I.M. Beck - quote unquote

I don't know if it was marketing that Doctor Alfred Sant majored in when he was doing his DBA at Harvard, and I'm not sure if I care all that much, but if it was that aspect of the managerial arts that he imbibed when he was sipping at the fount of knowledge Stateside, verily he sipped well.

He's managed, for the time being at least, to market that most important of all products, himself, in such a way as to overcome the handicap that should have consigned him to the very rubbish bin of history.

The handicap of which I mumble, of course, is his knack of losing Labour virtually every election into which he leads them. In 1996, admittedly, he won, but hey, in 1996, even my late granny, dead these last 20 years or so, bless 'er, would have won.

Hardly had Doctor Alfred Sant's posterior graced the PM's chair in Castille than he decided, for reasons known only to himself, to risk all because of a spat with the irrelevant Dom, over a flipping yacht marina, of all things. The risk didn't pay off, as we all know, and by rights he should have been told to take a hike by the people who count within the MLP.

But he clung on by his fingernails, to lead them into glorious defeat in the EU referendum and even more inglorious defeat in the general election a few short weeks later. In the meantime, he kept his hand by getting thumped in the local council elections.

Did this mean that the dear fellow finally took the hint and decided to do a what's his name and walk off into the blizzard, never to be heard of again?

Nope, he did what every self-respecting sufferer of power famine does, he rebranded himself and got himself a nice new image, of New New Labour, I assume, complete with new Deputies, having neatly got himself shot of the other two, who no doubt will now see themselves being blamed for all the trials and tribulations suffered by Labour, while Doctor Alfred Sant comes out the other end smelling like a rose.

It's not of his Deputies only that he has got himself shot, of course. I wouldn't have thought it possible but Emanwel or Manwel Cushcieri has also found out, the hard way, that in politics there is no gratitude and if you suddenly find yourself being seen as an embarrassment, it matters little that when you were actually an embarrassment, you were useful, it is out into the wilderness that you are cast, post haste.

And as has been done to E(M)C, so shall it come to pass that it shall have been done to all the other faithful who were so supportive of Doctor Alfred Sant when he thought he needed them.

Now he thinks he doesn't need them, so they have become expendable, cannon fodder, if you like, to be sacrificed at the altar of keeping Doctor Alfred Sant at the helm, so that in five years' time, in his own words, he will be prime minister.

What the people who re-elected Doctor Alfred Sant to the leadership don't realise, naturally, is that the electorate, while it does tend to be easily swayed, can't be that stupid as to forget that the man is still the same one who promised "war, war, war", and who came up with every weird and wonderful crack-pot theory known to man in an effort to get votes from any available Tom, Dick or Harry.

All that remains to be seen now is whether the new crew espouses the same ambition that Doctor Alfred Sant espouses, namely to see the great man ensconced on the prime ministerial throne. If they do, then they're looking down the barrel of defeat's gun even at this distance from the next election.

The next lap promises to be interesting down Mile End way, as Labour tries to make everyone forget that they were as rabidly anti-EU as Mr Mintoff and his buddy, Dr KMB, and as Doctor Alfred Sant tries to get through the first couple of years, knowing full well that if he gets through those, there's no one that can touch him in the run-up to the election.

Booking problems

No, this isn't a whine about Air Malta or anything like that, it's just an oblique reference to the mv Doulos issue that is trundling on and on.

Just to put things into perspective, had this tub contained a consignment of jeans and a crew of capitalist louts and exploited Filiponos, no one would have raised a peep if they had been banned from parking against our wharves and flogging their wares.

Why should anyone have objected, let's face it? In order to sell stuff, you need to have a VAT number, you need to employ people in accordance with the law and, generally speaking, endure all the bureaucratic tortures involved in setting up shop and doing business. So you can't have just anyone swanning in on a rust-bucket or whatever and dumping their goods on the market.

Not even the most rabid freemarketeer would advocate this: it would be as bad as telling people that they can't build any more hotels because there are enough beds on the island.

The problem with the Doulos, though, was that these weren't jeans that were being flogged and the crew weren't filthy capitalists and down-trodden wage-slaves, they were happy, clappy Christian volunteers.

In the current climate, with Tellyvangelists infesting our screens on a 24/7 basis, the mere allegation that someone is a Born Again Thingy means that said someone is elevated to the levels of sanctity that allow him to transcend any shadow of commercialism.

I am congenitally uneasy, let it be said, about any restriction at all on freedom to impart information and banning the sale of books is - taken emotively - only a few steps short of burning them, though not so many years ago, certain books were banned from sale here and no one made a fuss, because the Church had a hold on things.

It is irrelevant that the books that have been banned now are, ironically, saccharine sweet moral tracts (I know there are others, too) and innocuous, if not right up to date, textbooks, the fact is that the perception is that the government has interfered with the sale of books and the opportunity for the great unwashed to obtain reading matter for not very much dosh.

Of course, the eagerness with which people flock to book sales such as this demonstrates the reluctance that people have to pay what they think is over the odds for books brought to market in the regular way.

There are arguments on both sides about the price of books but I must say that I do feel mildly violated when I shovel over my credit card and see the amounts being punched up against it whenever I go book buying, which is often.

Reviewing the revue

No, it wasn't the Rowena Grima Show, as I had been led to believe before I trotted off to the Manoel to see Revueing the Situation, Masquerade's curtain-lowering on the season. It was the Alan Montanaro, Ray Calleja, Isabelle Warrington, Godwin Scerri and Rowena Grima Show, because the whole lot of them put up a performance that was a joy to watch and, more importantly, to hear.

If the show was just a touch longer than it might have been, this was more than made up for by the enormous fun that was had by all, not least the actors.

It would be invidious to single out any of the players for individual praise: Rowena Grima's Flower-arranging Matron was perfection, Godwin Scerri's various manifestations of a dirty old man (careful not to get type-cast, Godwin) struck closer to home than I would have liked, Alan Montanaro was, well, Alan Montanaro and Ray Calleja's Romeo was Shakespearian in quality. Isabelle Warrington deserves an honourable mention.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt