I know that the above spelling would - in the normal course of events - qualify me to appear in my own column as a purveyor of linguistic barbarity, but in the interests of colour and atmosphere, one sometimes has to try to convey the ennui and desperation one feels by resorting to peculiar renditions of accepted words.

Just for your information, the above spelling of the word "please" is meant to transmit my deep feeling of quasi-frustration and almost-disgust (the latter being a tad strong) at the behaviour of one Dr Alfred Sant MBA, DBA and Bar, BA etc etc, whose name shall forever be uttered, especially by Super One in all its forms, with an emphasis on the "Doctor", for all the world as if the learned gentleman has cornered the market in intellectual achievement and was the first Maltese politician to get a doctorate.

What prompted this mild outburst of very mild nausea was the manner in which the dear fellow conducted a press conference of late in the company of a sprout from Brussels, a bloke by the name of Pascal Lamy, if I recall correctly. The name may have stuck in my mind because 101 in all its forms insisted on calling him that, as if the Christian name were his appellation. They seem never to have heard of the French for Mister and that it would be appropriate to use it, persisting instead in telling us his full name and surname every time they referred to him, which, given that this was 101 and they were talking about something European, was about 20 times in the first sentence.

Never let it be said that quality comes before quantity in local electronic media.

But to get back to Doctor Sant: you may be asking, by now, what it is that brought on this rush of me getting at him, as if this had never happened before. Did he threaten to cut off M. Lamy's head and feed it to the Taliban with a tongue garnish or something like that? Did he call him a lunatic or imbecile?

No, nothing as horrendous as that, of course not. The MLP Machine never descends to this depth of, well, depth. What Doctor Sant, may his degrees be forever more acute, did that was so naff was to conduct the press conference entirely in French.

You may say, with some justification "So what? He was merely being courteous to a foreign visitor." Wrong. M. Lamy, in common with most people of his ilk, speaks excellent English and needs no lessons in French from any graduate of the Sorbonne.

Maybe he was being courteous to the foreign journalists, then? Wrong again. In the first place, if you're covering foreign stories, you speak English and in the second place, there were no such beasts in the menagerie that day.

Therefore, when one excludes the obvious, the even more bleeding obvious comes to the fore, namely that Doctor Sant was grand-standing, trying to impress an audience, which was not the assembled journalists, who, not being graduates of the Sorbonne, must have been pretty baffled with what was going on.

In other words, in keeping with the manner in which his undoubted intellectual gifts have been paraded before his bemused followers, he was seeking to impress the great unwashed with his prowess, his gift of tongues.

Pretty typical, when you think about it. The message is in the smile and gesture, rather than in the real content of the words: in this case, nothing that was intelligible to the press was said but he looked clever doing it, so that was sufficient.

One wonders what someone like Dom Mintoff would have made of all this, considering that even if you dared wear a jacket in his estimable presence, you risked a dressing down. Truly a case of dalle stalle alle stelle and back again.

Enough, no more

The latest scare being mongered by the MLP Machine is that, come the day when we take our rightful place in Europe, the government will be in a position to impose quotas on the number of businesses that will be able to operate in the various sectors of the economy, of course without being discriminatory in favour of the Maltese.

Coming from a party that, in its time, had opted for policies that closed the doors on free access to the course of your choice at the University and that prevented importation of goods because they were not within the economic policies dreamt up by such genii as occupied the position of finance minister from time to time, this is pretty rich, even if inaccurate.

In fact, the imposition of quotas and the practice of restricting the participants in any economic activity (such as land development, for instance) are means of control much favoured by the Malta Labour Party, because it has always assumed that it knows best and that us poor peasants, the less intellectually gifted, needed a paternalistic government to make sure we didn't dispose of the family jewels without a thought for the future.

Of course, the fact that such artificial barriers gave rise to golden opportunities for people with the power to grant governmental favours to stick their noses into the trough helped enamour the policies to the people who had to administer them, noses in the trough or not.

But let's get back to the main thrust of the story, shall we? Apparently, Dr George Vella, who had come pretty close to saying something like - just maybe - the result of the referendum might be worth respecting, felt himself constrained to chuck his two cents' worth into the debate and proclaim, with a straight face, that when we get into Europe, the government (like there's someone else who makes decisions? the unions, maybe, or the GRTU?) will be able to decide on quotas in business sectors.

To start with, this is hardly impossible now, if the government were loony enough to try this sort of thing on and getting into Europe is absolutely irrelevant (except to Labour, who have to blame Europe for everything) and to be going on, the government already imposes quotas, say, on pharmacies and taxis and stevedores and petrol stations, to mention but a few activities.

You will have noticed that, in all of the latter, there is some sort of reason behind the quota, even if you might not necessarily agree with it, while in Dr Vella's scare-mongering, reason would have nothing to do with it. The spectre he raised involves the idea of the government telling us how many tinkers, tailors and candle-stick makers can set up shop.

And all because of us joining the EU, of course.

Precisely where the logic lies in all this is beyond me. Is Dr Vella telling us that if his lot get into power, it's going to be a free-for-all and anyone will be able to set up shop as anything at all, all the time, without let or hinderance?

Are we going to have another series of promises of everything to everyone, just as long as we get the votes, come the day?

By your leaves

I'm not much of a horticulturist, even if during my formative years I worked as a florist-driver in Maggie Thatcher's booming economy, making more per hour than I would in the next few years as a free professional.

Nor am I much enamoured of the oleander, which tends to reach out and grab my golf-ball whenever my otherwise perfect shot strays just a few inches off the straight and narrow.

But it remains a fact that this pink excrescence, perhaps not without reason the emblem of wimmin, is probably one of the few endemic bits of growing stuff on this blasted rock, where greenery and natural colour (as opposed to artificial colour, such as the figolla that is the National Stadium seen from Mdina) are conspicuous by their absence.

So when it is decreed that a cluster or so of these clumps of vegetation shall be put to death, perhaps it might be seemly to consult with the local council that has some jurisdiction over the area where said clumps have their roots?

From what I've been told, the Mdina local council woke up one morning to find that one of the squares in the Old City, that was decorated by a few of yon oleanders, no longer had this privilege, the removal of the things having been ordered from on high.

Not on, that. We don't have local councils for nothing, you know.

On the pitch

You will have noticed, astute reader that you are, that I have refrained from commenting on the fun and games going on at some God Forsaken hour over in Korea and the Land of the Rising Sun.

And before some wag amongst you says that this is because England are not exactly setting houses on fire (by the time you read this, Argentina would have done their thing to the boys from St George, whatever that thing turns out to be) let me assure you that I am not commenting on the World Cup because the last time I dared poke some fun at folk who support Italy, I was on the receiving end of some very serious threatening stuff and there's no way I'm going to subject myself to such vomit just for the transient pleasure of poking some fun.

But that doesn't mean that I am not going to stand up and applaud the way the Italians were held and given the fright of their lives one day last week, when they only managed to win at the very last ditch, having been held by opposition that was generally deemed to be inferior.

I'm talking, of course, about the real World Cup, the one for lawyers being held here at the moment and in particular, I am standing to salute the efforts of our lads, who gave ASF Roma a game and a half, taking the lead and holding it for quite some time, until the chaps from up North snatched a draw and then drew ahead on penalties.

Be upstanding, gentleman of the bar (and bar) and receive congratulations. You gave the cugini something to cry about and no mistake. And there they were, assuming they were going to trounce the boys form Malta and go on to win the thing.

Ha.

Chapel time

Din l-Art Helwa, which heroically endeavours to push back the advancing hordes of commercialism and barbarity, organises a series of concerts at the chapel of Bir Miftuh about this time of the year.

We went along to one of the series last Saturday, when three gentlemen from France took up their Japanese Spanish guitars and gave us a couple of hours of pure pleasure. One who knows more about these things than I do told me that they were the best he has ever heard and I have to say that I could hear why.

The three blokes were, in a word, superb; but this would not be my column if I didn't have a small gripe or two, of course.

Firstly, it would be nice if the people who organise these things were to insist that the photographer they engage to record the event for posterity uses digital equipment that doesn't click and whir all the time, especially during the quiet bits.

Secondly, and this is no reflection on the organisers, it would have been nice if it had not been assumed that music stops short of blues and rock. You just cannot give an accurate rendition of the history of the guitar without touching on these styles.

Perhaps the fact that France has never ever produced a decent bluesman or rocker had something to do with it?

Faces were stuffed following the concert at Grabiel, where one is given the latest news about which lawyer is about to be sent to which jail and why, or whatever, over the hubbub of a crowded restaurant, with the usual standards of quality and quantity being miraculously maintained at the same time.

While on the subject of nosh, might I suggest you don't give the Nelson's eye to the Lord Nelson in Mosta, next time you want a rather decent meal? Book beforehand, though, because last Wednesday, we just managed to squeeze ourselves in (and squeezing out was even worse, after really going over board on the fine goodies).