Money, not common sense, has prevailed

Here’s a bit of breaking news. Violence pays. Literally. And quite well, too... in fact, I am sure there are many out there, slogging at their underpaid jobs all day long, who would be surprised to learn that you can make a tidy EUR20,000 in just three days: by destabilising the entire country, making a mockery of law and order, obstructing traffic, assaulting passers-by... until the government is left with no option but to cough up almost a quarter of a million euros, just to get you to go back to work.

OK, let’s recap a little. Late on Tuesday, MaltaToday got to know that the Transport Ministry had offered the motor hearse association the sum of EUR60,000 to call off its strike.... which offer the hearse operators turned down.

When we reported this on Wednesday, the minister (reportedly) hit the roof. He wrote an aggrieved public letter to federation president Victor Spiteri, accusing him divulging details of their top-secret negotiations to the media. He privately accused this newspaper of “letting the side down”... by failing to limit our coverage only to those details which glorify Austin Gatt himself, and instead trying to reveal what was actually going on behind everybody’s backs. (Shocking dereliction of duty, I know). And while he never quite denied that an offer had been made, Gatt insisted all along that we got the actual figure wrong.

Well, that last part turns out to be absolutely spot-on. Boy, did we get it wrong. In actual fact it was almost four times the amount we reported on Wednesday: EUR230,000. And bearing in mind that there are only 11 operators in this sector, that works out at a tidy EUR20,000... each.

To put that into perspective: it is arguably more than the annual salary of a AFM lance bombadier – you know, the type who gets beaten up for trying to provide an emergency transport service, while bus drivers are busy storming Castille. It exceeds the annual salary of all but the highest paid press photographers, of the kind who had their cameras and equipment smashed by a bunch of thugs. And it simply pales into insignificance compared to the estimated hundreds of thousands of euros (some are saying millions) in losses suffered by various industries – EFL language schools, to name but one – affected by the week’s mayhem.

Anyhow: that’s how much it cost the State to get a bunch of bums back into the drivers’ seat. And in case we’ve all forgotten, these were the very bums who instigated all this chaos in the first place. But... oh, look: the same motor hearse drivers who led the cavalry charge on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, suddenly turn around on Thursday and condemn the violence that they themselves had encouraged from the start. Suddenly, they tearfully deplore all the damage to Malta’s international image and reputation... conveniently forgetting that it was largely done in solidarity with their own, unreasonable cause.

Amazing, what an instant difference EUR230,000 can make.

But the real question is: was it worth it? The answer depends on how you look at things. From the government’s point of view, I would say definitely. In fact, it’s a bargain: not only did the measly sum of EUR230,000 bring an end to an unsightly and expensive anarchy spree in one fell swoop... but it also effectively castrated the Transport Federation, forcing its president Victor Spiteri to sheepishly tell his 1,000-odd bus, taxi, minibus and brontosaurus drivers to go back to work with their tails between their legs.

Taxpayers, on the other hand, might see things somewhat differently. After all, it’s their money that’s being flung about by the bucketful. And it’s their deceased family-members who were slowly accumulating in the hospital morgue, while all this horse-trading (hearse-trading?) was going on.

But before taxpayers can make informed judgments about such matters, they have to know that their tax money is actually being spent. Which is probably why the government went to such lengths to try and hide this fact from view.

As for myself, I am curious to know why the government settled precisely on that figure. Considering that the deal was struck on the same day the motor hearse drivers lost (allow me to repeat that: LOST) their court battle for a prohibitory injunction – and that therefore the market was already liberalised, without or without any financial compensation – one wonders how a defeated lobby still had enough bargaining power to first refuse an offer of EUR60,000, and then settle for four times that amount.

By what logic was this at all possible? The answer is simple: by the convoluted logic of politics.

When all is said and done, what we saw last week was a classic example of what the Nationalist government has always done best: divide and rule. Had any new hearse licences been issued on Wednesday – as indeed they could have been, even if the new operators would have needed protection by the North Korean riot police – the “hearsemen of the Apocalypse” would almost certainly have stuck to their tenebrous claims, giving the Federation every opportunity to carry on with its national blackmail exercise for days, if not weeks.

If, on the other hand, the hearse drivers could be persuaded to betray their Federation and go back to work (not terribly difficult, with EUR20,000 generously slipped into his pocket), then the rest of the Neanderthal bunch suddenly have a problem on their paws: there is no tangible reason to carry on striking. And that, as far as Austin Gatt is concerned, is worth every centime of EUR230,000.

As for the precise amount, the official explanation claims it was calculated on: a) an estimate of the losses accumulated through loss of work, and; b) the amount the hearse drivers would have to invest in marketing, in order to cope with new competition.
Yes, folks, you read right. In these enlightened times, people who refuse to work have their self-inflicted losses compensated by the taxpayer... who also foots the bill for their purely commercial marketing initiatives. But what I haven’t understood is this. The moment the hearse drivers called off their strike, the 35-odd corpses in the hospital morgue could be – and in fact were – buried. So... why compensate the hearse drivers for their “losses”... when they haven’t actually suffered any?

Personally, I suspect the reason was another. While the Department of Information was busy trying to hide the pay-off from public view – by skilfully omitting any mention of it in the official press release, and strategically positioning the document itself at a mouse-click’s distance from the actual announcement – the boys in the finance ministry were likewise busy on their calculators, trying to work out exactly how much money they had saved in terms of bus drivers’ subsidies.

Let’s see now: on Monday it was announced that the subsidy would be cut by EUR60,000 per day, for as long as the strike lasted. By my count, that’s four days... and even an innumerate moron like myself can work this one out off the top of my head:

60,000 x 4 = 240,000.

What a coincidence. Only EUR10,000 short of the hearse drivers’ pay-off. And how remarkable, too, that the deal itself was struck late on Wednesday and announced early on Thursday... the fourth day, after which the bus drivers returned to work at 5.30am...

So back to my original question: was it all worth it in the end? Well, if the overall price of liberalisation is limited to EUR230,000, then the answer is most certainly yes. But then again, there were only 11 motor hearse operators to deal with. The entire public transport service may prove a little more expensive to bribe. The 200+ white taxi owners each hold a licence worth (or so the rumours go) hundreds of thousands of euros. There are over 500 licensed bus drivers, and all them own their own buses. I don’t know the precise situation regarding minibus drivers, but I do know one thing: any settlement with any or all of the above will cost a heck of a lot than a quarter mill.

But who cares? If hidden well enough, a secret sell-out will make Austin Gatt a very popular minister indeed... and that, of course, is why we all pay our taxes in the first place.


(This article appeared in MaltaToday 20 July 2008)

France admits to two nuclear accidents in two weeks...

...but goes ahead with Mediterranean nuclear expansion

French nuclear firm Areva admitted on Friday that two of its nuclear reactors in the south of France leaked radioactive material into the environment over the last two weeks, raising fresh doubts about the safety of nuclear technology, and the wisdom of its imminent proliferation in the Mediterranean.

Over the last year, the government of France has entered into agreements with Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco to provide these countries with nuclear technology “for peaceful purposes”. As a result nuclear reactors are set to mushroom around the southern Mediterranean littoral in the coming years.

The closest to Malta is likely to be on the coast of Libya or in Tunisia, both within a radius of a few hundred miles. Meanwhile, Italian justice minister Claudio Scajola is pressing to expand his country’s nuclear programme, while Egypt is understood to be seeking nuclear technology for a programme of its own.

But in the last 15 days alone there have been accidents in two separate nuclear reactors in the south of France. The first took place late on Monday 8 July, when the Tricastine nuclear facility in the Cote du Rhone region leaked some 30,000 cubic metres of a solution containing 12% enriched uranium into the surrounding land and two nearby rivers.

The French nuclear safety agency ASN downplayed the gravity of the incident, but residents of the vicinity were banned from bathing, drinking, and irrigating crops. Subsequent tests also showed that radiation in the groundwater may have resulted from even earlier leaks, prompting the French environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo to order tests in areas surrounding all the country’s nuclear power plants.

And on Friday 18 June, another French nuclear facility reported a leak of radioactive material, this time from an underground pipe at a nuclear plant in Romans-sur-Isere in the Drome region. Safety authorities said that the pipe, which transported liquid uranium, might have ruptured a number of years ago.

A spokesperson for the French embassy told MaltaToday that the nuclear-powered Libyan desalination plant, which will be administered by a French firm, will also be monitored by the European atomic agency, EURATOM.

Green Party spokesman on sustainable development, Carmel Cacopardo, this week said that an accident along the Libyan coast could affect us in a number of ways: “Contaminating seawater, which is the source of around 40% of Malta’s drinking water; additionally destroying what’s left of the fishing industry; and depending on the timing of such an accident, it could also deal a severe blow to Malta’s tourism.”

But as European environmental groups openly question France’s nuclear expansion policy, the government of Malta remains reluctant to seek reassurances from a friendly country that currently occupies the presidency of the European Union, and which has placed immigration – a chief cause for concern to Malta – on top of its agenda.

In the light the Maltese government’s silence on the issue, Green Party chairman Arnold Cassola is calling on Foreign Minister Tonio Borg to speak up.
“French President Sarkozy is selling nuclear technology all over the Mediterranean and the Middle East,” Cassola wrote in his blog on Friday. “Tonio Borg, where are you? Speak up now for the safety of Maltese people, please.”