Natural Bore

The prospect of it hovered above loyal Times readers' heads like a ghastly dread, and after an extended period of restraint Jo-jo Mifsud Bonnici has finally lashed out against Kenneth Wain's invective on constitutional affairs. Wain's original article was written such a long time ago that it is no longer available on The Times on-line archive, so curious readers wanting to know what it is that Jo-jo is on about now, will be obliged to pay a visit to the National Library, which will memorialise this ridiculous exchange among irrelevant geriatrics in perpetuity. It is not immediately clear why it has taken Mifsud Bonnici a month and a half to put together this crabby reply, though there are some hints that he may have spent some time hitting his books in a bid to thwart his opponent. He throws off a reference to legal theorists as though their work constituted his bedtime reading:

"I have to begin by stating once again that what I objected to with regard to the use of the cliché 'naturalistic fallacy' was and is based not on my likes or dislikes but simply because it is a false statement, as demonstrated by Finnis. E. Moore and other philosophers who use the cliché have repeated it without looking at it closely as Finnis does."

But cursory research throws up some worrying evidence about the regard that Mifsud Bonnici has for accuracy. Enthusiastic readers of this polemic may well wonder who exactly Finnis E. Moore is. Might he by any chance be related to legal philosopher John Finnis? Or to G.E. Moore even? You might expect a bit more from a man who taught law in the country's university, especially one that takes some pleasure in chiding philosophers for not "looking at things closely".
No further proof of in-depth investigation is suggested by the subsequent paragraph either. One would imagine that at this stage of this legal slagging-off contest that the sparring partners would have ceased what Anthony Licari would probably render as "going around the almond" and would have defined their respective premises. And yet Mifsud Bonnici offers a definition of entrenchment that has undergraduate essay written all over it:

"Coming to entrenchment. If Prof. Wain used it simply as a technical word I have to reiterate that indeed it is and it describes what is a juridical device or technique used by jurists who are looking for a form of legislative restraint for the whims of simple majorities who change and twist laws to suit their temporary hold of power."

I will be humble and concede that it may be my deficiencies in comprehension that made me read a sentence from the following paragraph about three times before even beginning to understand it. If I were a bit more confident in my abilities, however, I might suggest that the childish and careless (and rushed?) punctuation would have hindered the efforts of even the most interested reader.

"I do not see anything special or particular in 'our kind of entrenchment' which qualifies it as 'anti-democratic' unless, of course, Prof. Wain does not mean to single out our kind of entrenchment as being anti-democratic but holds all kinds of entrenchment as being so."

Or has Mifsud Bonnici been devoting the last six weeks to formulating new ideas? Judging from the number of references to earlier arguments (e.g. "I have to begin by stating once again", "I have to reiterate", "I also repeat what I said", "I did also say" etc.), there is very little that is original in this sour and academically impoverished nonsense.
The motivation for this article has, in fact, everything to do with an infantilism redolent of a schoolboy pissing contest. Which makes it all the more ironic when Jo-jo asks whether "we [will] ever reach ... maturity?"
And it is immaturity that compels him to perform what he must believe to be a masterful feat of rhetorical entrapment:

"Happily, I can conclude my intervention by noting that Prof. Wain, in his ultimate paragraph, in part at least, agrees with what I have just written. He in fact states, with reference to natural law: 'Today it is not worth keeping and unnecessary for sustaining human rights'. I take this to be an acknowledgement that, at least up till today, natural law was necessary to bring forward human rights and sustain them. It is only now, today, since the battle has been won, that natural law is not worth keeping as it is no longer necessary for sustaining human rights as they have now taken root and are entrenched in most constitutions."

If this is what passes for lawyerly bravado, then God help us. In the unlikely scenario that Mifsud Bonnici were ever to be defending me in litigation over a parking ticket, can I just put in an early request. Lethal injection please.

Dear Sir

Fans of The Times letter pages will have been overcome with uncontainable joy over the last couple of days. On Wednesday alone the page featured no less than 23 missives, while Thursday's issue accommodated a no less impressive 20 letters. And as always when the harvest is this bountiful, the odd gem was turned up. Consider the gratitude of Lina Mangion of Gzira:

"I would like to say well done to the mayor of Gzira, Albert Rizzo, for doing his utmost to keep the Gzira Strand free of dog excrement."

The curious image of Rizzo personally walking around Gzira forking up turds with a swordstick is only superseded by the subsequent behaviour attributed to the local council by Mangion:

"However, what has been removed from the Strand has now been transferred to the side streets of Gzira, in particular the shortest street in the area, namely Sir Henry Bouverie Street, corner with lower St Albert Street and corner with Fleet Street."

Analise Cassar Farrugia of Qawra makes a seamless transition from talking about crap to talking crap with a censorious traducement of Maltese parents:

"I hope that ... parents of these children are made aware of the risks and dangers that an under-age child can face in areas intended for the entertainment of mature patrons."

By referring to "under-age children", Cassar Farrugia is presumably adopting the kind of high-handed moralism that alienates parents from their offspring. At any rate, I don't know what she means by mature patrons, but I can't say I've seen many around Paceville.
John Catania of San Gwann makes a not unreasonable argument for using the Maltese cross on the euro, though he is fatally let down by what is an obviously overworked and under-qualified letter editor, who chose to attach the title "Pope for euro". Aside from the fact that this sounds more like an electoral slogan than a headline, it completely misrepresents Catania's only slightly pious views:

"I do not see anything wrong in promoting our Christian roots even if the message were to be carried through our coinage, but we could retain our Christian image if we copied the Vatican's euro coins, which carry the image of the Pope, our shepherd, and simply insert the Maltese eight-pointed cross to differentiate. This way others stand to follow."

British reader Ray Boulton wins the prize for the most pointless letter of the day. Though the award would not be wholly deserved as if ever there was a man holding out for a discount then here he is:

"Once again we have decided to return to Malta, and specifically to the St George's Complex in St Julians. We return because we have always enjoyed our time among friendly staff who seem to go out of their way to ensure we have a most pleasant holiday. I would also like to mention the Eros newsagents who are also extremely customer friendly."

So that's two weeks accommodation half price and free copies of the Daily Mail fom Eros if you please. I'm more of a Phoenicia man myself. And have I ever said how fond I am of Sterling Jewellers of Valletta.
And because the Times has no dignity and does not deem itself to be much more than a glorified notice board, Michelle Laidman from Canada obliges by sending in a letter that looks like the prelude to the kind of dramatic reunion one might otherwise find on the Ricki Lake Show. As if she weren't writing to a serious (ahem) national newspaper she starts out with:

"Hi Nadine. It's been about 10 years since we've been in contact. So much has happened in my life as, I'm sure, in yours."

Against all conceivable odds, the image on the euro debate rolled on with tedious inexorability into Thursday with no less than five letters on the subject. Albert Ellul of Zurrieq, for example, "just cannot understand the fuss being made against the proposed image of the Baptism of the Christ on one of the euro coins". Which is presumably why he is one of so many to send in letters in support of the idea. His argument that dollar bills have the invocation "In God We Trust" written on them had already been put forward by Censu Galea in Australia on Monday and was subsequently rebutted on Friday by Joseph Bonnici from Rhode Island. If anyone could follow that sequence, they might have divined the fact that The Times's international readers appear to have the finger on the pulse better than people inside Malta do.
If one were to look for positive signs in The Times's utter lack of discretion in publishing the letters of all and sundry, it might be that they hold freedom of opinion in too high esteem to contemplate not doing so. So, while some newspapers are stupidly offensive, The Times can proudly claim to be offensively stupid.

********************************

Against my better judgement, I must pass some comment on this snippet from Anthony Licari's latest influential column:

"A different category of admiring proofreaders have been suggesting ways I could improve my Francophile English. These include portly buxom sad chicks teaching English, high-browed doctored doctors from Transylvania and especially very lonely blogging introverts with a pinch of agoraphobia - at least. I will try to cooperate - while you excuse my French."

I too have studied at three prestigious universities (two of them British, I might add), so I feel that I am within my rights to give some tips on how to write cogent and comprehensible English prose. When writing about something, will the author please not be so self-important and presumptuous to assume that everybody, or anybody, will have the slightest idea what it is that he is repining about. "Portly buxom sad chicks" indeed! And has he fallen out with commas or what?

Worthless Euro

It is common to see utter lack of humility and foolishness on the pages of The Times, but to see them combined in such undiluted form as in Tuesday's column by John A. Consiglio is rare. To set the scene, the subject at hand is the once-boring and now thoroughly cretinous euro versus ewro debate. Supposedly, by his own boastful admission, Consiglio was one of the first to rattle this vacuous orthographical hornet's nest.

"Having been among the first to throw in my whatever worth in this argument about the correct spelling to be used for the single European currency to be hopefully adopted in Malta after January 2008, I have really enjoyed the contributions (including those of the hotheads) that have appeared about the subject."

The article is written in that extraordinarily smug fashion that only those that have actually achieved something should be able to get away with. By the end of the second paragraph, Consiglio contrives to make no less four asides, in what he must imagine to be convincingly vaudevillian wit. Note, however, that they serve only to demonstrate that like the standard village bore, Consiglio is interested in only his own fat-headed opinion, failing even to remember who it is exactly that he disagrees with.

"But the cherry on the cake was that statement by whoever (officially authorised, powerful, qualified or not, or whatever) who said (wherever) that in legal and official texts it will have to be spelt 'euro', but it's worth encouraging (how condescending!) its use as "ewro" in other Maltese texts."

After the prerequisite bragging, he then proceeds to make an argument that I would wager has developed no more since the first time he made. Namely, this is that the wise counsel of the Akkademja tal-Malti has decreed that ewro is to be spelling. It has gone strangely unreported that the same academy has pledged to issue a pox on any house that fails to assent to its edicts. Not that that's true, but it might as well be, since its the only way that any of their guidelines are likely to adopted.
Consiglio then dangles the threat of what he imagines will be the popular rage that will assail the National Euro Changeover Committee should it "kowtow to any EU body that happens to bleat at it". Talk about the pot calling the kettle black; though it would probably be more accurate to describe Consiglio's remarks as whinnying rather than bleating.
What I assume to be a new branch in Consiglio's thoughts on the matter, and does he appear to have devoted an unseemly amount of time to it, is described generously by its proponent as "tangential". Tangential being the English word meaning "slightly relevant". Not tangential as in frigging ridiculous as so inapposite a line of argument as to verge on the senile. The paragraph is daft enough to deserve quoting in its full unfettered preposterousness:

"On another note which, I know, some will describe as tangential thinking, I would like to point out that in this country we also happen to have an Interpretation Act. This essentially provides that where a Maltese legal text might clash in its interpretation with the interpretation of the English language version of the same law, then it is the Maltese interpretation of said law which should prevail. Now in the case of whichever court (Maltese or European or whatever) that might some day be required to deliberate on the meaning of either ewro or euro then I have no doubt that the learned judges will easily decide and interpret euro and ewro as exactly the same common currency of the eurozone member states of the European Union. So there really should be no problem in writing ewro in all Maltese legal texts and all other material written in Maltese."

And how can you rely on the cognitive and argumentative faculties of somebody who unconvincgly begins relating his tedious anecdote with these highlighted words:

"On a final note, and this if my memory serves me right, I distinctly recall the former Minister of Education and President Emeritus - and a sincere lover of both our Maltese and European cultural heritage - Ugo Mifsud Bonnici pulling me up at a packed Chamber of Commerce meeting to insist that when speaking in Maltese I should say ewro and not euro."

As a legal argument this is complete piffle. So returning to his opening gambit about throwing in his "whatever worth into this argument", my suggestion is that whatever the currency is eventually called, the sum should be zero. Or xejn, for the purists.

Open and Shut Case

Sometimes, I wonder why The Times is sold to the public at all. The assembled opinionists of Malta are so fond of conducting their personal exchanges through the medium of their columns that reading them feels invasive and voyeuristic. This was further compounded on Sunday by the disturbing spectacle of Lino Spiteri's dumbfounding impersonation of a dog in what I believe to be some kind of veiled verbal assault on somebody. I say that I believe as it is very far from clear to me what Spiteri is wittering on about in his introductory paragraph:

"Dog Does Not bite dog.
This one certainly shall not as much as much as growl and bare one single tooth-gap at old friends who also sniff around the terrain of this newspaper and its sister daily. If I wuff wuff gently just once at two of them I do it not to pick a fight, more as a compliment: I did notice that they were around with compelling intent and make a rare exception to my not engaging other contributors."

As I have tried to argue before on this blog, The Times gives every impression of gathering material for publication by redirecting the content of their in-tray straight into the pages of the newspaper. If you are willing to write rubbish prolix enough to permit graduation out of the letter section, then the world's your oyster. Well, The Times is your oyster anyway. Deficiencies in style and writing abilities are, in what might perhaps be considered by some as appreciable democracy, no obstacle to having even the most deranged garbage stuck in.
Lino Spiteri is obviously, in spite of appearances, no amateur in the writing trade. But even he has no respect for basic style rules that even first-year University students are meant to be versed in. What follows is a slightly amended three-point tip "borrowed" from a web style guide on opening paragraphs, which Spiteri might find useful:

• Give an introduction to the topic the article deals with; a general sentence or two will usually suffice.
• Offer background information about the topic that will help familiarise your readers and generate interest.
• Put forward the article's thesis statement, which is usually reserved for the last sentence of the opening paragraph.

But Spiteri imagines that we already inhabit the intimate space of his own thoughts. It is hardly for lack of space that he cannot concede even a single word to clarity of expression. Like many Times columnists before him, Spiteri assumes that the reader will be so fascinated by the debates among writers that no explanation is required. If Spiteri's design was literary, he may out of his depth.
Personally, I favour the first line of Anthony's Burgess's Earthly Powers:

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

The book is especially rewarding in a scene in which a pretentious and untalented Maltese writer comes to dinner at the narrator's house, an insult against the country that Burgess probably intended as retaliation against the local philistine censors that tormented him.
However, for some of The Times columnists I wonder if other first lines might not be more apt. I am thinking in particular of the opening Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, a work demanding intellectual and academic analytical rigour of the sort normally reserved for the pages of The Times:

"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man."

Or even more succinctly, for the paranoid and insane, who are certainly not underrepresented, is the stark first line from Ken Kesey's psychiatric ward novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:

"They're out there."

Anyhow, the point is that I fear that pending literary inspiration, contributors Times might be best advised against venturing into practices requiring wit, metaphor, pathos or even competence in the area under review. Of course, one could protest that this would make the newspaper too boring for words.
Now that would be funny.

Mickey Mouse Column

When is an aphorism not an aphorism? Well, judging by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s column in the Independent, it’s when it’s a slightly pointless observation, strung out in such a way as to provide the building blocks of an equally senseless column. This epigrammatic approach, consisting of a cobbled-together sequences of barely cogent thoughts, is reminiscent of another writer whose name it would be unwise recall.
To the troubling issues of our day Pullicino Orlando proposes the constructive approach of inviting John Bundy to reprise the spirit of memorable Pajjiz tal-Mickey Mouse. This is not the forum to explore and reflect on the utter stupidity of that song and its creator, but the fact that Pullicino Orlando chooses to begin the segment of the article with:

Hunger, poverty, discrimination, disease, global warming, nuclear proliferation… the list of issues which humanity should be doing its utmost to tackle is impressive.

… and finish with…

Remember that famous John Bundy song, Pajjiz tal-Mickey Mouse? It seems Dinja tal-Mickey Mouse would be a fitting sequel.

… is telling in itself.
Yet he invites us to have a laugh at the stupid Americans; again, and this is really stretching the goodwill of even the most generously inclined readers, by suggesting that John Bundy provide a sequel to his ghastly song. Of all the things he could cite, of all the great satire of history, from Twain and Jonathan Swift to George Orwell and Mariella’s Diary, that he could have called upon, he invokes the cretinous spasm of a man whose cultural contribution to the world currently consists of driving cars into the studio during L-Istrina.
After a twee Biblical-style parable about the euro, a subject that promises to overshadow the meaning of life as a favoured topic of conversation, Pullicino Orlando wilily merges two current issues into this Mike Giggler observation:

"Since we are now officially the happiest country in the world I agree with those who suggest we put a happy face on our euro coins."

Just to recap, the article started out with poverty and disease, but with sleight of hand of such sagacious deftness that comes straight out G.K.Chesterton he rounds off his mongrel of senselessness with a cutesy anecdote that rightly belongs in a “The Funny Things They Say” column. Proper newspapers tend to pay their columnists, and Pullicino Orlando might indeed have been eligible for a £50 cheque had he sent in his story to a down-market magazine for bored housewives. As it is, if the editor of the Independent has any sense, he will have rewarded Pullicino Orlando for this story with a pat on the head and a boiled sweet.

"I’d like to round this article off by sharing an amusing incident with you. My youngest daughter, Marija, is seven and my partner’s daughter, Celine, is nine.
They often engage in heated debates about a wide variety of topics. They were watching Hocus Pocus this week, yet again.
There is a reference to virgins at one point.
'What’s a virgin?' I heard Celine asking Marija while I was preparing supper in the next room. 'It’s someone who only eats vegetables,' was Marija’s prompt reply.
I nearly knocked over the salad!"

Coughing Fit

Had I been drinking something when I read the line below, from The Times' leader on Monday, I would certainly have sprayed it out hilariously in the style of a Hollywood comedy:

"Written in the desiccated style so beloved of academics and environmentalists, the State of the Environment Report for 2005, just published by Mepa, makes powerful - not to say disquieting - reading."

This singularly hypocritical characterisation of the report's prose precedes, however, a slavishly admiring article on the content. The worrying issue at the heart of this editorial is the withdrawn blandness of the newspapers position. It would be fatuous to expect this flabby newspaper to express any scepticism about the genuine commitment of this government to Malta's environmental well-being.
The Times idiotically parrots Lawrence Gonzi's plangent appeal for the conservation of the environment, though it reserves the right of not reminding its readers that the Prime Minister believes that "people [have to be made] aware the environment is their responsibility as much as it is Government’s." Which should be read as "We like nature, but we'll be damned if we're losing any votes over it."
As in other areas of political life, the Nationalist government relies on the moral and political expediency of EU membership to account for increased "standards and policies for environmental protection and awareness." And as if Parliament had been toppled by a Greenpeace-funded coup d'etat the Times codedly implies that the government has taken green values to its bosom, though local environmentalists may be of another opinion:

"The real wonder is that his government, and those before it, have taken so long to realise the parlous effects of the way we have treated our environment."

In spite of the at best lacklustre efforts at addressing these issues, The Times casts the Minister for the Environment into a gloriously Sisyphean pose.

"While the Minister for the Environment, George Pullicino, bravely points to vestigial improvements in reducing air pollution and bathing water quality, he has to admit that 'we must continue to improve environmental quality in these areas, as we must also do in the areas where the challenges are greater, as, for example, for waste management and nature protection.' These last words hide a multitude of sins."

The asthma sufferers produced by the Delimara power plant may well agree, though it may prove hard to convince them of the Nationalist government's commitment to their respiratory well-being. But The Times is rather too busy uncritically quoting extensive chunks to busy itself with critical insight. For the sake of statistical completeness, it should be noted that just under than 200 words of the 550-word article consisted of direct quotes from the report, which is probably more than necessary considering anyone that wants to see the flashy pamphlets can do so for themselves here (or here in Maltese).
As it is, the report is being trickled out into The Times, without any meddling comment, is bitesize easy-to-ignore installments. This way, everyone wins. Pullicino gets to play the enlightened hippie, Gonzi smugly intones his Confucian meditation on the balance of nature, and the rest of the country listens to all the bold announcements on their car stereos.

Minister for Boring Affairs

On the day that Sharon Spiteri commented on her aspiration for more English-language literature, The Times began its own foray into redefining the boundaries of contemporary semantics. Consequently, under the rubric of the opinion columns, we found Michael Frendo's bone-dry and bone-headed exegesis of Maltese foreign policy. The article itself purports to be about a document about the recently published "Strategic Objectives of Malta's Foreign Policy", though it is in fact an exact copy of the foreword of the document itself. And speaking of purporting, there is something not altogether felicitous about this sentence:

This document purports to be a framework document that sets out the general lines of the strategic objectives of Malta's foreign policy.

So, where does the line lie, in the mind of The Times' opinion page editor, between publishing the self-serving bureaucratic twaddle of a man who has increasingly taken on the pallor of a Madame Tussuad's waxwork model and an actual opinion. The policy statement has already been reported as a news item in The Times, as well having been the subject of not one, but two other columns by Michael Frendo, whose dead stare has ever more acquired the glassy quality of somebody who has seen things you people wouldn't believe, such as attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
But since Frendo cannot offer anything but verbatim chunks of text written by some unthanked grunt at the ministry, I will have to proffer my own opinion on the so-called strategic objectives. They're rubbish. Consider the first two points:

1. Harness Malta’s geopolitical relevance to maximise political and economic benefits
2. Make a success of European Union membership and contribute towards the construction of a European Union which gives added value to its member states and its citizens

As opposed to what exactly? Would be too much to venture that these ridiculous statements have to be issued from the various ministries from time to time to persuade Castille that they are doing some work at Palazzo Parisio? That and that Frendo has not in fact departed to other world, in spite of his worsening appearance of cadaverousness.

***********************

It is obvious that Andrew Borg Cardona's indefatigable pomposity is specifically designed to consistently aggravate the readers of the Times, but his now regular spot on the restaurant of the week has gone straight from arrogant to ridiculous, and transcended into a whole new level of effrontery.
This week, the fat owl of the remove doesn't even bother denying that he has been given his meal for free, though he does not overlook reminding us that the latest victim of his gorging "is not a cheap place at which to dine out". Not cheap, that is unless the manager is sure that the customer in question is going to write a column about how great the restaurant is. Of course, whether the disinterested readers of the column should be taking the appropriately nicknamed Bocca's advice to heart, considering his faculties for judging taste will have been deadened by the decades of smoking he lobbies for so energetically, is a matter for them to decide.

Notes From the Moulding Darkness

How sad that Fausto at Malta 69 Methadone has been so quick to scorn the insightful contributions of Anthony Licari on the evils of anonymous blogging. How easy it would be to demur that people are forced into anonymity by threats of being referred to "democratic legal and journalistic structures" for merely contesting the validity of someone's competence to write columns in a national newspaper. And not just any national newspaper; the newspaper of record itself, if you please. It's surely footling pedantry to raise Licari's sloppiness in managing to grievously misspell a word in the very first paragraph of his "column":

Zombies are very easily provoked. It suffices to utter the words "Fred" or "Tony" or to "dare" show displeasure at anything this administration is doing wrong to have them grunting under their protective tombtones.

To be exact, it is hardly relevant to speak of zombies being provoked. Surely a better insult, or constructive criticism, might have been to refer to the noxious bloggers in question as jellyfish; attacking unannounced and utterly spineless. Zombies are of quite another species. Indeed, as wikipedia explains, zombism can be induced by:

"... the victim's own belief-system, possibly leading to compliance with the attacker's will, and causing quasi-hysterical amnesia, catatonia, or other psychological disorders..."

Not that readers should even begin trying attempting to cast anybody in that role. For as it says in the book of St. Anthony of Licari, "if you aim at nameless people say what you like". Yes readers, you're right, there should be a comma between 'people' and 'say', but isn't it too much to expect universities, any of the three you've been to, to teach such fripperies as punktuation and speeling. Faithful readers, your sadistic minds and stomachs disappoint me.
I might go so far as to say that your inferences are clearly criminal and are definitely not covered by freedom of expression. Are you not aware that you are not at liberty to offend, criticise or mock? Get ye to a dank buried hole. Can you have a buried hole? Does that make sense? Weeell, you get the point.

Laughing All the Way to the Euro

As time does not allow, I shall not be able to blog as I would wish today. Not wanting to leave the day's spot empty, however, I shall yield the space to a rib-tickling corker appearing in letter pages of The Times today. Like Victor J. de Bono, whose impertinence has so angered the internee fan club, Paul Sant Cassia lives in England, or in Cambridge to be exact. He has the temerity to poke fun at the Maltese from his English perch, where he is probably studying Gay Studies, or something similarly immoral and unChristian. Sadly for him, the United Kingdom has not adopted the Euro, so his currency-based wit must be shamefully unused in those parts. Gratefully, he has generously obliged to endow the men and fishwives of Malta with his ribald largesse:

Here are my tongue-in-cheek suggestions for the euro designs, which may not make me very popular:

¤ The Erica decorating the Brittany coast

¤ A white taxi crawling along on the inner lane

¤ A Pisanello-type relief of a bus driver

¤ The recently resurfaced road to Castille as a contemporary cart-rut

¤ The Sliema Front as a World Heritage Site for our contribution to world architecture

¤ A slim child to represent that we have the greatest percentage of obese children in Europe

¤ The fish farms that mysteriously never make it on to the tourist brochures conceived by the ever-changing Malta Tourism Authority

¤ The Dockyards as an example of our contribution to European research investment

¤ Some elegantly attired youths in Paceville gazing philosophically at some auto-generated effluent on the ground

Readers will have their own suggestions. We have a rich repertoire to draw upon, and we should not be ashamed to propose them.

Chortle, chortle.

Sweet Dreams

If mere mortals are deserving of a little pampering, then what concupiscent luxury should one of Malta foremost diplomats be allowed to lavish upon himself. The answer, as In-Nazzjon has discovered to its misfortune, is not safe to venture into. The diplomat in question is none other than that who the common man must cautiously refrain from insulting in any way, lest a lawsuit direct itself in the direction of the offending remark: His Excellency, Richard Matrenza.
It must be said that never has a finer man represented his country. Not for a moment could anyone suggest, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, that he is quiet and small, that he is black, from his ears to the tip of his tail; that he can creep through the tiniest crack, that he can walk on the narrowest rail; that he can pick any card from a pack, that he is equally cunning with dice; that he is always deceiving you into believing, that he's only hunting for mice. Indeed were "[these allegations] presented as [facts], it [would be] up to the defendants to prove the truth of their allegations."
As in the case of the Towelgate, in which Matrenza was maligned for spending a paltry Lm1,687 on sheets and towels, the offending journalist would be compelled the prove the truth of the allegation that he is cunning with dice. After all, the pejorative implications of cunning could certainly lend themselves them to hugely libellous inferences for a high representative of the Maltese government. As for creeping through tiny cracks, the less said the better.
So let's make this quite clear, Lm1,687 is about the most perfect sum of money that could be spent on bed linen for four bedrooms, three bathrooms and two lavatories.
Consider, for instance, that eight king-size sets of White 'Bed by Conran' Measure Fitted Sheets will cost £360 sterling. Four King-size John Lewis Hungarian Goose Down Pillows will cost another £360. Four John Lewis Hungarian Goose Down Duvets then set you back another whopping £1120. And so on. You get the picture.
Imply, suggest, or insinuate that Hungarian Geese were not necessarily the only alternative and you will be directed to the logic above. Prove that "the purchases were unnecessary" and you're laughing. But frankly, only a communist or a pederast could be so base as to suggest that Richard Matrenza, perhaps the most imposing statesman since the age of Charlemagne, should sleep in four "completely bare" bedrooms of the official residence. Only a sick mind could contrive to imagine that Matrenza should have bought some of his bed linen and towels at Marks and Spencers, where only African and Belarusian diplomats are content to do their shopping.
Another day of Maltese justice is over, and Matrenza gets an extra Lm600 to stuff his cushions with.