The Downward Learning Curve

“Hey teacher,” sang a cherubic choir in overwrought prog rockers Pink Floyd’s seminal hit, Another Brick in the Wall, “leave us kids alone”.
Few students through the decades have failed to engage with the sentiment at the heart of that song, namely that schools are little more than chambers of repression where learning happens by accident. But no classroom is complete without its clutch of nerds and teacher’s pets, which is where poor Christopher Bezzina steps into the breech.
To give him credit where it’s due, he opens his column The Capacity to Create Better Schools with an assured, telegraphic intro that is Dickens without the verboseness, Melville without the tortured introspection:

“We are living in exciting times.”

So far, so good. There is certainly no problem with setting the bar high, but let’s remember that this is The Times we are dealing with here. When it comes to bars, the Olympic gold here is in the limbo dance not the high jump.
Fittingly, Bezzina torpedoes all his early promise with possibly the most unwieldy, and definitely the least interesting, sentence ever committed to paper:

“They are exciting times for those who want to be directly involved and engaged in the educational reforms promised by the Education Reform encompassed in the amendments to the Education Act (2006), in the Reform Agreement entered into between the government and the Malta Union of Teachers in July 2007 and the various policy documents that have come out through the ministry responsible for education over the past few years.”

Bezzina is supposedly in the business of assuring quality in the education sector, which holds out no great promise for whatever tedious government initiative about which he is writing about so uninspiringly. Then again, he is a technocrat and a satisfactorily grey one at one, so no more should and could be expected of him other than the parroting of hideously vacuous government policies. The educationalists churned out of the University of Malta need to be employed somehow, after all, and what better way than getting them to overhaul the teaching sector like monkeys typing out the complete works of Shakespeare.
Could anyone be blamed for finding this paragraph, for example, as inspirational as watching a dog being run over:

“Both the Education Act and the subsequent Collective Reform Agreement (2007) recognise the need to create a context for professional learning to take place within schools and their networks and outside, and to have professional staff that work within the networks and support the networks from outside to improve and enhance the learning capabilities of everyone - adults and students alike.”

Bezzina is apparently never happy with a sentence unless it is far too long, contains at least one date and repeats the key word no less than three times. Networks anybody?
But if Bezzina is the willing executioner of this largely uninformative puff piece on how the government is saving Malta’s children from certain unproductive cretinism, who is the enabler?
An abettor of inadequacy or excess can take several shapes, from the small-time pimp to the street corner crack dealer. A most disturbing manifestation of this abusive role was shown in a Channel Four documentary in Britain some years ago about the weird and perverse men that feed their gargantuan wives to states of such criminal obesity that they can barely walk. The women become so fat, their layers of overlapping skin putrefy and turn black, unseen but detected by the sensitive nose.
It is a disgusting and cruel form of indulgence that has found its home contentedly on The Times’ editorial board, where quality assurance might as well be a tin of chocolates. Nothing is too dull, badly written, rambling and uninspiring for the weasels that get paid for copying and pasting straight from their inboxes into the publishing software.
Bezzina is little more than a pride gourd to inflate, who will provide the reams of inconsequential copy to fill all the newspaper space The Times’ utterly lunatic advertisers will not buy.
So, to get back to the article… It drones on about improvement, learning, experience, network, unifying ethos etc. And then ends with the obligatory platitude about the future, God help us:

“It is indeed an exciting time to be in education. Together we can make a difference for the youth and young adults of tomorrow.”

Indeed, indeed.
Indeed.

[Sic] Comments

In his reprehensible treatise The Revolt Against Civilization (1922), American historian and racial theorist Lothrop Stoddard laments what he perceives as the burgeoning menace of the untermensch and the burden it heaves onto the back of the ruling classes. Dwelling on the outcome of the then-recent Bolshevik revolution, he sniffily decries the notion of "natural equality" as understood by political radicals, in Russia and beyond.
Thankfully, these disturbing concepts of human stratification are little more than an ugly relic of scientific racism. Then again, too see what bedlam was unleashed when the Times of Malta website handed over the keys of the asylum to the inmates, one wonders whether Stoddard may have been onto something when he called the for the gates of civilization to be guarded.
As any faithful reader of The Times' online edition will know, the newspaper some months ago started enabling its readers to leave comments on any article, opinion and news as it may be. Sceptics, the underwritten included, scoffed at the clumsy and inept execution of the initiative.
Submitting a comment requires volunteering a quantity of information that would have satisfied even a devoted Stasi operative. In fairness, the criteria are a few degrees less stringent that those required to get a letter published in the actual newspaper. It would be no surprise to learn that The Times might once required attachment to letters to the editor to include a set of fingerprints, a mimeographed copy of a birth certificate and a signed statement from the local parish priest.
In these enlightened times, all the website asks for is a name, surname, e-mail address, town of residence and a telephone number. And to judge by the tone and volume of the comments on the site, just about anybody can qualify for connection to the telephone grid these days.
On a visit many years ago to Cairo zoo, I saw the dreadful sight of a flange of baboons pouncing on an unfortunate cat foolish enough to wander into the primates’ giant enclosure. The cat’s death was mercifully swift, but what followed was a terrifying and discordant cacophony of shrieks, grunting and dust-throwing as rivalling congresses argued over ownership of the limp corpse.
Exchanges of views on The Times website never fails to bring this tragicomic image to mind. Gratefully, the comment strands never stray far from utter absurdity and ploughing through them is a joy that vindicates the drudgery of day-to-day existence.
Picking an article at random, Sunday’s issue features the heartening news that Labour Party deputy Karl Chircop’s condition has improved slightly. Quick as a shot, the insanely pious F. Camilleri logged on to seize victory in what has apparently been a stimulating debate elsewhere on the healing powers of prayer. Not content with his unseemly celebratory dance, he follows up his own comment some 18 minutes later with this:

“This is GREAT news.
Thanks be to the Lord and Our Virgin Mary of LOURDES.”

People who capitalize their computer-based correspondence do so because they want us to imagine them shouting the words in question. So reread that snippet and try to visualize F. Camilleri shouting, the veins in his temple throbbing, in a dark room on a Sunday and imagine the monitor flecked with tiny projectiles of foamy saliva on that final sibilant.
Camilleri’s comments invariably kick off the familiar sight of an incrementally more and more indecorous crossfire of what could generously be termed as opinions. Indeed, the bulk of what The Times’ readers commit to the website has all the intellectual tone of what results from a fat man sitting on a whoopee cushion.
A story about the Mediterraneo Marine Park denying cruelty to dolphins, elicits these remarks among others. From Eric Gahn:

I wonder what [Mediterraneo director Pedro] Maghalaes would say if HE were kept in a small cage with a controlled supply of purifed air and made to jump for balls and through hoops so he could earn his keep in the small cage.

And Franco Farrugia:

Well said, Mr Cuschieri. What if dolphins could talk! (sic)
And indeed, patrons are more guilty than the keepers themselves!!!

An indignant howling-at-the-moon letter from faithful old fart John Guillaumier to complain that Paceville is no longer as it was in the days of his youth in the 1960s, “when a better class of tourists than nowadays led to the establishment of the first night-clubs and restaurants in Malta”. This kind of letter, along with the perennial favourite about how Maltese is apparently a pointless language and should be abandoned forthwith, is always guaranteed to generate the standard slew of replies.
Guillaumier’s better class of backers include Ray Axisa:

So True, what a dump Paceville has became (sic), well done with your comments.

And Joe Buttigieg:

A trip to the continent recently revealed how Malta has become the dirtiest and shabiest (sic) place in Europe.

On the other side of the argument is a disappointingly sensible set of people with unreasonably reasonable views.
The Times has in a rare effort tried to instil a climate of democratic expression on its site. What it has ended up with is a verbal version of Pong, where one opinion burped onto the site provokes, by some yet unformulated law of physics, an equally banal and ridiculous response.
But of you’re forced to choose between watching YouTube clips of chimpanzees falling out of trees and reading The Times comment pages, then you know what the right choice is.

Better Late Then Never

It was a bit disappointing Alfred Sant's first column after coming out of hospital was not titled Proctologist.

Sunday! Bloody Sunday!

Whoever says Sunday is the day of rest has clearly never been troubled by the weekly ordeal of ploughing through the newspapers. The chore is mercifully only a self-imposed feat of masochism for media junkies.
But spare a thought for Joe Vella Bonnici, a martyr to the cause of punditry when he is not performing his duties as chief executive officer of the Institute for the Promotion of Small Enterprises. There is almost nothing about the Sunday papers that doesn’t cause Vella Bonnici to break into a cold sweat. They’re too big, too colourful, have too many adverts, and cost too much. As if that weren’t enough, there are too many of the damned things.
With seven newspapers to process, there just aren’t enough hours in the day, he notes. Especially when, oddly enough, more people are “getting glued to their computers or television sets”.
Vella Bonnici is bewildered by the weak influence wielded by the invisible hand of market forces on the price he has to pay for his reading material:

“One would have expected that this intense competition would drive their prices down. Still, they keep going up.”

But after cynically and sarcastically casting doubt on the value of the papers, he concedes some ground to the impact of commodity prices on the cost of publishing the weeklies:

“There could be other considerations, such as the weight of paper used…”

But Vella Bonnici wavers between caustic misgivings and pietistic devotion in his views on the Sunday papers. Indeed, for all his criticisms, he describes the process of reading the weeklies as “worshipping on the sacred altar of journalism”, a frankly disturbing image with hints of the black mass about it.
But in a sharp switch in tone, Vella Bonnici reverts again to a position of cavilling denunciation:

“Sunday papers too have their share of sermons. They all speak on behalf of the truth. As Joe Jackson chanted way back in the 1970s, ‘Sunday papers don't get no lies... Sunday papers don't got no eyes’. Or do they?”

History does not relate whether Jackson was thinking of Roamer’s Column, Lino Spiteri or Adrian Muscat Inglott when he penned those lines, but other verses from the song suggest otherwise:

“If you want to know about the gay politician,
If you want to know how to drive your car,
If you want to know about the new sex position,
You can read it in the sunday papers, read it in the sunday papers.”

That stuff is usually in The Times on Thursdays.
It transpires, however, that there is a reason behind Vella Bonnici’s folly. And it is not just sour grapes that he has not been offered his own slot in any of the papers on Sunday.

“Why do I bother to read the Sunday papers? It is mostly in search of inspiration for my opinion pieces. It is not easy to find what I want, especially as I am never sure of what I am looking for.”

At this stage, it is tempting to take pity on Vella Bonnici, as one might on a drunk tramp trying to climb back onto the seat of a broken bicycle. But the jaw-droppingly irony-deficient assertion that follows his plea for enlightenment obviates any such sentimentality.

“It is then that I realise that, not only do we have too many Sunday papers, but also too many opinion writers.”

Unmolested by any sense of his own ridiculousness, Vella Bonnici pontificates in mangled English on the relative literary merits of columnists, before hypocritically calling for a cutback in media output in the name of the environment. But wait a minute:

“Naturally, I speak for myself.”

Well, that’s alright then.

What's Left of Good Sense?

Without wishing to venture into any imprudent suggestions, is it out of place to note that Anthony Licari gets scarier as his thundering righteousness entrenches itself ever deeper? For the uninitiated, disquisition on this subject requires a cautious approach, lest one incur threats of police investigation as well as the mouth-foaming abuse that Licari reserves for his antagonists.
In this Saturday’s column, he limbers up for his weekly rant with a mild jog of resentment directed at his subjection to the “mental conditioning”, ahem, of society’s right-wing milieu. In more words than are strictly necessary, however, the tale of acculturative woe soon sees our plucky Licari-as-Oliver-Twist hero rip defiantly at the frontiers of intellectual constriction. “Please sir, can I have some more cultural evolution,” he seems to be saying.
Flash forward and it’s all flower power, free love, poetry readings, titled berets, rive gauche, existentialism, Sartre, Godard, but not, and please pay close attention, any mind-altering drugs or liquor that would only reduce the user to spouting incoherent, inconsequential and pointless claptrap. So don’t in any way misread this sentence, for example:

“As article followed article in the conservative press - which promised me that it had room for my thinking that the evolution of a country had to pass the test of elimination of poverty, hardship and, especially, arrogance - I became more and more convinced that the glass of water necessary to swallow the conservative pill now required a bucketful of a stronger liquid.”

Even wanting to feel sympathy for the calamitous predicament that so consumes Licari, it is far from clear what it is that he is trying to say. This deficit of clarity is in large part a consequence of what Licari thinks is a sequence of imagistic triumphs, but what is actually a man with a woefully inflated sense of his lyrical powers. A useful illustration:

“Around me there were people who spoke of "the others" as incapable of comprehending thinking and less bent on brushing their teeth. But at the same time, they slammed me with their bad breath and, when challenged to discuss without laughing and shouting, they idiotically accused me of trying to crack glorious tradition - a parody of Religio et Patria.”

As if you cared, what he is trying to say here, in his trademark pompous manner, is that some people did not agree with him about something. And as a sign of his contempt for those that go around randomly abusing people and high-handedly dispensing their rambling opinions without being asked to, he goes and makes some friends who do agree with him.

“I understood that their conviction of thinking was indistinguishable from rigid self-righteous mould. So I bid farewell to the stinking fold.”

That is perhaps just as well, as his lamentably personal approach to settling differences of outlook would only result in countless awkward cocktail parties and ensue in costly dry-cleaning bills. For Licari, his erstwhile reactionary companions are now hateful, psychologically diseased “racists” dwelling in a “dank dungeon” in a “sediment of their varicosed (sic) mental convolutions.”
The words chip and shoulder spring to mind.
Upon reading further, however, one is struck by the sneaking suspicion that the true purpose of this ill-composed diatribe may in truth be more mundane than Licari is letting on. Possibly out of boredom with the love tribute to his own earth-shattering insight, Licari’s outpourings of mental vacuity begin to take on a distinctly partisan hue.
Having cast off a couple of overt political references to Nationalist Party, the Christian Democrats that kick in “the teeth both Christianity and Democracy” (Ho ho, readers!), he gets his hands dirty with the business of political satire.

“The MLP is mistaken to think that many Labourites would have to emigrate following another PN electoral victory. Indeed, emigration is not cruel enough. It is more cruel to oblige people to live in a country where jobs and promotions are for the less competent conservatives. Ask those who went to see the Ombudsman and others who did not even bother to do so.”

And of course, for anyone that despises those that always see corruption in others, there is, er, this:

“… Labour is keeping to itself some more interesting stories about corruption and will divulge them just before the election date. I suspect that Labour is also searching energetically for more corruption stories and may discover a few more things in the coming weeks.”

On and on it goes, like a party balloon slowly having the air let out of it. All the energy and demented idealism of the column’s intro descends into a laundry list of whinges about whatever it is that has popped into Licari’s head on that particular week.
But to give him his due, for thigh-smacking chutzpah, he does leave the best till last:

“While not agreeing with its stiff military-sounding name and its lack of letters to the editor [Note: For him to write to, presumably], I agree with Maltarightnow's advice: ‘The best challenge in life is to believe in what you are.’ Friends of friends have tested this successfully.”

And could friends of friends be an immodest reference to himself, one wonders.

Blog Standard

What better subject to prompt a return to observation of the singular curse of the Maltese commentator than the new-look Times of Malta web site and its cringe-worthily incompetent embrace of modernity in the form of its in-house blogs.
The shared blandness of the three slots on offer makes it unfair to single out any of the writers for scorn, but fairness has never been Fool Cap’s bag and the eight-month hiatus has done nothing to remedy that.
In the delusional stakes, the egomania displayed by self-appointed rock star Ira Losco is of a rare and almost heart-rending quality.
On Nov. 16, as news emerged that the casualty rate from the cyclone in Bangladesh rose above 1,100 victims, Losco regales what she imagines to be her adoring readers with a quite literally somnolent account of getting up in the morning.

“Contrary to the misconception of many, I do have to wake up as early as possible to fit in a ridiculous amount of work in a day and quite frankly 24 hours are definitely not enough anymore!”

Because Losco is writing a blog, however, she can be afforded the kind of juddering non sequitir that almost any editor worth their salt would iron out, and before too long she is verbally consoling those less fortunate than her. Unlike Jennifer Lopez, she truly has not left the block, and is eager to let people know that runaway success in Malta and a not entirely disastrous showing at the Eurovision song contest has not gone to her head. In prose as crippled as the children she must weekly visit in one of the local orphanages, her compassion shines through:

“Every story is heart wrenching and sometimes incredulous, it is a clear depiction of the struggle of certain members in our society today.”

Exactly one week later (a coincidence of timing that could prompt the irremediably cynical to suggest the blog thing is nothing more than a thinly disguised column), Losco changes tack altogether and adopts the sassy guise of the perennially football-flummoxed chick. But because she’s not a chick, right, she’s a woman, yeah, she comes with a Spectrum-installable attitude straight out of Woman’s Own circa 1989:

“It's a bit like trying to explain the toilet seat rule to a man, get my drift?”

Yeah, ‘cause the men keep pissing all over the toilet seat, yeah?
This mentally offensive inanity is all fine and well, but where does it leave the Times’ apparent new remit to engage with the reader. The hoary old columnists that normally contribute to the paper are at least invigoratingly lunatic in their ramblings, which is more than can be said for the insipid non-views of Losco’s piss-poor offerings. What editorial meeting resulted in this barely literate singer acquiring her own platform to air her vapid views and flog whatever supposed career she has going for herself?
In belated recognition of the format’s interactive faculty, the latest post is adorned with craven comments of praise that would have made even Kim Il Jong blush with embarrassment. And, if the first few weeks are anything to go by, it is unlikely that the content of any of the Times’ blogs will allow reader input to rise anywhere above this sheep-like monotony.
The Guardian, which has lead the way in creating a format that allows for genuinely enlightening and vigorous exchanges, named its interactive opinion page after a quote from a celebrated essay by its legendary former editor, C.P. Snow in which he noted that “comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
How very different from The Times, where comments are worthless and facts are scarce.

D.I.V.O.

As tedious types go, there are two great strands. On one hand, you have your mage of inconsequentiality that can will reams of opinion in spite of an utter deficiency of actual beliefs. The other category is the cocktail party bore, whose gargantuan surfeit of views will cause instant mental gout in anybody so foolish as to listen. Austin Sammut, blow-hard that he is, tries to have his cake, eat it, and then shove the remains down his miserable readers' trousers.
Affecting chastely professorial ambivalence, he opens his recent opinion piece on the battered old nag of divorce by disavowing any claims to judgment. The introductory text is reproduced fully so that the reader can see, without having to consult the original article, how Sammut flip flops from meaningless one platitude to another, only to duck the actual task of offering his own utterly pointless perspective:

"The divorce debate has raised its head once again. As expected, this has happened over the years at regular intervals with the arising of every opportunity to peg onto it. It is a debate that will continue for a long time. It is a valid debate. It is not an easy one to decide upon. There are pros and cons and strong arguments on both sides. To make things more complicated (though not necessarily right or wrong) we have the Church ingredient. Quite frankly, I have my views, but no hard and fast position on the issue; but certainly it is an interesting one and worth discussing."


When millennia have passed and future archeologists somehow rescue this text from a sunken National Archive, they will remove their tin foil hats and scratch their heads in wonder at what god of indecision this devolved exemplar might have praised at the feet of.
Incidentally, it must be for just such time-distant chroniclers of the past that Sammut must feel it appropriate to patronize and insult the reader by spinning out no less than 250 words of contextualization of an issue that only an a determined cave dweller could have avoided — a point he makes himself in the very first sentence of the article.
Such tricks are the result of the low cunning that the self-absorbed megalomaniac, who thinks that the paper cannot do with any less than a thousand words of his wisdom, has to resort to. It is nothing more than a variation on the old schoolboy shortcut of doing lines faster by sellotaping three pencils to one another.
The waffle also performs the function of forcing the half-hearted reader (does The Times have any other kind?) to quite forget Sammut's erstwhile coyness about divorce once the usual half-witted arguments eventually get trundled out.
His most stimulating excursus in the midst of the pitchwater-dull exposition is a troglodytic attempt at an indictment of the levity with which the topic is handled in contemporary drama:

"We hear on television very often in some dramatic series: 'I want a divorce'! It's as simple as all that. 'I have a meeting with my lawyer tomorrow. Why don't you get yours to meet him so that they can sort things out?'"


Obviously, as the former chairman of the PBS, he speaks with some authority on the irresistible influence that broadcasting can have on the impressionable putty brains of Maltese viewers. To read Sammut's script for this terse scene, one can only lament the loss to the country's dramaturgical heritage that his competencies did not also stretch to screenwriting. This is, after all, just how people speak in real life and these are the genuine dilemmas that real people, one's without newspaper columns, have on a daily basis.
Sammut's version even has space for a saintly conscience in this scenario, albeit one that sounds more like the wife of Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons ("Why will nobody think of the children?") than Thomas Aquinas:

"But what about the institution of marriage, the social fabric, the family as the basis and core of our society, the good of the children?"


"But where does one draw the line?" Sammuts asks further down the page. Or, to read between the lines, "Is this waffle enough for this week?"
Sure enough, once Sammut becomes bored with his the voices in his head, he summarily signs off with an unenthusiastic call for a referendum on divorce, a Hail Mary and what almost sounds like an apology:

"Personally, I tend to be against divorce, but then who am I to impose my views on what might be a majority of the people?"

Only Criminals Don't Want to Be Nationalist

People never ask, although they should, how this site (which will probably henceforth be updated at least once a week) chooses it subjects of scrutiny. What threshold of rank foolishness must one overstep to qualify for the treatment?
In truth, the answer is sometimes a matter of fairly dry statistical inquiry. Consider, for instance, the automaton-inspired writing of Malta's uninspiring answer to Herbert Norkus, the future onorevoli Mathieu Cilia.
As has now been decreed by the Nationalist mother ship, all communications with the civilian untermensch must open with declarations of the party's unfettered passion toil and, er, labour:

"The outgoing year has been a busy one indeed for the Nationalist Party youth section."

What humane mission can these selfless militias of national pride possibly be undertaking? Why, reaching out "to the younger generation who are often labelled as being reluctant towards politics", naturally. Not reluctant to embrace the deathly throes of Cilia's crushingly beige ideology?! What responsible and strapping youngster would not embrace the possibility of latching themselves into the suicide belt of tedious mediocrity by their venerable early twenties?
Because even Cilia cannot be so obtuse as not to realise that convincing the impressionable is not as easy as it looks, he is compelled to raid the thesaurus for variations on a theme that he hopes will distract reader from the inherently staid quality of his organisation. He thus refers to "new jobs" (twice), "the young" (twice). "younger generation" (twice), "enthusiasm" (three times), "change" (twice).
But because Cilia is as obtuse as he looks, he couches his weirdly patronising allusions to the young in the setting of adult approval. The "younger generation", for all their enthusiasm, are still there to be judged by him and his middle-aged peers. At one point, he recounts how debates have been "well attended by politicians and experts in the various spheres who listened to the valid suggestions of the young audience". One can only imagine that the events were indeed attended by the self-important idiot classes that populate Malta's corridors of influence, who would occasionally condescend and evaluate the validity of the young people's views.
Because what Cilia omits to mention is that politics and politicians (both mentioned twice) switch off swathes of the Maltese "younger generations" because they do not offer engagement and dialogue (not mentioned once) but grudging acceptance into a moronic cabal of mutual gratification.
And where do statistics come into this? What words other than the mini-me management speak would a more effective propagandist utilize to appeal to the young (granted that nobody but a halfwit would use The Times to perform the deed). Engagement? Cilia does not mention it once. Dialogue. Nope. Talk. Nah. Conversation. Not. Honesty. Nyet. And the list goes on.
When he talks about work, he refers to his own party. When he talks about jobs, he does it to boast about the factory line employment that passes for economic progress these days.
How about his single use of "elections", which he uses to crow about his party winning, but his failure to acknowledge "democracy". And how about "solidarity" and "justice", popular slogan words when his party actually meant something to people other than its supporters? Zero.
If he trips himself up through the involuntary sins of omission of a prematurely middle-aged political hack, it is his grotesque aping of his adult models that really show him up for the fraud that he is. This is where the piece must end, because anyone who cannot see the perverse irony of a man supposedly tasked with galvanizing the young writing the follow sentence is already a lost cause:

"… pensions reform, which is an urgent matter if we, the pensioners of tomorrow, want a secure future."

Time Waits For No MEP

You read David Casa and wonder why Shakespeare ever bothered. For every word that the Bard has either invented or replenished with new meaning, another one has been stripped of all significance by Malta's champion wallpaper impersonator.
For several sentences into his appropriately titled article "Turning the Page", appearing in Tuesday's edition of The Indpendent, he manages to drone pointless about the symbolic value of the new year:

"A new year is like a new chapter in a story. It is a continuation of the previous one that brings new changes and new challenges. This New Year, Malta will start reaping the fruit of our hard work. A year that brings with it alterations, both on a local and international scene. Changes we should learn from so that we will be prepared for future challenges."

Next time this man comes professing his beliefs in a bid to be given another go on the gravy merry-go-round (which goes nowhere, unlike its locomotive variant), dust off the remarks above. There you will find the words of a man with a mind admirably uncluttered by original thought. Or any thought at all, for that matter.
Redundant as it may feel, force yourself to parse the extract for its almost superb elusion of substance and rank tautology.
A "new year", Casa says, is like "a new chapter". A "new chapter", he adds helpfully, in "a story". Like an aboriginal tribesman taught how to read a watch, Casa is astounded by the notion of sequentiality and novelty. Though, of course, this is deeply insulting to even the most primitive caveman, who indeed understands perfectly well the mechanics, if not the metaphysical implications, of chronological progression. For millennia, human beings have measured out the seasons and even hewn stories from natural processes that underlie our earthbound existence.
If anything, scientific and cultural modernity has brought us to an intellectual impasse in this regard. We are taught in our schools that time is an arbitrary and abstract principle, a conceptualization of an inexistent fact. Even in story-telling, it is now foolhardy to assume that "new chapters" signify novelty, moving forward. Even as far back as Lawrence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" that crude simplification of the narrative flow was questioned. Some of Andy Warhol's infamous experimental films, Empire and Sleep, further tested the presumption that lies at the heart of this cultural postulation.
Indeed, when Casa implies that the "new year" is a " continuation of the previous one", you have to wonder where he stands on all the ideas floated in the preceding paragraphs. How, bearing in mind how far our collective contemplation of chronology has come, could anyone seek to argue that one year is a continuation of another year? This very though turns the brain inside — Casa's intention perhaps.
While this is all a remote possibility, what seems more likely is that Casa's are more political than philosophical. Maltese politicians labour under the puzzling conviction that the people are braying for their pearls of wisdom, read by the masses much like a Palestinian dispossessed might huddle over his thumbed copy of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion.
To whom does the possessive pronoun refer, for instance, in the sentence "Malta will start reaping the fruit of our hard work". Would it be cynical to suggest, maybe, that this stuffed suit Eurocrat party hack could be so presumptuous as to believe himself and his smug party burdened by messianic toil, like latter-day Stalins working by his night-lamp.
Having established the concept of chronological progression, for example, he alludes to Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, which he again implies (ungrammatically) might have benefited from his efforts:

"Being a member of the EU-Bulgaria joint Parliamentary Committee, I am very pleased of (sic) the success achieved by this country."

As though only the halfwits dumped onto these pointless committees can take pleasure in the accession of this "new" EU member. The corollary to this self-centered sentiment is presumably "Not being a member of the EU-Romania joint Parliamentary Committee, I am not very pleased of the success achieved by this country".
The game, based on Casa's ego could keep a particularly stupid child happy for hours. What about "having been born in 1968, I am very pleased of the independence of Swaziland"? But, "not having been born in 1969, I am not very pleased with the moon landing". Ab initio ad nauseam.
A whole article of meaningless and self-gratifying drivel, he rounds up with yet more claims of epic labour:

"Another 12 months of hard work are waiting for us. 12 months of challenges to improve our country and marketing our abilities to attract investment that will solidify our economy."

But David, with all this heroic Stakhanovite sweat you shed for Malta (and Bulgaria), how will you find time for these articles and your new website, www.davidcasa.eu?

Sixteen Degreens of Credibility

The dial on the Geiger counter of stupidity at The Times has finally spun off its spindle. There is no point trying to be all fancy about it, or approaching the painful truth in narrowing circles of inferences. What analogies can fully encompass the foolishness of the president of the General Workers Union.
As always, some balance must be struck in assessing the full scale of Salv Sammut’s assault on accepted norms of sense and coherence. Any newspaper editor worthy of that name should understand that their job is to edit. Usually this means re-writing and re-arranging, but just as often it means cutting. Understandably, the meek editors at The Times might be unprepared to incur the wrath of the leader of Malta’s most credible trade union. But they would have to do no more than direct to slightly more credible publications.
Taking a cursory look round the opinion pages of the days international press, there is some indication of how these things ought to be done. The influential Burt Reynolds-impersonator Thomas Friedman’s column about China in today’s New York Times comes in at a fairly substantial 800 or so words and succeeds in sticking to its subject from beginning to end.
Picking an article at random from Times of London, we find a modest 730-word diary piece by erstwhile-anarcho-Trotskyist-but-latterly-contrarian-libertarian Mick Hume. Even the pompous Sergio Romano only manages a positively Ethiopian 550 words in the Corriere della Sera. And so and so forth. Across all nations and media cultures, it is an accepted wisdom that opinion columns begin to suffer past the 700-800-word mark. And The Times of Malta is all the proof you need of that. By the time I.M.Beck is preparing to wind up and head for the restaurant-of-the-week home straight, the sneaking temptation to go run the car engine and pull out the rubber hose starts becoming very real. And he’s one of the vaguely amusing ones. Sort of.
Sammut’s effort, coming in it a wheezing 1,057 words, does not pay heed to these conventions of brevity, and his editors do nothing to help him out of the hole he digs himself into. It is a standard litany of pompous cretinism about credibility, a word that he uses no less than 16 times, so there is only a cruel kind of enjoyment to be had in savouring its details. The contrived attempt at erudition of the opening paragraph is only one instance of this cringe-worthiness. There he relates, with undisguised admiration, details from the decidedly un-syndicalist life of the Cynic Diogenes:

“It was in his nature to live in an empty tub and walk through the streets of
Athens with a lantern in his hands in broad daylight.”

That Sammut aspires to the values of a man that lives in a tub, an empty one at that, is probably quite revealing about his own credibility.
The article turns out pretty quickly to be Sammut’s riposte to a television program that he saw which he didn’t enjoy very much. Which is all fine, of course. Malta is quite used to having this bickering played out publicly like some kind of junkyard dog-fighting contest.
But at the point Sammut should probably have been thinking of making his concluding remarks, something odd happens. As he writing the frankly disturbing words below, his eyes wander off and, it is likely, his legs too follow suit towards the television set:

“Credibility is a universal problem. It could be talked about and scrutinised in
every sphere of life. But it most distinguishes itself in politics. This is the
arena where it is most violently raped.”

When he returns to his seat, he begins with:

“As I write, the news that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been found
guilty and will be punished for his crimes has just been broken.”

Just like that! And so what started out a slightly idiotic stream of consciousness item of recrimination becomes a thoroughly bizarre foray into international affairs, a subject that I was unaware came within the GWU’s remit.
Which brings us back to our original point. What exactly was the editor of The Times doing while he was meant to be pruning this article, or even better throwing it straight into the wastepaper basket. Hiding in a cabinet and waiting for Salv Sammut to leave the office is my guess.

Wholly Fool

Can a man be good without knowing it, or to phrase this quandary in Christian terms, can a man be good apart from revelation and the grace of Christ? The question has troubled the minds of some of the greatest moral philosophers and theologians throughout history. Thomas Aquinas would argue that for the man that could conduct himself in a model fashion within the civic context, goodness is indeed possible. But what is this worth in the absence of Christ?
Here, let us dwell upon the redeeming quality of logic and reason in the timeless dialogue with this enigma. Aristotelianism brings us frustratingly close to the essence of being, in its moral fullness and its complex examinations of goodness and its opposite; evil. And then, of course, there is Desmond Zammit Marmarà.
In the cosmic order of things, what is the moral value of a man whose essence, utterly divorced from the very slightest notion of either logic or reason, nonetheless lightens the darkest corners of the most melancholy soul? On what side of the Lord does the Punchinello archetype sit in all these grand celestial designs? The buffoon is after all a lord, if only of the absurd. A fool is sovereign over his own moral and emotional destiny, but is this autonomy a reward of subterfuge and low cunning?
Naturally, this is all the domain of mystery. To preserve the commedia dell’arte analogies, is Zammit Marmarà the comic and sometimes wily harlequin servant of countless opera, or the clumsy Petrushka of Russian folklore. An additional nuance to this query is lent by the latter figure. The original Petrushka comedies began to be sanitised in the early 20th century, at which point they were increasingly interpreted as a ill-coordinated marionette of childish appeal. Before then, in conformity with the often gruesome traits of Russian folklore, Petrushka was a murderous fool and no benign bedtime figure.
Perhaps, though, we are casting the net too far and back. For anyone who sniggered at the primitive spectacle a weeks back of a North Korean newsreader announcing her country’s entry into the ranks of nuclear powers, the tone and content of Zammit Marmarà’s latest column will seem strikingly familiar:

“I often meet people, whose involvement in politics is minimal, who ask me: ‘When one separates the facts from the fiction created by the Nationalist media about the Labour leader, who is the real Alfred Sant?’ Since Dr Sant will, hopefully, be Malta's next Prime Minister, this question deserves an immediate answer.

First of all, Dr Sant is a great leader. He brings out the best of the people who work for him, tolerates no incompetence but always adds a humane touch to all his actions…”

On this occasion, it is quite impossible to selective pluck quotable extracts as there as little in this article which cannot be savoured for full comic effect. All the text invariably evokes the kind of decadent laughter one might have imagined only existed in the performance halls graced by the Catholic Institute’s travelling troupe.
I have rarely seen an audience as gripped by hysterical laughter as the one I saw in Birzebbuga primary school reacting to some forgettable gag about pastizzi. For the more blue-eyed reader, it should be explained that this was an astoundingly gynaecological joke, which put lie to tired observations on the sexual immovability of the Catholic order, it must be said.
Anyhow, lest one should harbour illusions as to the virtuousness of the amusement to be derived from dipping into Zammit Marmarà’s breathtakingly craven musings, this is the level of wit we are operating on.
Which brings us inexorably to the opening point. What does natural order reserve for the joy and mirth that such tripe brings to the ordinary working man? Before rushing on to metaphysical matters, however, should the Maltese public not at least be urged to clamour for this man to awarded some sort of honorary republican order?

Roam Around the World

Correspondence in the local Maltese press regularly treats the reader to heated polemics about the most adequate fashion in which to translate particularly problematic items of new vocabulary. This emphasis is unfortunate, insofar as it serves to needlessly exaggerate the inadequacies of the Maltese language. It is, in fact, a pity that more attention is not paid to those aspects of the national tongue that are so nuanced and exclusive as to present a point of pride. Perhaps the best representative of this select vocabulary is the word “miskin” as when used to describe a pathetic person.

To be exact, this particular meaning of the word is not solely limited to Maltese. Predictably, it contains same shades of significance in Arabic, from which language the word is derived. Less intuitively, the dialectal Sicilian usage of “meschino” (as distinct from the purely Italian word, meaning petty*) also carries the same effect. In all instances, however, the term conveys an understanding a pathos-laden condescension that the English “wretch” does not satisfactorily capture.

In wanting to illuminate the puzzled learner of Maltese though, one could do much worse than direct the enquirer to Roamer’s most recent column. In truth, almost any of this person’s columns would be useful in this respect, but wanting to establish a hierarchy of miskin-ness, it is as well to start from the top. Meanwhile, for connoisseurs of world cinema, the most useful analogue would be the itinerant, hopelessly benevolent and ultimately doomed priest hero of Luis Buñuel’s sadistic masterpiece Nazarin. Indeed, beneath all his Panglossian incoherence is a pitiable core of tragic simple-mindedness.

From his opening sally, Roamer pleads for compassionate mercy in the face of his own inanity:

"(a bit of a roam around if you will forgive the dreadful pun; plenty of other sources for Budget observations and comments)"

It is frankly inconceivable that this pun, which is barely a pun anyway, has only now come to its author’s attention. Indeed, it always seemed more likely that the very pen name was itself an improbably ironic inversion of the column’s indefatigably parochial worldview. As it is, the joke itself is piteous to a degree that only Maltese is able to properly express.

Sure enough, the article proper begins with a stunned awe that lends more than a hint to the startled attitude one might expect of a rabbit caught in headlights. For some unfortunate species, this experience can constitute a transient moment of sensory displacement; for Roamer and his ilk, it is a permanent state of being.

"Ever since God sent the earth spinning on its axis the only person who will be able to stop it spinning will be God. Meanwhile, we must watch in some amazement, at least, and with some degree of horror, or amusement at what is going on around us."

Sure enough, he soon comes to his insular senses after this initially galactic survey. In the course of roaming around the world’s hotspots, which are apparently ordered in importance in direct proportion to their distance from Roamer himself. About Iran, he notes worriedly:

"Nearer than is good for us, Iran continues on its course, a course it denies, to create a nuclear bomb."

Not too close for little skirmishes though:

"Proxy wars may be a better bet until such time as proxy outruns its meaning."

More reassuring for Malta is the ongoing crisis in East Asia, as Roamer explains in this bizarre sentence:

"Further than is bad for us, North Korea's declaration that it carried out a nuclear test, set a tiger among the Bambis in Asia and China the lion-hearted."

From the safety of his bomb-proofed bunker, Roamer does feel emboldened enough to launch the odd fusillade at the real villains of our time. Like his equally humourless British counterpart, Simon Heffer, Roamer presumes that referring to informal politicians in formal terms makes for a devastating putdown. And “Bill” Clinton is spared nothing in this verbal IED:

"William denies the charges [that he did little about the Al-Qaeda threat] even if he could only show, as signs of his determination to come to grips with Al-Qaeda, a few missile attacks lobbed into Afghanistan that served no purpose whatsoever except to give America's enemies heart - this after the destruction of American embassies in East Africa and an attack on an American warship. And we saw him earlier this month, his jaw set and resolute, his eyes glinting as he finger-wagged a reporter this dodgy dodger who dodged the draft and became the commander-in-chief of the forces of the United States."

And with an unwieldy pedagogic lurch forward, he projects his roving beady eye to South America. One eye on his trusty Atlas Four and his fingers flicking through a 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, he courses his pioneering path forward and, largely, downwards:

"To the south of the United States lies Brazil and next to it, Venezuela. They are both in the news for a number of reasons. Brazil, which is 4,000 km by 4,300 km and a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty"

But there is nothing more comforting after almost 2,000 words of roaming (and rambling) around the globe than to return to the homely bosom of Christian issues, namely the decline of the institution of marriage and humanity’s general descent into a moral swamp of Godless iniquity. And after that, a quick anecdote about the time that actor Robert Morley gave an entire speech with his flies undone.

* To be exact, “meschino” did mean “miskin” in its archaic form, although this now remains a largely regional variation.

Di-ving into the Deep End

Much has been made of Malta's recent historic victory over the mighty football titans of Hungary. To put this in some context, consider that Hungary drew 0-0 against Croatia during qualification round for the 2006 World Cup. These results would appear to demonstrate that Malta is, statistically speaking, a superior footballing to even England, which was disastrously, defeated 2-0 by Croatia last weekend. All thanks, it might be added, to the efforts of Marsaxlokk striker Andre' Schembri.
However, as I noted in the comments section of the Lanzarote blog, the achievements of the Maltese national team are as of nothing when compared with the historical ascendancy of Marsaxlokk F.C. The most recent development is that Marsaxlokk have gone top, having defeated the only team that can really compete against them... Marsaxlokk.
Now, I have never subscribed to the fashion of deriding di-ve, which I find somewhat akin to firing Katyushas on a Sisters of Mercy orphanage, but this latest blunder is truly a masterstroke of editorial incompetence:

"Marsaxlokk rose to the top of the table when they beat Marsaxlokk in a kenly contested encounter yesterday."

It is frankly surprising that in addition to the existing squiggly red and green lines that Andrew Borg Cardona relies on so completely to make his I.M.Beck columns sound literate, there isn't also a third variant which signifies "you are complete frigging moron". For the sake of di-ve’s editorial team, one can only hope that the word processing program in the much-awaited Microsoft Vista operating system has been accordingly upgraded.

Sewer and Be Damned

How Anthony Licari fumed indignantly when it was suggested on this site that his writing had all the coherence of that which might be expected of a person under the influence of hallucinogenic substances. Not that it was written by an actual drug user (a useful legalistic distinction, it seems to me); just about as grounded in reason. Indeed, for all the indubitable harm that droppers of acid cause Maltese society, they could rarely be accused of the kind of teeth-grinding tedium and stultifying senselessness that this country’s columnists have inflicted upon their readers.

Back in the day, Licari harrumphed, as is his prerogative, about nameless trolls foaming at the mouth, referring ever so obliquely to Fausto Majjistral and myself. On that occasion, his peculiar brand of writing was so suffused with feverish purpleness and meaningless non sequitirs that it is unlikely that anybody but the people in question had the faintest clue what he was on about. His clumsy attempt at caustic invective thus fell catastrophically flat on that occasion, though I would be lying if I did not say that his words did leave an impression on me. After all, he may have had a point.
Is it my place to question the pronouncements of a person who has studied at three universities, a fact he takes much pride in? Unlike Licari, I am not a lecturer in psycholinguistics (or sociolinguistics and geolinguistics, for that matter), and can therefore not presume to question the state of mind of a person capable of giving form to this sentence:

"Meanwhile, the sick brandy continues to make us smart and reel. For, after all, it was said that I am the coach and I like to react to serious advice with loud, metallic, hysterical laughter while playing the lyre. This continuous laughter by conservativo maximo is getting on the nerves of the Nats."

For those unwilling to read the original article, let me explain. Incidentally, you would not be blamed for the omission, for the piece is most, how shall we say, literarily challenging (ahem). In launching his ruthless excoriation of the Malta Tourism Authority’s recent activities, he begins with a bold and fittingly linguistic sleight of hand. As even the most dull-witted reader will apprehend, the word brand, as in “Brand Malta”, is quite similar to the word brandy. Well, quite similar.
Ok, this next bit is a tricky. Once you have established that the two apparently unrelated words are phonetically (is this right, Anthony?) consonant, you then use one to refer to the other. Thus achieving wit. So, but sick brandy (hic), he means a medicinal cure that makes you reel and, well, er, you get it
Admittedly, that one was hard. Let us try a real easy one next. When you want to make people laugh uncontrollably at your mastery of the humorous idiom, merely use a word to mean the opposite of what you intend. Cynics will object that this device, known as sarcasm, is “the lowest form of wit”. But as any schoolchild can tell you, “wit is the highest form of humour,” and sarcasm gets no wittier than when it is deployed by Malta’s most accomplished geolinguistician:

"Few people would not admit nowadays that tourism is enjoying a lovely nosedive as a result of incompetence, inefficiency and downright pig-headedness."

But Licari is not just about wicked wordplay and verbal mastery. He isn’t pulling his punches when it comes to weighty social and academic issues that dominate the day. Indeed, he is thirsty for scientific rigour and will resolutely refuse to give in to ham-fisted approximation and obtuse generalisations:

"Men of the West seem to be increasingly finding wives and partners in Eastern Europe. No formal scientific study that I know of has attempted to analyse this phenomenon. However, Western newspapers, often for reasons of sensationalism, like to print stories about East European women who have 'tricked' West European men."

He later concludes that these people are little more than “veritable village idiots”, so not a lot mileage there it turns out.
On and on it goes in this eclectic (erratic and incoherent, for the Philistines) vein. Yet, the last paragraph did force a theatrical double-take out of me. And please recall that this is written by a person who took such umbrage at my decidedly restrained characterisation of his excruciating articles:

"Cartoonists are an important element in journalism - even if few of them have actually followed a course in journalism and I don't understand how they are called "journalists". Even less journalistic are cartoonists who have an obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions and with whatever belongs to all things biological and putrid. If you know anyone in this pathetic psychological situation, please be a good Christian and suggest to him/her to visit a psychologist who can identify the origins of such morbidity before moving on to its possible cure."

Coyly, with a cheeky little finger poised over his mouth Austin Powers-style, he is effectively implying that Maurice Tanti Burlò is clinically insane and possibly suffers from faecal fixation. I feel entitled to say this as he does after all invite his reader to nominate candidates with “obsession with the vulgar, with toilet functions”.

I’m not certain that Tanti Burlò is actually obsessed with toilet functions (there seem little grounds for such a sensational charge), but if Licari has such a valiant belief in his convictions, as he has indeed previously claimed, perhaps he ought to be that kind Christian and issue his benevolent invitation to Tanti Burlò in his next column. As a psycholinguist, heaven knows that he is considerably more qualified than me to perform the deed. He wouldn't want to appear hypocritical now, would he?

Would You Like Food With Your Salt?

As the Book of Proverbs tells us, “he that has knowledge spares his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is counted wise: and he that shuts his lips is esteemed a man of understanding”.
As this quote evidences, even the teachings of the Holy Scriptures show us that baby Jesus would appreciate it if, from time to time, such people as would be normally predisposed to brimming over with pointless waffle would only restrain themselves from stating the obvious. Yet for all their Solomonic wisdom, what the assembled busybodies behind the Book of Proverbs potboiler could not have apprehended back in Bible days is that newspapers simply do not write themselves. No indeed, people like Frank Salt write them.
When Salt first began writing his pieces for The Times, people might have been forgiven for wondering how his real estate background could possibly give him the grounds to set forth on whatever tickled his fancy. My own dealings with estate agents have gratefully been circumscribed to their periodical extortion of my earnings and the odd call on my part to complain about a mouldy fridge. If, however, Matthew the estate agent had ever presumed to come round to my flat to share his views on the importance of a prudent fiscal policy for a country's stability, well I'm not sure what I might have done.
If, moreover, he had shouted advice on how to save water through the letterbox while I cowered behind the sofa pretending to be out, things could have taken an ugly turn. After all, just like lawyers, estate agents are at best licensed thieves. You would no more ask an estate agent for energy-saving tips, than you would ask a cat burglar for advice on what locks to install. Sure enough, Matthew (that weedy little creep) never transgressed in the ways described above. But not so Frank Salt.
Having gorged himself to satiety on the easy riches that a profession that even a trained seal could master without much difficulty, Salt has imperiously announced that he has no aspiration to see his fellow countrymen join him in his state of Cheshire cat smugness.

"I know it might sound strange, but one of my worst nightmares is that Malta strikes a lot of oil in our territorial waters, become a very rich country, and then the population will not have to work or want to work, so they sit down and do nothing."

Do nothing but write barely literate columns for the Times that is.
But before the Maltese reader is tempted to cast themselves into deeper penury by furiously flinging their PC out of the closest opening of their windowless hovel, please consider that ceci n'est pas une article, as Magritte himself might have quipped.
Sure enough, a quick scan down the page reveals the horrible truth that Frank Salt is "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate". When the clods at the MTA are not doing a group impersonation of Inspector Clouseau, it transpires they might be taking the advice of this erstwhile camarade de bataille in their bid to civilise the semi-feral Maltese nation.
As is often the case with self-appointed sages, Salt deals with onerous burden of concocting actual solutions with a dizzying hail of rhetorical inquisitiveness:

“Now what will happen when the low-cost airlines start coming to Malta and become very successful? Make no mistake about it, in the future they will be very successful indeed, and so too will Air Malta. What will happen then? Will some of these new tourists be accommodated in the same substandard hotels? Will some of our hotels stay in the same dilapidated condition they are in now? Will these hotel owners say thanks for the tourists and do nothing to rejuvenate and renovate their premises?”

This passage reeks of Salt’s terror at how Malta’s barbaric lumpenproletariat will foul up this golden opportunity. And, as we all know, estate agents are such a delicate breed.
As usual with these wretched columns, the substance is Procol Harum pale and found ferreted away in some apologetic mouse of a paragraph:

“The Malta Tourism Authority has established rules, regulations and standards, and these must all be enforced properly so that when we receive the large increase of tourists that will definitely be coming to Malta and Gozo, they will all be accommodated at a standard they deserve.”

In short, the MTA should do its job, instead of rushing around and overacting like some pantomime dame. But since Salt himself is the "the former chairman of the MTA's Product Planning and Development Directorate", you have to wonder how many of those halcyon days were spent in the shameful indulgence of getting “away with not doing anything”.

Praise Be to Sant

After a few month's break from blogging (about The Times anyway), the time seems ripe to return to the activity. For a start, one can only hope that the private investigators that Anthony Licari was implying he wanted to put on my tail will finally have lost the scent. This particular bloggist has been half way across the planet to ensure that would happen. And so much more has happened in the meantime.
The Fool's Cap has assiduously slipped off the blogrolls of even the most faithful admirers and hateful antagonists. Racial intolerance very much remains a feature of Maltese life, although an unprecedented proliferation of shiny magazines has happily taken people's minds off such depressing matters. Planes continue to crash into New York buildings, but they are now much smaller and piloted by baseball players. The Education Channel still exists, but it unaccountably becomes older with every day that passes. Apparently, the bank in Albert Town was closed down years ago. I wish someone would tell me these things.
But The Times... The Times of Malta remains as ever the last refuge of every mental halfwit that metaphorically wanders into its empty vessels. Ever it was thus.

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It has surely been observed here before that some things are simply beyond mockery. Yet, with every passing Wednesday the preoccupying prospect of that prat Alfred Sant presiding over the proud provinces of Malta as Prime Minister presses upon its proletariat with preoccupying proximity. To read this preceding sentence with anything resembling discernment would necessitate the inevitable conclusion that it was largely nonsense. Any sensible editor would be excused the act of transforming prose (oh God!) based upon such a patently childish ludic concept as that of insisting that all titles begin with the letters "PR" into an improvised game of wastepaper basketball.
For those disposed to believing the most outrageous conspiracy theories, it might be considered that The Times has long been operating on the principle of "give them enough rope". And if Alfred Sant has hanged himself four score and seven times already, let nobody accuse of him not being willing to rush headlong into more punishment.
Before anyone think that this blog’s hiatus has transformed its author into an acolyte of the lazy I.M.Beck habit of relentlessly laying into the same straw man of politics, it should be said that Alfred Sant was quite justified in objecting to a recent vignette depicting him as a purveyor of drainage, or something. The original cartoon, drawn by the spectacularly untalented and unfunny Maurice Tanti Burlò, was crude and stupid. It was also a supremely pathetic attempt at satire at the expense at a person not running country.
But, on the other hand, if you will look for it, as Sant does on a tragic weekly basis, you will get it. Of course, any fool can titter at him for poring over his partly very well-thumbed dictionary for inspiration. Not any fool, however, could foresee that Sant would raid his record collection in his ever more desperate hunt for ideas. So it was that this week’s article, Procol Harum pale, came to be.
With a doleful attempt at distraction he tries to claim that it has not taken him literally a week without sleep to write this article:

“In the past few weeks, I worked closely with the Malta Labour Party's spokesmen on working conditions and on youth affairs, as they finalised draft position papers and plans on these subjects.”

If only, he must have been thinking to himself at the time, you could switch around the letters ‘d’ and ‘p’. But what the hell is a praft dosition? That won’t work. Little does he know that PRAFT stands for Predator/Red Alert Fishing Team (according to Internet acrnomym finders anyway), a theme that could finally compel him to discuss the disgracefully neglected area of Marsaxlokk-related issues. But what with Mintoff’s summer house in Delimara that would not do at all.
Well, much in the way that customers of long-defunct Marsaxlokk video rental outlet Green Dash would wear out the tape of Best of the Best by fast forwarding to the climactic fight scenes, seasoned Sant-watchers have learnt that the fun of his articles lies in scanning ahead to the tenuous substance of his column’s title.
And how much waffle we had to put up with this week. First, some rubbish about globalisation, labour markets and how he used to attend Socialist International meetings. After these reminiscences about his Leninist youth, he gets rather disappointingly to the point:

“When analysts talk about the ‘friction’ of labour markets, as they still do, they refer mainly to the social legislation which protects workers' rights and conditions, and to the role of unions. Such rights and conditions should no longer be printed in bold - they have to be made pale.”

What exactly that means is anybody’s guess. Although, much like Anthony Licari, I have studied at three universities, only one of these institutions has been infested with the revolutionarily disposed left-wingers that spout this sort of socialist mysticism. And those people I avoided like the plague. And on and on he goes about “friction” for several more paragraphs, doubtless disconcerting his “PR” regular.
Yet, if ever there was a case for letting Sant getting to the end of things, that is to be found in his columns. After stringing out a whole article on the back of the weakest imaginable analogy, he breaks the suspense with this wet fart of a conclusion:

“The pressure continues from people who prefer it like this: they come from the corporate world, naturally, but they find supporters from within the centre-right political spectrum. The perspectives they promote remind me of a hit song by a forgotten pop group of the late 1960s, Procul Harum, as they repeatedly call for a whiter shade of pale; for the paleness we have is, in their view, still not enough.”

Prathetic. Absolutely prathetic.

Drowning in Tolerance

Just to digress from the formerly established pattern, I am making a break from comment on printed media to pass a brief comment on a recent Internet-based initiative undertaken by blog enthusiast Jacques René Zammit.

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Earlier this month, the lamppost movement published its manifesto. As the document explains in introduction, the lamppost serves to be a platform as well an umbrella, an odd sequence of images that conveys more a rainy train station on a Tuesday evening than a progressive organisation.
The blog calls for comments, which I have decided to offer here in some greater length than I would prefer to volunteer on the forum provided. As the overly rich combination of images and intentions of the manifesto alluded to earlier suggests, some of the core issues of discussion may be fundamentally linguistic in nature. Some time back, I encouraged Sharon at Lost in Thought to throw out a few provocative questions on her blog in an attempt to incite some discussion, and hence understanding, of the themes underlying the decidedly medieval fashion for door-burning and racially intolerant rhetoric taking hold in Malta. Ultimately, the discussion proved unfulfilling and was relatively unsubscribed to, which is a shame, because explanations should ideally be sought to social problems before setting forth into nominally noble and grandiloquent affirmations of love and respect for one's fellow man. Consequently, amidst the austere legalistic framework of the manifesto, which looks like it owes more than something to formative mini-European assemblies, the author(s) speak of how they are:

"Alarmed by the current rise in acts of intolerance, violence, terrorism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, racism, exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination directed against national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, refugees, migrant workers, immigrants and vulnerable groups within societies, as well as acts of violence and intimidation committed against individuals exercising their freedom of opinion and expression – all of which threaten the consolidation of peace and democracy, both nationally and internationally, and are obstacles to development."

The very notion of tolerance is then used as the defining issue for the first article of the manifesto. However, as Zadie Smith recently noted in an interview of Radio Tre (available here, listen from 5:09 for the relevant remarks), tolerance is a concept that cuts in both directions. As Smith correctly observes, tolerance is the sensation one feels when someone on the train plays their stereo too loud. It's irritating, but you can put up with it.
As a concept, tolerance has several centuries of vintage to it and is not the enlightenment novelty that we might immediately assume it is. Mindful of the fact that this is beginning to sound like a column in the Sunday Times, it should be recalled that as early as the 13th century, Pope Innocent IV observed that it was not desirable for natural law as understood by ecclesiastical authority to be imposed upon the non-believer. From this, there derived two basic propositions - first, that which is tolerated is synonymous with evil; second, the application of tolerance serves merely to pre-empt the prevailing of a worse evil.
These remain the basic principles that define, if not inspire, tolerance on a popular level. As I attempted, not very clearly, to argue in e-mails to Sharon Spiteri, tolerance understood as the act of "putting up with" represents a far more ominous and real threat than the likes of Malta's budding far-right.

The Maltese have, after all, with their centuries of Catholic piety become experts at the art of making the right noises about loving one's neighbour while stabbing them in the back and gossiping about them at every available opportunity. This means that the effort to browbeat people into saying the right things about the minorities may be the easiest part of the challenge that the lamppost initiative is taking upon itself.

To get real about this, though, it is unlikely that Malta could ever feasibly support what could truly be identified as an actual minority. In this sense, the commendable effort of the lamppost movement/platform/umbrella should perhaps address the not only the roots of racial disharmony but also the benefits for a mature society that has evolved enough to see past the primitive conception of race relations as they currently stand. After all, the embrace of diversity is not an aspirational value in itself, but a means to a culturally sophisticated society. Arguably, Malta’s relative failure to produce a genuinely exportable and compelling cultural product to reflect its modern self is a product of the insularity that has provided fuel to the “current rise in acts of intolerance” cited by the lamppost manifesto. Before descending into serious rambling, I will leave this observation here for now. However, I would like to state that although I certainly sympathise with the goals envisaged by this project, there is some reason to feel that its constituent principles have erroneously superseded the process of understanding that such an exercise entails. I have no sense that this has really taken place.

God Save the Queen

It is hard to tell when Kenneth Zammit Tabona writes about the Queen whether he is referring to himself or to the sovereign ruler of the United Kingdom, or Queen Bess as he chummily refers to her. As testament to his fairy-footed effeteness, the opening paragraph of his latest column is nothing but a sequence of prosaic affectations worthy of I.M. Beck at his very worst:

"To most of these 'gels' with more money than sense, the intricacies of equine bloodlines and speeds per furlong are a cabbalistic mystery; not so to Her Majesty, who, while her troops suffer needlessly in war-torn Iraq, is content to leave King Tony in charge doing the real work and getting all the flak for it too. The Queen may know all there is worth knowing about quadrupeds but where survival is concerned she is certainly no fool; she also has no hang-ups and insecurities as far as original millinery is concerned!"

What all this literary mincing all means is quite beyond me, though I am fairly confident Zammit Tabona is attempting, with embarrassing amateurishness, to satirise the mores of the British upper class while simultaneously working in some acerbic political commentary. While I have absolutely no interest in dwelling upon the merits of the Queen's constitutional authority, I am worried that the moment has come when any oaf can exercise himself in feeble caricatures of figures of authority. Not that these people are not deserving subjects of criticism or mockery, but the twittery of such commentators as Zammit Tabona cannot but serve to undermine the validity of such endeavours.
His giddy opener, however, soon reveals itself as nothing but a prelude to a broadside against the peccadilloes of "the hapless Victor Emmanuel wannabe IV of Italy". I confess that my free time is fairly limited these days, but should KZT wish, I could quickly glance over his preposterous articles before he files, if only to sort out the woeful mish-mash of demotic styles and hone the P.G.Wodehouse-lite tone every other Maltese columnist believes they are affecting:

"Elizabeth II, despite her disastrously deficient progeny, is, despite the Mrs Bucket hats, a success story quite unlike the hapless Victor Emmanuel wannabe IV of Italy, now languishing in an Italian gaol on charges of prostitution and corruption. Having lived most of his life in exile, this descendant of kings, emperors and dukes, cast to the winds the overriding maxim that royalty has to live automated lives as chevaliers sans peur et sans reproche."

As if the vaguely schizophrenic quality of most Times' columnists were not bad enough, almost all of them are forced by the childish layout of the newspaper to indulge in a string of non sequitirs loosely linked together by transparent, and ultimately failed, devices like the following:

"The Casa Savoia has lost the plot for good.
Therefore to move to a slightly different location, Brussels, we have had some equally contrasting voting by our own home-grown MEPs."

The "therefore" festers there like week-old roadkill, but it does the job. As much as it may look like it, Zammit Tabona’s 1,305 words of drivel will not just write themselves. Sadly, for the
long-suffering readers of The Times, they won’t read themselves either; so, on and on, you must plough on through an alternation between faux profundity and domestic troubles so trivial they sound like the transcript from a fishwives’ conversation.
Suitably, his concluding paragraph is a chronicle of political and journalistic squabbles so clearly designed exclusively for Zammit Tabona’s own insular readership that he cannot deign himself to make any sense at all:

“In addition, Charles Polidano was reported to have had a violent altercation with a fellow columnist [Note: As violent as a handbag to the face can be] about whether he is or isn't a baron. I believe the case has been referred to the Committee of Privileges of the Maltese Nobility and is being considered. Despite all this David Casa attended the rally because he said he believed that the environment was the PN's top priority and had the audacity to mention the landfills affair that was stopped simply because a brave MP had the gall to stymie his own party. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando where are you?”

Horse Sense

All the seats on the bus are free and he has to sit next to you. Why? That's right, I'm talking about Austin Sammut. Happy as you go, you're turning the pages of The Times towards the latest instalment of the Wizard of Id and a happy half hour on the wordwheel. Maybe even a quick look at which famous people were born and died on the day. Yi Sun-sin, the famous Korean admiral, born today? Wonders never cease!
And what's on Prime tonight? Ah, Keeping Up Appearances. That program will literally never cease to be rip-roaringly funny. Which is just as well, as people from Cape Town to Kowloon must have had to watch the damn thing more than a thousand times over the last ten years.
And so on and so forth.
But then that wretched Austin Sammut had to ruin it all. His column on Tuesday, mostly about scratched pavements, believe it or not, was partially redeemed by this snippet, which has something ever so slightly Beckettesque about it:

"I had one relief. There was no horse excrement around. A miracle indeed."

He had one relief, ladies and gentlemen. If you listen very carefully, you may just be able to make out the sound of a bead of sweat sliding down his clammy face. A miracle indeed!
And on and on and on he drones. Next, as you wish you could whisked away by death's munificent grace, he begins to bang on about rubbish, like some kind of pantomime mother-in-law:

"The latter council cannot even keep garbage away from our capital city's noble street corners (I wrote to them about this months ago and have been totally ignored) - but perhaps that's the wardens, and, again, more later. Explanations from all and sundry would be most welcome. I have seen excrement bags under the backsides of horses all over Europe, but why not here?"

Or to put in other way:

"I told about her about the state of that road. It shouldn't be allowed, I tell you. I told 'er about that road before, it wants cleaning. What are the neighbours going to think? Oooh me back. Been to the doctor. No good. Says it's psychosomething, bloody cheek. Mind you, I told 'er about the road, you should have seen it last Sunday, covered in rubbish it was. It's no skin off my nose, but what are the neighbours going to think? And them horses. Without the bags. It's a disgrace. Mess all over the shop. What are the neighbours going to think? I can't see what she ever saw in 'im."

The column is written from beginning to end in this bumbling, but ultimately hard to dislike, fashion. Who could be so stony-hearted as to fail to fall about laughing at Sammut's low comedy depiction of street wardens' antics? In my mind's eye, all the action he describes has been speeded up in the style of a Keystone Kops comedy, with Sammut playing an irrepressible Harold Lloyd-type character, one moment being pounced on by a street warden, the next he is running along the street holding a bucket under a horse's soiled bottom, and some day perhaps he'll be hanging off one of the clock faces of Mosta Cathedral.

Turning Over a New Leaf

I imagine that I was not the only one affected by Blogger's lapse into crapness over the weekend, so I have taken the opportunity to toy with a new layout. A company of web designers has charged me a reasonable fee of Lm1,500 for a look that I find both fresh and sober. They have given me their solemn word that it is completely original work, and I for one do not intend to doubt them. Readers may rest assured, however, that the content will remain as stale and repetitive as ever.