"This is my dream"

I am aware of the fact that this blog was meant to be devoted to London and how my times in the city are unfolding. However, I broke this continuity in the last post since I referred to my last visit to Malta and described most of the events which took place over last weekend. I am afraid I am going to proceed with yet another post which is more or less Malta-specific but which I cannot help not writing about: the Eurovision song festival.

For the past couple of years (I could almost safely say "decades"), the Eurovision is the highlight of Malta's cultural calendar. There are 101 issues which need to be tackled in Malta from various aspects of life: social, economic, political (I will illustrate just one aspect later on)...but around the beginning of February, the country pauses all its operations in order for it to hold a Song for Europe festival. This usually features the same couple of singers singing songs written by the same couple of songwriters - a totally predictable affair of Mr.X singing a ballad-type song, Mrs.Y singing a pop-style song and so on and so forth. This year, the winning song was a ballad (surprise, surprise) and was won by a newcomer to the local music scene. Hundreds of minutes worth of airtime on all TV channels followed, discussing the song, the video, the dress, the singer's likes and dislikes and other such stupid waste of time devoted to these futile matters rather than discussing more useful matters relevant to the country's well-being. And all this built up a momentum up to May, when the real festival takes place.

Since last year Malta failed miserably in securing a decent placing, this year's song had to first qualify through a semi-final night and then be "promoted" to the final night. And, yet again, the country came to a standstill on Tuesday night when the semi-final took place. Unless you are Maltese, you might not know that Malta failed to qualify. I predict that once this poor lass returns back to the rock, another limitless array of TV discussions, analysis, debates and intellectual efforts consumed in trying to decipher why Malta failed to qualify will follow. My opinion about all this: stop this nonsense once and for all! Stop participating in this damn festival and set up our own annual music festival, in the same way the Italians have done with San Remo years ago. I can find a thousand reasons why we should not take part in this Eurovision anymore but will illustrate myself with one: financial.

Let me start off my argument with a set of case studies from the local context and which prove that one should not talk of absolute numbers but rather in terms of relativity (do not worry, dear reader, this is not a discussion of Einstein's theory of relativity).

For almost 20 years, the Maltese have been constructing a new general hospital which turned out to be a subject of controversy and debate but which finally was completed a year or 2 ago and is now one of the largest medical complexes in Europe. This monster of a project costs the Maltese tax payers about 2,300,000 Euro each week to run. This works out to be almost 300 Euro per minute (there is a specific reason why I am working out the cost per minute). Considering that this is a noble cause which provides such a service to the population, then I can safely conclude that it is money well spent.

Next, the Pope's visit to Malta last month. This visit of just 26 hours cost the Maltese tax payer 750,000 Euro. The 750,000 figure might be much less than the 2,300,000 I mentioned before but this blessed visit (pun intended!) works out at 480 Euro per minute. I will not even dare mentioning whether this was money well spent or not for I do not want to risk being banned from Malta for life, but let us say that the Pope's visit was of spiritual benefit for Malta and also "promotion" of the island on BBC and CNN (although this was more due to the famous Luqa phallus rather than Ratzinger himself). So far, so good.

Now comes the bombshell. Malta's participation in the Eurovision (or rather, attempted participation) cost us dear Maltese 400,000 Euro. This is almost 50% of the last figure but considering that there is a rule which states that Eurovision songs must not exceed 3 minutes, then this works out at 133,333 Euro per minute (thus this explains why I was considering cost/minute). Need I say more? The damn Eurovision costs Malta more than it costs to run its new state-of-the-art general hospital! It might be the smallest costs of these 3 case studies I chose, but it is by far the most expensive! Malta, wake up!

And considering the fact that Malta has a national debt of 4,000,000,000 Euro (in case you got confused with the many zeros, that is 4 billion), or almost 10,000 Euro per Maltese citizen, I am sure that we can find better things to do with 400,000 Euro each year rather than spending it on a festival which is nothing more than a political lobbying exercise disguised by some scantily clad singers singing crap songs to s****y tunes.

I am not a visionary like Martin Luther King, who had a very noble dream ages ago of a world where racism does not exist. I am not Malta's 2010 Eurovision singer with a song entitled This is my dream, which dream turned out to be a nightmare. I am just an ordinary Maltese citizen who has a very simple dream: the day when Malta bans Eurovision for good! Am I asking too much?