would have saved Marthese lots of cutting and pasting and the Indy some valuable column space.
Marthese Portelli is currently President of the PN Executive and chairs the meetings of the conclave discussing divorce.
Image via Wikipedia
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Last Saturday, the day before MaltaToday splashed his holiday on Nazzareno Vassallo’s superyacht all over its front page I happened to meet Paul Borg Olivier at Ghadira Bay. In our short conversation Paul could not resist a jibe at my ever growing waistline by putting it down to my incessant blogging at the computer. I wish I could have snapped a shot of the look of disgust as he mimed me typing away at the computer. It only stands to reason. Nationalists must not have such a big love affair with computers. It all started with the infamous story of Austin Gatt destroying a PC as the results of the 1996 elections came out and went on all the way to PBO’s gaffes of pressing the wrong buttons and David Casa and Marthese Portelli still not realising that cut and paste is not such a sly move in today’s computing world.
