Tag: Manuel Delia

Categories
Politics

See no evil

According to a news item that went viral over the weekend the Splash and Fun complex is full of shit. Actually to be more precise, tests have detected the presence of E Coli bacteria in the pool water at the popular summer resort. The news gets worse though. Apparently the Health Department tests and results took place early in August but uncharacteristically the resort was not shut down and remained open for business. Some wise guy must have thought that the balance between shutting the resort down during the busiest summer month and a few sick clients should definitely shift the business’ way. Meanwhile the resort has issued a denial of the contamination report. The shit has only just hit the slides…

Denial aside there is a feeling of complacency that was best summed up in a recent Times editorial (was it Sunday?) entitled “Anything Goes”. The silly season is no longer an excuse, what with the rumblings and showers of early September. A Labour government elected on the Taghna Lkoll mantra has been in power for six months and has proceeded to ride roughshod over any semblance of promise that might have conned even the most lukewarm of supporters.

The Great Libya Deal is the latest in a long line of jaw-dropping charades that could only have been fed upon an audience still high on the (false) 36,000 rush. First we had a deal that was greater than any other trumpeted ad urbi et orbi. What the nationalists did not do in 25 years we did in 6 months. Now it transpires that the “deal” is nothing more than a memorandum of understanding based on the hope that the government with whom the deal was made will actually be in control of the oil that was promised at preferential prices to the Taghna Lkoll Gang. Or so they tell us. Joseph tells us that the oil is there, it is only a matter of crossing our fingers that the right people get their hands upon it. Which is actually a complete new definition of hedging (more like betting really) and speaks volumes about the diplomatic acumen of this government.

(A small aside for those silent mice at the pre-coffee shop at Dar Centrali – what the hell was all that applauding the deal for? The PN will be the subject of another post soon enough but please… wake up. )

The Libya deal was not enough though. We also had MEPA accepting some kind of extension for the use of HEAVY FUEL OIL at Delimara. Yep. This government that had promised black on white to end the use of damaging heavy fuel oil is actually going ahead with an increase in our capacity to use it. A promise is to Joseph Muscat as an open bottle of ether, there one minute – gone in the air the next. I wonder what ever happened to those people who went on about “Jiena nemmen f’Joseph ghax hu jemmen fiha”. A yes, they got a place on a board.

Still. Many are those who are still prepared to applaud this government and its shenanigans. Their counter that “these are always better than the previous lot” gets weaker by the minute. So long as we get a bit of the iced bun (copyright the runs), a discount here and a board member there… then it’s all par for the course. The evil they saw everywhere just up to the last election seems to have magically vanished simply because everything is sold to them with a taghnalkoll wrapper.

As for the nationalist party. What they need is defibrillators, life support machines and the like. Still, their heritage runs deep too… Manuel Delia must have been so happy to read the latest bit of Arriva news. €35 million loss. Flimkien kollox possibbli.

Palla lunga e pedalare.

See also: Jurgen Balzan on the subject of Oily Deals, Michael Briguglio on the subject of how the whole liberal facade was a lie, Arriva’s 35 million losses.

Categories
Campaign 2013

Not Simon Busuttil

Much is being made by the nationalist party and its faithful supporters about the goodwill that the election of Simon Busuttil to vice-leader has brought about. We have heard plenty of words about the change that Simon is supposed to bring about to the nationalist party – presumably the same mistakes of the past will not be committed again, particularly in the arrogance department. Presumably (again) the nationalist party will take care before fielding candidates whose ego will barely fit in one seat of our hallowed chambers in parliament.

With these thoughts in mind I found this video doing the rounds on social networks rather intriguing. It’s a perfect picture of “old vs new” – hosted on a labour station of course – a clear effort to expose the warts (past and future) that the PN carries. And they seem to have been quite successful in doing so (forget the title chosen by the uploader – I don’t think any one of the two egos was comfortable here).

I wonder what Simon makes of this (witt rispekt).

 

Categories
Campaign 2013

Digital Lies

Only yesterday Austin Gatt and two of his sidekicks were busy presenting a White Paper that was almost being hailed as a quantum leap in the state of digital rights on the island. Essentially Gatt, IT Claudio and Arriva Delia were promoting a suggested new constitutional provision that would enshrine the digital rights of every Maltese citizen – the digital right amendment. Kudos to all this sci-fi and all that but J’accuse’s feet remain firmly entrenched in the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach to legislation and we will not be easily impressed by the special effects of a proposed provision.

Not too far from the realm of digital rights is the issue of data and its protection. We do not need new rights to be enacted for that – we already have a snazzy Data Protection Act. The basic principles of this act are quite easy to grasp. Consider first of all that data is any information related to an identified or identifiable person. You then have the principle that in order to gather “data” that is yours or that identifies you, the potential gatherer (or “controller”) requires your permission. Once he has obtained that permission he can only use it for a specific purpose and for that purpose only.

Why am I saying all this? Well. Here’s the thing. I decided that it is high time I should log onto mychoice.pn and subscribe to updates so that I would be able to analyse what everyone else seems to be receiving. I proceeded to the lovely page and was asked to register. I gave the page my real name and my real surname as well as my email address (there’s always the spam folder). I did not wish to give the PN a remote chance of having my mobile number so I input what I believed to be a credible but phoney mobile number. No probs there.

Then came the ID Card business. I figured that if I subtract one from the progressive number allocated to me when I was registered I would come up with a credible ID card – not mine but credible enough… so if for example my ID was 500075 – the 5000th registered kid in 1975 then all I had to do was input 499975 and hey presto mychoice.pn would let me in.

Let me in my digital rights arse! Imagine my surprise when the validation system on mychoice.pn told informed me that the ID card number input does not match the name or surname provided. Wow. Let’s see what happened there. Essentially the ID number was checked against a database that mychoice.pn OBVIOUSLY has and the validation process checks whether the ID card corresponds to the right name and surname. Lovely. I was never asked by the site whether I acquiesced to the use of my ID number and name (the only box to be ticked is the one were you accept to recieve PBO’s updates). So mychoice.pn is in possession of a database (little need to guess that they are using the electoral register) that contains MY INFORMATION and are actively using it for data processing WITHOUT MY CONSENT. Without your consent either.

So what? I hear you say. Don’t we all know that political parties regularly use the electoral register in their day to day meddling. Sure. But they are definitely going out on a limb here and stretching the rubbish exception that they planted in the Data Protection Act to an incredible extreme. In any case, whether or not they manage to find some loophole to the Data Protection Act in this case what does this really say about the ever so grand initiative of DIGITAL RIGHTS and the white paper?

You’re right. Digital rights? They don’t give a rat’s arse. So much for all the high falutin’ consultation process.