Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Greed is good… for some

Last week I had an impromptu chat with an old friend.

We go back to our childhood and our parents were friends way before we were even thought of. The subject of our natter was greed. My friend, let’s call him Ninu (after all it is his name) railed against the current trend, particularly here in Malta, to seek instant gratification and riches. Nobody wants to extol the virtues (if there are any) of grinding poverty, but there is a trend, particularly with many millennials, to want it all and to want it now. Ninu thinks it is all due to the political climate of the times. He feels that in the last 10 years the tendency to over-reward political cohorts and hangers-on has reached almost obscene proportions.

Ninu is much more politically aware than I am, so I must bow to his superior knowledge and experience of the local political situation. But even I have noticed the prevalent tendency to want more and more pecuniary gratification… and to want it today – or even better… yesterday!

I – and most of the rest of the population – has, I’m sure been aware of loads of generally young men – and a few young women – parading proprietarily around Valletta in ill-fitting grey suits, clutching briefcases and trying to look as though they belong... which they palpably do not. Mind you each one will drive a top-of-the-range BMW and eat out at a fashionable restaurant every night. Not one of them looks even vaguely competent, but most manage to affect a rather uncertain strut, that fails to convince even the most casual observer. These are the newbie gimmees; in all their somewhat tarnished glory.

A month or so back a friend and I were sipping a beer in a bar on the outskirts of our village. We were talking football and that perennial worry… the cost of living or rather existing. I have known this bar and its owner ever since he took it over about four years ago. Ryan is a guy in his late 20s, and very much a typical new Maltese millennial. There were about five other people drinking and chatting besides us two. After about 20 minutes an elderly English tourist couple entered and ordered drinks. The old man settled on a pint of lager, while his wife selected a soft drink. The cost should have been, at the very most… around €6. Ryan pretended to do a quick mental calculation, then asked the old guy for €10. The poor fellow looked a bit taken aback for a second or two, then paid up and joined his wife at a table nearby. I thought no, I can’t let this go… so I said to Ryan something to the effect of: “That’s a bit naughty gbin, they won’t be back you know.” He turned on me and practically spat out the justification: “I don’t bloody care. I want it now… today not forsi tomorrow; when I might get run over by a bus eh.”

What a sad, grasping little island this has become. These days I often hear the expression: “I am ashamed to say that I am Maltese.” That small altercation encapsulated one of those moments for me. I felt that I should apologise to the old couple and explain that not all of us are like that. But then I thought: No, that wouldn’t work because it’s obvious that nowadays we bloody well are, mostly, like that.