I.M. Beck - quote unquote

What a sad lot the MLP machine makes itself out to be. Their Supreme Guru, Doctor Alfred Sant, has fixated on another wheeze, another slogan, if you like, embodying this peculiar notion that he has that the country's woes will be solved if he is put back into power.

His notion is predicated by the assumption, of course, that the electorate, having booted him out a scant 22 months after the Nationalists lost the election to him in 1996, would be bemused enough by his smoke and mirrors to vote him back in again.

So the machine trundles into action, with the E(M)C's of this world droning out the message every hour on the hour: Fenech Adami has not risen to Doctor Alfred Sant's challenge to hold an early election.

Now, where have I heard this sort of political thought before?

Oh yes, on the playground when I was about seven, when chants of "Johnny is a scaredy-cat, Johnny is a scaredy-cat" rang out everytime one toddler failed to do something that another toddler thought might be a fun thing.

Doctor Alfred Sant doesn't look like a toddler, of course. Not even when having a bout of pong ping for charity. No, he looks the part, right down to the reasonable tone (except when telling a EU representative that she is a Taliban with a tongue fit only for biting off) and the simpering smile. Tony Blair, of whom more below, would be proud of him, carrying the New Labour Torch high and proud.

But, boy oh boy oh boy, he sure can act like a toddler, ignoring the conventions of the Constitution with an insouciance that would be breathtaking were it not so puerile. The fact is that, under our Constitution, the PM calls an election when he is good and ready and no amount of playground posturing or taunting is going to have an iota of an effect on him.

Not that the reality of any situation is going to have an iota of an effect on Doctor Alfred Sant, of course, who after the electorate took to its senses and booted him out in 2002, with a landslide majority for the other side in Maltese terms, he started whining about the government being illegitimate, a position only he could understand, given the size of his defeat. I seem to recall that he was blaming the Nationalists for his trials and tribulations at the hands of Dom Mintoff.

Whining Cherie

New Labour lives and breathes in the United Kingdom of Her Majesty's domain, you will be glad to know.

The Spinner-in-Chief's wife, lauded to heaven and beyond as a shining example of wife, mother, professional person, Prime Ministerial consort and nice appendage to have around for when Our Tone struts the world stage, has come crashing to earth with a little thump. The thump would have been little, no one really giving a rat's tail about Cherie Blair's cock-ups, had the New Labour Machine in the UK not gone into overdrive to try to protect the good name of His Toniness.

The basic facts of the matter are that Mrs Blair-Booth QC (the latter two letters signifying that this is no babe without a brain, she's been found worthy by her peers for elevation to a plane of legal beaglery that is of the highest, and that's pretty high) made a bit of a mess in buying a couple of flats in Bristol, of all places, having taken advice from a bit of a crook.

Now, her being a brief of the first water, you'd have thought that she was used to dealing with crooks, but, hey, we all make mistakes and had she come out with her hand up, saying "sorry, folks, missed the plot there, will do better next time," as most of us normal folks do when we bungle it, things might have been a bit different.

But not, this is the New Labour Nobility we are talking about, Camelot come home to rule, shining out as an example of we can do no wrongness. They, the New Labour Spinners, know it all and then some and they assumed, wrongly, that they could spin the story into touch.

Buzzz...wrong answer. The tabloids in England, ever eager to give the media a bad name (rather like KullHadd here, they don't have a red top for nothing you know) jumped down Cherie's throat and started to worry her like a rabid dog worries a particularly dim sheep.

There being little honour among spinners, the New Labour Machine turned over a couple of times more and then spat the little woman out into the cold dark afternoon in Downing Street, to face the media on her lonesome.

And out she trotted obediently, a New Labour Woman doing her New Labour Husband's bidding.

With a tear here and a gulp there, a fleeting reference to her family, a gut-wrenching (wrenched with nausea on our part, of course) nod towards the flight from the nest of her son (to University, not exactly unheard of) this paragon of feminist virtues denied her background to save the moment.

No longer Cool Britannia, doing it all with one hand tied behind her back, Cherie Blair became a bumbling housewife, bouncing haphazardly from wall to wall in a haze of events happening around her, just because she had to try to make sure that His Grace, Tony, could come out of this smelling of roses.

And then people ask why I don't like New Labour. At least the old lot were thugs who made it pretty clear where they stood - this lot don't even stand all that much, they just lie down on their backs to have their tummy scratched or play dumb.

Closing doors

Going on in parliament about that most absorbing subject, agriculture, an Opposition member, whose name I missed, enunciated that the Labour Party never closes doors, they leave them open to all, never missing an opportunity.

Or something like that.

I wonder what the Machine did to him when he stepped down. That's not the message we have to give, was probably the message thumped into his head: in this party, we close the door, with a resounding wham, to the European Union and we treat our listeners like mushrooms.

Feeding mushrooms different types of fertiliser confuses them, so let's keep them happily in the dark and feed them one line of fertiliser shall we, and not have any more guff about open doors and that sort of thing, OK?

And while on the subject of the EU and opening doors, do you think an election or referendum might be on the horizon? The signs are there, of course, the MLP is opening its doors to all sorts of people, not least of whom are the hunters.

While New Labour in England, who are just as bad as this lot here, are doing their best to end hunting once and for all, New Labour here, going its own sweet way as usual, is embracing the hunting lobby with both hands, which is a peculiar way of winning votes, given that most people in Malta rather don't like the idea of birds being blasted out of the skies all the time.

But that's New Labour, of course.

And then there are the usual whines about how parliament will lose its power when we get into the Union, because Brussels will decide everything, which I think is a sight better than having everything decided by Mile End, which is what would happen if the MLP get into power, they having made it clear that it will be government by Labour for Labour and for Labour only.

Sig. Romano Prodi, just to carry on with the EU theme for a moment or two longer, has, according to the MLP Spin Machine, said that partnership is possible, which has been latched onto by that lot as an endorsement of their position on keeping Malta isolated from its true destiny.

Which it would be, quite honestly, if anyone had the slightest idea what this partnership means. Of course it's possible, we could have a partnership with the EU like that what the Chinese have just set up in the shipping sector, free access and trade across borders. Is that what Doctor Alfred Sant wants?

Dunno. Dunno if he knows, either. It's about ten to midnight, in electoral terms, and he hasn't told us what he means yet. Is he going to get round to it at any time, or is he hoping that we will have such a blind faith in his negotiating prowess that we will buy his story sight unseen?

Maybe because stars and stardust can get into our eyes and distort a true vision? A single light like that coming from maltastar.com can and should identify the truth with laser precision, for instance.

This latter load of peculiar stuff came from Richard A. Matrenza, who is a Maltese Social Scientist, writing in maltastar.com.

Hot stuff

No dinner to report on this week but I had lunch at Trattoria Palazz which was excellent, if hot. I chose Filetto al Diavolo and, boy, was it devilish. An excellent piece of beef, with a sauce made of molten lava and peppers that lay there, waiting to pounce on your taste buds, was served and on the first mouthful, I had to reach for an extinguisher like there's no tomorrow.

My fault, of course, that the top of my head came off and steam blew out of my ears, because if I hadn't wanted a hot one, I would have ordered something else but I love this stuff.

The staff, always attentive, rallied round with remedies such as Perrier by the gallon (can one still say gallon?) and cooling carrots and bread to mop up the palate.

A truly enjoyable, if mildly electric, experience. If you like it hot, go there. Go there anyway, because the other fare is just as good.