I.M. Beck quote unquote

Sorry if you've seen the headline 'ere above before. I'm writing this on the Wednesday after the Tuesday (as Wednesdays usually are) on which the new Labour movement (the Moviment Laburista Popolari, just to prove that the MLP doesn't have a patent on the MLP) dawned and I'm sure other headline writers will have run out of silly cracks by the time you read it.

Doctor Alfred Sant has already dismissed as a gimmick the Popular Labour Movement (to give it its English name, as devised by di-ve.com) (and which we can call PLM, to differentiate it from MLP, which is what the Partit Laburista Malti abbreviates itself as). If I had the energy I'd discourse awhile about the irony of the PLM being what the MLP should be if they didn't insist on using English and how amusing it is that a rival Labour movement that uses Maltese manages to call itself MLP too. Actually, let's call the PLM MLPv2 and the MLP MLPv1.

Confused? Me too, but MLPTwo would confuse me even more.

Anyway, we have a new Labour Party. Well, as things stand, as at the time of writing this, what we actually have is three people who have told us they have set up a popular labour movement. The leader of the Malta Labour Party, as I have already mentioned, has pooh-poohed their little effort, even if at the same time he must be feeling a bit uneasy that yet another crack has developed in the edifice that is the Workers' Movement.

A quick glance at the public manifestation of the aims of the new MLP reveals a not insignificant element of anti-EU rhetoric, accompanied by the usual dose of sticking up for the poor downtrodden non-clique adherent elements of the populace at large, wording which harks back not too far into time. Only a few months ago, Doctor Alfred Sant himself was banging these particular drums and now he's already calling the people who have carried on thumping these tubs purveyors of gimmickry.

If one were to take the dear fellow seriously, as one should, being as he still seems to think he is the alternative Prime Minister, policies such as those apparently espoused by the MLPv2 are gimmicks, presumably because the said policies are not being proposed by him.

This position simply begs scurrilous twerps such as I to ask the obvious question: Shouldn't Doctor Alfred Sant's policies and policy statements be called gimmicks in turn? What makes him so special and Dr Alex Sceberras Trigona not so special?

After all, what is more reminiscent of gimmickry? Being consistent with a position (MLPv2) or pulling u-ees every time the political breeze makes it opportunistic so to do (MLPv1)?

Perhaps you need a DBA to be able to answer that one.

Apologies

Last week's column, I noticed on reading it on Saturday morning (as one does), was pretty shoddy, in that a number of sentences appeared to have been left hanging in mid-air, with a few typos to boot.

Those were not the only aspects of the column for which I need to have a small helping of humble pie. The first e-mail I got was from none other than the Hon. Tonio Fenech, who gently pointed out that he had not, actually, said that the first three grand of host-family income was tax-free (or whatever it was that I wrote) but that taxable income started from a certain level and that with appropriate usage of such entitlements, host families would not be paying the full whack on the income they were making.

Well, I have always said that my grasp of tax law is equalled only by my grasp of Hindustani (the Northern dialect, that is) so I'm grateful to the Parl. Sec. for setting me straight on that one. While on the subject, I acknowledge also the point made by someone else who took the trouble to e-mail me to tell me that hosting students actually requires some expenditure and that it was this element that should not be taxed.

On this latter point I am as one with my interlocutor; if money is spent to make money, then the money that is spent should not, of course, be taxable, however much the Revenue want to get their sticky fingers on the moolah. I trust wise counsel will prevail and an equitable solution that taxes only real profit will be found.

So, gents, humble apologies for misrepresenting things a tad.

Just so you won't think I only got dumped on, a couple of folk wrote in to say how much they appreciated my humble scribbles. One took me to task, tongue firmly implanted, to inform that I was wrong about Dom Mintoff; he had done something positive for Malta.

He had introduced summer time.

Top rugger man

I am informed that it is not only the team and the officials that deserve a pat on the back (which I am reiterating, just to show that I still think they deserve it) for the achievements of the last months.

There is another chap who deserves fulsome praise, to go with the praise he's already got from every visiting team. This unsung hero is one Salvu Cachia, the bloke who takes care of the pitch at the Hibernians Ground, where the feats of derring-do were done by the players.

According to the information I have, which is top-notch, the pitch that Salvu prepared for the games was of high standards, it being no exaggeration, I am told, to compare it with the best that England and Italy, to name just a couple of countries that have resources of a slightly higher order of magnitude than ours.

Stand up, Salvu, and take a bow.

In the vernacular

His European Honourableness, Mr Joseph Muscat, has attracted some attention recently by stopping himself in mid-oration to underline the point that there were no interpreters available to translate his remarks from Maltese.

I have always had this sneaking suspicion that we would have served the national interest more by making a deal with the EU to save it the money that was going to be spent on translating to and from a language that most of us, while loving it dearly, don't actually need to use. The deal would have involved us being given a goodly portion of the saved dosh, of course, but the idea was always going to be a non-starter, really.

That being as it may be, Maltese is now a language of the European Union along with all the others and, it may surprise many of you to learn, I am as one with Mr Muscat in his protest. Where, pray, do the faceless functionaries in Brussels get off not doing their job by failing to get their act together? I don't need to speak Maltese and I am sure, nay, I know, that Mr Muscat doesn't either, in order to communicate my thoughts but, darn it, I have the right to, just as Tony Blair has the right to speak English, Silvio Berlusconi Italian and whoever whatever.

So, all you smug pen-pushers who think you can extract the mickey from Mr Muscat's mild broadside at the EU Mandarins, think again - he was right to do that little thing.

And, so, from now on, even though we are a bilingual country and proud to be so, I propose that Maltese only be used in certain contexts (street names and traffic signs, for example) just to drive the point home. After all, I don't get any concessions when I am trying to navigate in Germany, for instance, so why should I give any? So there.

Sideswiped

On Tuesday, it being a holiday and all that, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I thought it would be a wheeze to trot along to the cinema at St James Cavalier. There was Sideways on and it had got virtually unanimous good reviews and we had missed it when it was on at the mainstream theatres, so it was an appealing idea.

Bad move.

The cinema is fine, let me hasten to add, and the audience couldn't have been better. Nourishment in Valletta after 8 p.m., on the other hand, is not the easiest of objectives to achieve but that is hardly anyone's fault but that of the so-called entrepreneurs who leave the field fallow.

But that is not my gripe.

My gripe is that the movie was dire. A pair of juvenile losers, on the wine-trail in California to pre-celebrate the impending marriage of one of them, go from one highly unamusing misadventure to another, culminating in one of them getting smashed in the face by some female he had picked up for the purpose of fleshly gratification prior to entering into holy matrimony.

In the meantime, the two heroes behave with the gay abandon of 15-year-olds with a bottle of cheap wine and the keys to the car.

I assume the film-makers set out to produce a parody of the mores of the chattering classes, the ones who think that a wine-tasting tour, with accompanying pompous pretentiousness, is actually a good way to spend time. The thing is, the movie is American and, although this is a generalisation, I do not think that it is unfair to say that your average Yank lacks the lightness of touch and mastery of the medium to produce a decent parody.

The upshot of all this was that the film was almost universally loved by the very people it set out, hamfistedly in the extreme, to lampoon. Film critics, in the main, are people who probably appreciate good wine and who can spout drivel about it with vim and vigour, not to say gusto, so it is hardly surprising that they liked the movie. They probably convinced themselves that they were getting the joke, while the rest of the audience, poor plebs, were just laughing at the slap-stick.

The thing is, there was no joke to speak of: what you saw is what you got.

That will teach me to rely on American film critics. Can anyone point me at a website that uses English critics?

bocca@waldonet.net.mt