Yes, folks, you read it here first - summer is almost officially over and our most earnestly beloved honourables will soon be at it again, refreshed from their summer break and raring to go.

One such refreshed honourable gentleman is Doctor Alfred Sant, who has returned amongst us after his trip down under. Yes, it is he about whom I am going to discourse, fully aware that there are some people out there in reader-land who think I write about him too much. Well, there are some people who think about the revoltingly racist radical right too and also some who think that when I write about the best team in the world, I'm going on a bit too much, so all I can say is, if you get bored when I write about something, skip it.

Don't skip too much, of course, or else the dream of the sore losers (and that's not spelt l - o - o - s - e - r - s, you silly bigots) will come true and I will be banished forever from these columns, like Mercutio or whoever it was.

To be getting back to the good Doctor Alfred Sant, verily he is back, rather like I am Beck (what did you expect, scintillating wit and humour or something? It's still September) and back with a bang he is too, being interviewed on Super One in a wide-ranging way, covering all the bases, as it were.

So, according to our Prime Minister in Waiting, when the Malta Labour Party (the real one, not Dr Anna Mallia's here one second gone the next version) is installed into government, he will do all manner of good things.

Well, more precisely, what he actually seems to have done, rather than tell us all what he will actually do, is push all the buttons, the ones guaranteed to get his breathlessly bemused followers to breathe somewhat more easily.

Thus, when the MLP are in, immigration will be tackled because as soon as the government-that-will-be sees that the country is not getting support from the rest of Europe, it will take unilateral action to protect Malta's interests. What this action will be Doctor Alfred Sant does not, surprise surprise, tell us. Naturally, this action will not include letting the immigrants drown or booting them off the beaches, as Lowell's band would have us believe is the solution, and I doubt even Doctor Alfred Sant's delusions of omnipotence stretch to his believing that he can fly the immigrants out willy nilly.

Oh well, just so long as he said he's going to do something, that's all right then.

The next thing Doctor Alfred Sant said he will do is stop the golf course in Ghajn Tuffieha. The only thing is, he said he'll put one into Ta' Cenc (not too many voters there, it seems) and one into Maghtab, though he'd do well to check how much this will cost - it's not going to be cheap by a long, long shot.

You can just imagine him sitting there, mentally ticking off items from the list of mentionables. "OK, I've appeased the bigots and the greens, who next? Ah, yes, all those people who think that they have a divine right to park in Valletta." So, he's going to take care of the Park'n'ride Scheme, he is.

And so on and so forth, ending up with the usual stand-by, taxes and his pledge to be nice to the small self-employed (unlike the bigot Lowell, who wants to string this porky columnist up) and to reduce bureaucracy and generally make this Heaven on Earth for the private entrepreneur.

I know this relentlessly opportunistic playing to the gallery is what politicians do best, but it doesn't mean I have to sit back and admire it. No doubt the Desmond Zammit Marmaràs and Lorna Vassallos (when she isn't producing the late Pope's plays, of course) of this world are taken aback by the sheer brilliance of Doctor Alfred Sant's telling us that he's going to do something about things, but I, for one, would prefer it if he told us what it is he's going to do - even if he only does this little thing just once, for a change.

Wow, gee

Some Church commission or other recently laid down the law from on high, telling that the waste-recycling plant in Marsascala was a good thing or something environmental like that. It might have been that it was a bad thing but since the pro-PN media headlined it, I somehow think it might have been the former option.

Precisely why the Church has got it into its collective bonnet that it should make pronouncements on matters environmental is not immediately clear to apostates such as I. Or is that supposed to be "me"? I'm sure some intellectual will dedicate a couple of columns to that particularly searing question, along with an explanation as to why the accent acute (sorry, can't do a French accent) is the only accent that an English keyboard is capable of producing (not that I would have noticed that there was a difference but then my mother's tongue wagged only in the local vernaculars).

I mean, I would have understood it if, say, the Church had decided to lend its not inconsiderable weight towards prodding the national consciousness away from bigotry and xenophobia and more in the direction of treating people with a basic - not to say Christian - humanity.

But tampering with the greenery? Aren't there slightly more important - or, better put, more pressing - issues with which the monsignori should be concerning themselves? After all, one of their number is a prime target for the revoltingly rightist racist ruffians (or, I should say, used to be, since I don't waste much of my time reading their rubbish any more) so shouldn't the people who matter within the Church come out with it once and for all and condemn racism and all its manifestations?

That sad subject

I don't, as I mentioned last week, visit the losers' website all that much any more, except to have a quick look at the threads which mention me (and even that is becoming a boring experience - read my lips, losers, I will not resign and I will happily fly in the face of the opinion of whatever percentage of the country is bigoted) but a friend e-mailed me the suggestion that I should have a look at the front page of their site.

So I did. Have a look at the front page, I mean.

This is the front page, mark you, not some thread or other started by some more rabid a lowlife than the norm: this is the official stance of the people who run the site, the ones who, if they knew the meaning of the word, would be responsible for its contents.

And on the front page, what does the casual surfer find, other than a couple of re-printed pieces from that other paragon of liberal thought, nationalvanguard.org, which pieces gloat - visibly and without even a trace of embarrassment - over the fact that the majority of people affected by Hurricane Katrina are black?

I had long come to the conclusion that these people, all couple of dozen or so of them, are, in the main, unfit to be called decent. There are some of them who seem to believe in what they're about and who don't pollute their posts in the various threads with racist bigotry but then you get vileness like this being posted at the very front of the site, which immediately devalues to the point of inexistence anything positive that might otherwise struggle to come out of it.

The people who post in the site can squeal and bluster and threaten and hurl insults at me all they like: the fact remains that they are vicious racists who only write what they write because the 'net is - as it should be - unrestricted.

Enough of them, now, I'm almost sorry I ever mentioned them but sometimes you have to lift up the stone to see what's squirming about underneath.

Good stuff, bad stuff

A few quick ones to close, some good, some not so good (a bit like the guy with no shoes).

A good one: hunting and trapping is to be restricted even more. Restricted to the point of eventual removal from the national psyche, one hopes.

A not so good one: Lija residents are planning on having a birthday party. Apparently, it's almost two years since a retaining wall collapsed near the football pitch and no-one has done anything about it. I don't know whose responsibility it is but the pitch is about two yards from the local council offices as the chucked parking summons flies.

A pretty weird one: a nice new wine bar in Fontana, on the road up from Xlendi, advertises good food and a pleasant terrace on which to enjoy it. That's until you roll up to the place and enquire about food, the serving thereof, on a Sunday evening, to be told that there isn't any. Oh well.

A good one with a bad side: the Malta Red Cross leapt into action to collect aid for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, as this heroic society does always, the bad side being that it is the greatest economy belonging to the world's only superpower that they are having to help. George Dubbya's guys really messed up this one.

Two good ones, to do with face stuffing, to be going on with. The place on the Waterfront, La Vita de La Vallette (or something on those lines) is always packed, and sometimes orders go a bit awry - this is only a problem if the problem is not handled well and when we had one, the floor manager handled it superbly.

We will be there again and often, even if the racket from the bar next door is mildly OTT. An old favourite was revisited on Tuesday evening, the pizzeria at the Xara Palace in Mdina and I kid you not, it was probably the best pizza I've had for a long time, with service to match.

And a really excellent one to finish up with: Classic FM, a UK station that you can hear through Campus FM or streamed on the 'net, are giving great coverage to the tenor Joseph Calleja, who they justifiably recognise as a great talent, and consequently to Malta.

A standing ovation, please, to this gentleman.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt