Category: Uncategorized

Generation Y’s latest treasure is Twitter. It is the crossover meeting point of social networking (facebook), blogging (wordpress), photo-sharing (picasa) and basic net presence (myspace). Twitter is the closest we have as yet to becoming one with your avatar – your net persona. Through Twitter other people can tell what you are doing at any given point in time. Its mandatory word limit of 150 words makes Twitter an extraordinarily concise method of communication.

You practically send out an SMS to the world. A message in a bottle. It could contain a snapshot. It could be an opinion. It could be a TinyURL (which is a condensed version of a full internet address). Whatever it is it takes less than a minute to fill and send a “Tweet” and add to the general buzz.

Among the significant terminology used for Tweeting (you guessed it.. it’s using Twitter) we find “followers”. Followers are persons who chose to follow your updates regularly. This is Warhol’s minutes of fame from a new perspective. As you build up a follower-ship you become “popular” in your own little world and before you know it over 500 people know that you were stuck in an elevator with four other people.

Twitter has even made it to breaking news. The Hudson River landing was first reported by a Twitterer who happened to be on one of the Hudson ferries.

It’s a little step forward (?) in the evolution of how we establish our presence on the net. For now it is a ragingly popular medium preferred by journalists, VIPs, wannabe VIPs and politicians (some categories might overlap). I’ve tried it. It’s awkward and hard to keep up to date. But don’t miss the Twitter from Generation Y.

The government is down on its knees. Well not really it isn’t. It’s just a metaphorical way of seeing the government’s whole-hearted appeal to shopkeepers to collaborate in the implementation of the eco-contribution on plastic carrier bags.

The Independent had investigated the situation in Valletta on Monday and found that Valletta hawkers were prepared to absorb the €0.15 contribution.  Another article in the Malta Independent yesterday found that shopkeepers were preferring handle-less plastic bags because these were not included in the eco-contribution scheme. Rather than forcing customers to pay an extra €0.15 and give them a fiscal receipt for the trouble, shopkeepers chose to circumvent the tax by handing out free plastic bags without handles.

So the Times reported that the government (note that when something is not working it is not the Minister but the anonymous Ministry that speaks) is appealing for people to pull the same (presumably eco-friendly hemp) rope. The VAT department even went so far as to say that there are sanctions for those breaching the law – which in the case of people giving out handle-less bags is tantamount to telling someone who is peacefully walking on the Sliema front that there are sanctions for the possession of illegal drugs.

Of course we all want to find ways not to harm the environment and this incidence only proves that a better education campaign needs to be put in place to prop up these sanctions. Educating the people about the environment through punishment or fiscal sanctions can be counterproductive. The measure is in the people’s interest. Less fiscality and more common sense might help.

And as a footnote… don’t you find it pathetic when the Times refers to the Independent as “a newspaper” as though we have three million papers nowadays? It’s not only blogs that suffer from the egoistic syndrome I guess.

Fausto thinks that J’accuse (and it’s cartoonist) are busy pulling bunnies out of their respective hats (Bunnies out of a hat). In reply to our Sunday digest (J’accuse: What Lies Beneath), Fausto asserts that we have been up to some tricks of our own. His apologia pro the Nationalist Party is based on a number of tricks of Fausto’s own. Let’s see:

1. JPO and the Nationalist Party in March 2008

Fausto’s line on this point has been the same for quite a while. The PN could not have predicted that it has a loose cannon on its hands and was unaware of his misleading the whole works at the party just before the election. Well it does not seem to be so. Judging by what Joe Saliba had to say about having to regrettably back JPO in the run up to the election, the PN is not entirely clean of involvement in turning JPO into a viable electoral horse. Whether votes were lost or won following the judgement call to back JPO and his crocodile tears in the last weeks of electoral campaigning is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the PN chose to share the bed with JPO for convenience’s sake. An admission that Sant’s accusations were spot on was inconceivable… tanto vale backing JPO in all his dwarf (or muse) versions.

From that judgement call onwards, the nationalist party could only distance itself from the potential loose cannon by doing so in an official way. True he’d still be in Parliament but at least PN followers (and others) could tell whether a position was that of a loose cannon or official party line. If only Fausto stopped letting himself be fooled by the magic trick he’d see it bright and clear. Instead he keeps waiting for the bunny to pop out of the hat.

Granted, you cannot blame Joe Saliba for being sly but then you cannot act stupid and claim that the PN did not readily dip its fingers in the pie and should not now bear the consequences of being associated with the loose cannon.

2. Vince and the Rest

The other loose cannon by Fausto’s own admission is Vince Farrugia. Here we see another bit of skewed reasoning. BECAUSE he is a loose cannon we are therefore not allowed to place him within the twisted reasoning that seems to accept that the PN is a mult-purpose, multi-value bandwagon kind of party. Vince Farrugia is opportunist so we should close an eye. Damn right we won’t! Who is accepting Vince Farrugia the opportunist within its own ranks as a candidate? Is it not the Nationalist Party? Are we therefore not justified in criticising the PN of being a tad too opportunistic and unscrupled in the assembly of its own Motley Crue of candidates?

Methinks not. Either that our bunnies are turning into crazy March Hares.

March Hare: …Then you should say what you mean.
Alice: I do; at least – at least I mean what I say — that’s the same thing, you know.
Hatter: Not the same thing a bit! Why, you might just as well say that, ‘I see what I eat’ is the same as ‘I eat what I see’!
March Hare: You might just as well say, that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!
The Dormouse: You might just as well say, that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!

The GRTU said today that Vince Farrugia, a PN candidate for the European Parliament elections, would stay on as its director-general but would not speak on its behalf until the elections were held on June 6.

Which means what exactly? That should Vince Farrugia not get elected on June 6th he would then revert to being neutral Vince and be able to represent the interests of his union as best he can? Not that we were worried that Vince could not guarantee sniffing which way the best wind is blowing – given his comments to di-ve.com the other day. The GRTU is content with the fact that its staff were used to working while Vince is away so this short absence while VF jumps on the PN bandwagon won’t affect them much.

Meanwhile, back in Bruxelles, Simon Busuttil has been appointed spokesperson on the EU Asylum Support Office for the EPP. This means that Simon will be representing the EPP when the new EU legislation on the EU Asylum Support Office is drafted. Well done for Simon. Simon forgot to take heed of RMTT’s warnings of not exporting partisan quabbles to EP matters and could not resist a swipe at Joseph Muscat on the matter:

“….this proposal is not a Socialist discovery as Dr Muscat would have us believe. It is an EU initiative that goes back to the Hague Programme in 2004. So, as usual, the Labour Party is trying to steal credit for other people’s ideas. Secondly, three years ago I supported a budget amendment proposed by Louis Grech on this office, even if plans were still vague because the matter was still being studied by the Commission. My support was also reported in the media; so it is incredible that the PL should now claim that I did not support Mr Grech.”

The language is a bit sorry for someone accusing another party of “trying to steal credit”. It’s not Labour’s idea, no doubt about it… but doesn’t Simon leave you with the lingering doubt that he tries to imply that it was his own (or his party’s)? Don’t worry… it wasn’t either. It’s an EU initiative. It is only now, that we are in the run up for an EP election campaign that both PN and PL are busy claiming fatherh0od of such ideas.

While our parties bicker on issues under the general subject of “Who’s Your Daddy”, the East-West divide that had healed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Iron Curtain has revived following last weekend’s debacle on what kind of aid is necessary. Hungary seems to be the main spokesperson for the floundering East European states as the EU faces the first real challenge to its foundaitons.