I.M. Beck - quote unquote

You keep hearing that Labour have turned over a new leaf and become all cuddly and reasonable, seeking to become a real alternative to the Nationalists. To do this, they have to appeal to the middle ground, the ground that occupies virtually the whole of the Maltese political landscape.

One of the traits that alienated the MLP from the middle ground (let's not put too fine a point on it, shall we? We're talking about the middle class, really) was their obsession with instilling animosity into virtually any argument they proposed and getting personal with anyone who dared to say anything that they didn't like.

After the last election and the tanning they were dealt by the electorate, the people who matter at the MLP took the bold step of removing (E)Manwel Cuschieri from the airwaves, which was a move that probably will win them more votes in the long run than anything. Well, it would do if they carried on down that road, but the evidence last week was to the contrary.

Gino Cauchi, who always gave me the impression that he was one of the more reasonable sort of professional journalists who would, given the chance, distance himself from the dirt-dealing that characterised the emanations from the Super One studios under the disguise of news and comment, saw fit to come up with a piece on Marisa Micallef Leyson that plumbed Cuschierian depths.

According to Mr Cauchi, columnists in the English language press have been mobilised to start an attack on social services, the sub-text being that these hacks have been given lucrative political appointments in exchange for their journalistic favours. Ms Micallef Leyson chairs the Housing Authority and earns a decent (but only a decent) living from it. By Mr Cauchi's logic, she does this because she writes things that favour the PN, not because she is qualified (which she is, demonstrably).

Just in case you missed it, Ms Micallef Leyson wrote a column some days ago about how people (including unmarried mums) living in pocket money land claim and use social benefits when they are patently not in need of them and for reasons that are not the ones for which social benefits are given. She did not write that all unmarried mums do this, only the ones who live in pocket money land, but this subtle distinction seems to have escaped Mr Cauchi, who chose to spin the story in such a way as to show Ms Micallef Leyson to be unfit to hold the office she holds on merit and how she is just out for the money.

Cheap is too good a description of this shot, but it's the only one that is available, since the lawyers will cut anything that describes Mr Cauchi's piece more graphically.

And just so I can add to Mr Cauchi's pretend-paranoia about columnists, incidentally, I'll add my two cents' worth: our social services (including the national health service) just can't stand up much longer under the onslaught of undeserving claimants who go whining off to their MP (of every hue) if anyone dares to try to stop the drain. The people who need them are going to go under with the ones who don't and cheap shots by Gino Cauchi and his like are just going to hasten the day.

And, while I'm about it, let me say that I am sick and tired of my tax money and my social security payments being used to pay for benefits and services for people who don't deserve them, don't need them and don't do anything for them.

Read my lips, Gino Cauchi: this does not mean that I am against social services being available for people who need them. Is that clear or are you going to add me to the list? Shall we then start thinking about you as the McCarthy of Malta, out to purge the media of undesirables who dare say things with which your party decides you should not agree?

On English

A piece in the glossy, First, that comes out with the competition on Sunday, had the word separation spelt incorrectly many, many times. It had it spelt once correctly, which means that the person who put the piece together either does not know how to use spell-check or she had it turned off and mistyped the word once and didn't notice.

Oh well, this is the same type of professionalism that thinks that there's nothing wrong with spinning the operatic rip-off that was La Boheme into a success story by using an estate agent whose job (quite understandably) is to show Portomaso in the best light available and a chap whose job, as marketing man for the Hilton, is to do the same.

In case anyone thinks I'm obsessing about that blasted opera, I have to react to being provoked by having pieces shoved into my face by so-called independent publicists for the organisers of the debacle that contradict the feedback I got being at the disaster and from the comments I got then and since.

And then there was a piece in The Sunday Times about MITTS and the team-building initiatives it promotes. The only problem was that before going on and on about team building, the person who wrote it (clearly a publicist for that august institution) should have taken a course in writing English.

And so it goes on, the invention of a new pidgin. Someone shoot the pigeon, please.

Dogmatic doggerel

A clerical gentleman by the name of Buontempo saw fit, some days ago, to regale us with some lines of verse bewailing the appointment by some sect of the Anglican Church of an overtly homosexual man as a bishop.

Presumably, if he had been covertly homosexual, that would have been OK. Just as being covertly heterosexual (or homosexual, for that matter) is OK within the Catholic version of Christianity, celibacy being what it is.

Quite apart from the awfulness of the poetry, I have to take issue with the ecclesiastical poet, who seems to labour under the misapprehension that homosexuality equates with and/or leads to paedophilia. Buzz, wrong answer, you (and your arguments) are the weakest link, goodbye.

And if I might make so bold, your Honour, it would be more seemly if a member of a Church that seems to have taken more pains to cover up paedophilia and other aberrations within its own ranks were to keep quiet about the trials and tribulations through which another segment of what at the end of the day is the same religion is going.

At least, the other branches are a bit less ambivalent about sexuality.

Doing it for laughs or what?

It being summer and me having decided to get a life (in other words, to leave the office a bit earlier than usual), I have been surfing the channels a bit more than usual and at different times.

I have to ask: is Simpatici on Super One played for laughs or is it meant to be taken as serious soap opera (if that is not an oxymoron)? I only ask because apart from being populated with the most un-sympathetique group of people I have ever seen, the plot is so awful, the acting so wooden and the general tone of the thing so depressing that sometimes I think the people making it are having a big laugh at their audience's expense.

And just when you think it's over, Viva l-Ministru comes on, with a plot line and acting and a set of production values that are even worse and this time, you know they're doing it seriously, because every so often one of the characters (if you can call two-dimensional cut-outs 'characters') delivers him or herself of some portentous utterance that is meant to impart a message to the audience.

Oh well, you can always switch over to the God Channel (I kid you not, that is what it's called) on Channel 7 and listen to some Australian going on and on and on about mind-control and invasions of privacy, which is sort of ironic, since most religions tend to want to do just that.

Brief thanks

Can I just thank the Malta Communications Authority and Maltacom for combining, I know not how, to remove the feature on Maltacom's website that lets me find out whose that scribbled number on my shirt-cuff belongs to?

Pizza à la south

It's not haute cuisine or anything like that: it's just a pizza place in St Thomas Bay called San Tumas Pizzeria (well, what did you expect, Shakespeare?) where the food is adequate but the service superb.

Seriously, the people running this place seem actually to enjoy their job and you are made to feel welcome from the moment you step onto their terrace. You get your booze and your nosh at the speed of light and with an attitude that shines in an industry that is marked by surliness and growls.

Nice one, guys.