The Google Translate app (for both Android and iOS) is a thing of beauty. It works just like some instrument out of Star Trek. You can point your camera at any sign and it will instantly translate it into your language of choice. The guys at Google will be hard pressed though to work on something similar that could translate Government-Speak. The Taghna Lkoll government has done it again. After Joe Mizzi’s unfortunate statement with regards to the traffic congestion situation in Malta (It’s not traffic, just perception) we now have Muscat’s government telling us that the fact that people are buying more cars means that everyone is happy with the current fuel prices.
This comes at a time when the Nationalist Party has upped the ante on the issue. In fact the PN has just launched a new site www.dieselupetrol.com that purportedly calculates how much more expensive the Taghna Lkoll fuel is than on the continent. Progressive and liberal Muscat went into counter-measure mode. First of all anybody trying to access the dieselupetrol.com from within any of the MITA government network would find a blocked page – the government censors having decided that it qualifies as spam. Just days after Muscat flew to gay Paris to march chin first among the #JeSuisCharlie and to remind the world that his government stands shoulder to shoulder with the champions of freedom of expression, his own government engages in a bit of Chinese Sourcery… shutting down access to a website that criticises it.
That is not enough though. Muscat still does not control the whole interwebs so he has to send out other feelers to the ever grateful minions wallowing in his paradise world of promises and taghnalkollisms. So now Muscat has told everyone that if they really were not happy with fuel prices then they would not be buying cars. It’s not Marie Antoinette’s fabled “let them eat cake” but a twist on that theme. If they really did not like paying for fuel then they could walk. What idiots they are. Why are they buying cars if they cannot afford to pay the fuel? they must like the price of fuel then, no?
Why indeed Joseph. They should be catching the bus now shouldn’t they? At least in that case they would be oblivious to the fact that, even though the new scheme claims to be cheaper for the commuter, in the long run it is actually the taxpayer’s pockets that are needed to fork out the multi-million increase in subsidy that will be swallowed by the Autobus de Leon.
Joseph Muscat is safe in the knowledge that the polls show that he still has the minions in thrall. They will thank him for the bills with which he is burdening the nation. Some will naively say that the economy is still doing good and that is why the minions like him. Fools that they are they swoon supportingly at every word of GovernmentSpeak.
“There is no truth. There is only perception” – Gustave Flaubert.
