Thursday 28 March 2024

The War of the Tablets

Above montage courtesy of Bertoons

It was bad enough last night listening to Clyde Puli practically taking credit for Apple products (“in the past under Labour all we had were people driving an Escort Mark I …now we have the iPhone and the iPad!”).

But this morning’s war of the tablets has really seen this unnecessarily long campaign reaching new levels of absurdity.

First Muscat announces that all Year 4 students will be given a free computer tablet and then just as the guffaws and sniggers reached a crescendo on the Internet, Gonzi trumps him by announcing free computer tablets for all students and teachers across the board.

Statuses were hurriedly deleted as PN supporters had to re-adjust their thinking on how to react to this unexpected announcement. (“Hmmm, can I get away with ridiculing Labour but then praising the PN on the same exact proposal without anyone noticing?”)

It is ridiculous to see the two political parties acting like this is a game of poker, raising the stakes as they try to outwit each other on who can promise more to the voters.

Free this, free that, more money for stipends, more money for everyone and everything it seems, but the question is, how is all this going to be possible?  No one is really telling us how they are going to balance the books and reduce the ever growing deficit. Have we struck oil and I missed it?

Recently I read an article about people who are heavily in debt, and whose only way of coping is to go into denial. Rather than cutting back, they live for the moment and go even further into debt by applying for more credit cards with different loan companies until one day it catches up with them, and they have to declare bankruptcy.  When I hear politicians assuring us that all these freebies they are promising are sustainable, I am reminded of this kind of mindset.

Rather than all these pie-in-the-sky promises, I would much prefer a hefty dose of realism, but maybe that’s just me. I know there are people who are perfectly capable of living their lives with debt up to their eyeballs, ignoring their true financial situation as long as they can live “the good life”.

Until one day the bubble bursts.

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