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samedi, août 19, 2006

Wake Up and Smell the Budget Airlines


The Brand Managers of Malta are busy teaching the peasants and general populace all about the Wedding Cake Metaphor. The campaign stresses on why our country needs to have good quality to be sold. While this commendable but probably useless exercise in cheap upgrading (except for the printing costs of all the Brand Malta campaign) goes on, the gatekeepers to the brand itself are sitting put. Prices to fly in and out of Branded Malta are becoming more and more ridiculous.

We now have the news from a British survey that Tourist Packages to Malta from Britain will rank third costliest in the Med. Only two countries have more costly packages - Brand Cyprus and Brand Egypt. Wunderbar. The average package to Malta will cost an English tourist 771 euros while the same tourist can choose between a trip to Spain (709), Portugal (712) or Greece (725). So while we are being implicitly told by the government that unless we clean up OUR act we will not be getting any more money dropping tourists, we have the government's taxes and obstinacy blocking the way forward anyway.

The writing has become so clear on the wall that I cannot believe that the Nationalist government has not worked out the math, physics and algebra involved to see that Budget Airlines could only benefit Malta. No. My suspicion is different. I suspect that the PN electoral geniuses know full well the positive morale boosting effects of more travel. So the great plan will probably be that in parallel with that great joke of the Tax Cuts (remember - giving back money which should never ave been collected) we will also get the great present of Low Cost Airlines... just in time to ensure that the good mood oozing out of our latest holiday in Sardinia costing Lm40 will stun us into voting PN into government. Introducing low cost, tax free flying seven months before the election would be PN's equivalent of Labour's mass enrolments in the government and parastatal areas in the eighties. After all the new century does require a modicum of sophistication.

And what continues to irk me is the number of people I meet who prefer the "lesser of two evils" option rather than sending out a concrete message and choosing a third way. How can you keep voting MLPN when you get your legs pulled daily by the two parties? How can you vote for the fake philantropists at PN or the mindless wanderers at MLP who would assumedly look to Praxiteles to come up with a sculpted tourism plan.

A change in the way of government? ... tista' tkun int!

2 commentaires:

Fausto Majistral a dit…

And what continues to irk me is the number of people I meet who prefer the "lesser of two evils" option rather than sending out a concrete message and choosing a third way. How can you keep voting MLPN when you get your legs pulled daily by the two parties?

Unwittingly, this must be the best argument you've ever made for voting for the Greens (why don't you mention them by name?): if one of your legs is being pulled by the Nationalists and the other is being pulled by Labour then you can be assured that there's no leg left for the Greens to pull.

Congratulations.

gybexi a dit…

This is something yoy obviously feel very strongly about, so why not do something MORE about it - why not set up a pressure group? Even a website would be useful.

Our politicians will play the waiting game unless somebody disturbs their slumber. The maltese social/political scene is characterised by a gush of excitement over an argument or theme which will eventually die out after a few weeks/months. All our politicians have to do is stay schtum and the thing will finally die out... after a few months it'll be old hat and no one will ever mention it again. what you need is someone annoying and insistent who keeps bringing the subject up every few weeks.... we need to ANNOY our representatives out of their collective inertia. Over to you :p

Jekk ghandek bzonn nghinek jien ukoll (I'm working on something similar - a dossier highlighting a few implementable solutions to malta's pulic transport problem[s]).

Ejja Gwakkin! Tal-blogosfera warajk!