Hansen Beast

If there were an award for the most miskina columnist of the year Pamela Hansen would win it every year hands down. The graceful way to describe her would be as a poor man's Daphne, though in reality this is closer to the truth than just a put-down. Hansen was parachuted into her Sunday Times slot after one of Daphne's notorious bust-ups with the newspaper.
While Daphne appeals to the nominally sophisticated chattering classes, Hansen can only hope to captivate the fleeting attention of newspaper-reading housewife. I say fleeting, because her reasoning and prose is so cobbled together that it bears no scrutiny. This week, for instance, she has trod onto my territory by mocking the Independent for their boring headlines, in particular a recent story about the recent increase in local gas sales. Interestingly, she expresses her disappointment at the failure of what could have made the article more captivating, namely that nobody died of hypothermia:

"While it is true that it is sometimes not easy to get a riveting front-page story - and this time of the year is notoriously slow - Friday's Malta Independent was really scraping the barrel with the headline "Sale of gas increased fourfold in December" - surprise, surprise - and a large photo of gas cylinders, albeit an interesting one (a sunbeam hitting the top of a cylinder)."

Implicit in her mockery is the suggestion that her own paper's track record on this front is in some way exemplary, which is a stupid enough assertion not to merit comment. Anyone unconvinced need only look at this doozy of a headline, featured as the only front page story last month:

"Changes proposed to original plans"

It will come as no surprise that the story goes downhill from there. You would have thought that a keen observer of Enemalta affairs Hansen might have picked up on this one.
Having run out of ideas for her article, Hansen then does what any self-respecting journlist does at such moments; she switches on the TV. And duly, she relates the contents of an edition of Hard Talk on BBC World and two news reports on Bloomberg and Sky News.
After what sounds like the work of a few minutes channel-surfing around the turn of the hour, Hansen concludes that it would be wise for WHO officials to keep a distance from headless chickens. I don't exclude the possibility that she is joking, though it is far from clear. As it is far from clear why she hasn't been given the boot.