I.M. Beck quote unquote

I thought I would be able to ignore the racists this week, but sadly, I can't. This week, it's personal. This week I came across a post by Mr Norman Lowell, who was showing himself in his true colours and riding unashamedly on the killing and wounding of two policewomen in England to make some racist point or other. His vapid verse style was used, as always, to call people names and to denigrate anyone who had caught his beady eye.

This in itself is nothing new and nothing of great pith or moment.

However, this week, Mr Lowell, Sir Norman as one sad member of the forum calls him, this particular specimen clearly being impressed by someone whose ideas and philosophies are quite a few sandwiches short of a picnic, went just a bit too far.

Referring to yours truly, to Daphne Caruana Galizia, to the Jesuits and to the various other NGOs that have shown disdain for his disgusting theories, Mr Lowell threatened that "They will all pay for their treason./They will all wish they were never born./There are not enough lamposts".

Just to be clear, so that anyone with even the meanest intelligence, such as the people who think that Norman Lowell is someone to be tolerated or, to boot, given some credence as a thinker, will understand me, this foul-mouthed peasant thinks he can threaten and intimidate people like me, who dare to point out that his theories are racist and unworthy of a civilised people.

He is threatening us with death by hanging from a lamp-post, simply because I, and people who think like me, are opposed to him: because this, according to him, is treason.

The people who think Mr Lowell is amusing, colourful, partly right or whatever will tease me, with a smug smirk on their faces, that he is getting under my skin and that I shouldn't over-react.

To these people I will reply that Mr Lowell and his band of social inadequates, who can't even organise a five-a-side soccer match without taking five or six weeks about it, can bring it on whenever they like, they don't worry me, but threatening people like this is nothing more and nothing less than base thuggery. Which is nothing more and nothing less than you can expect from a racist redneck, after all.

Choggle on

Tony Zarb and his merry men over the last week have been having a jolly good time. First they went to the airport to hand leaflets out to the arriving delegates and media people, here for CHOGM 2005. As a side-bonus, Mr Zarb and his mates then found themselves on Net TV, being interviewed by Karl Stagno Navarra, who was trying to figure out precisely what the GWU officials were proposing as a solution to the woes about which they were protesting.

One of the GWU officials, the deputy general secretary, no less, mumbled something about being a puppet of Europe (and he wasn't mumbling fondly, either) and when asked who was being a puppet, Gejtu Mercieca shot back with: "Your government, that's who".

Luckily for the GWU's image with their European buddies, Mr Zarb cleverly ensured that Mr Mercieca got nowhere within sound-biting distance of a mike again.

Then the good old boys and girls of the GWU had themselves a bit of a stroll down the road. At the time of writing, and with my deadline well and truly looming, I have absolutely no idea how the GWU's demo went, but I'm sure it went swimmingly.

There was something of a body of opinion that they shouldn't have held the demo at all, because of "washing dirty linen in public" and "giving the impression we're an unstable country" considerations, but frankly, that's a load of tosh, because the democratic members of the Commonwealth know that little things like the GWU's demonstration are signs that the country is in rude democratic health.

What the undemocratic members of the Commonwealth think, of course, fails to interest me in the slightest.

One should, of course, give the Commissioner of Police a little slap on the wrists for giving them permission to hold the thing in the first place. By so doing, he deprived Mr Zarb and his comrades of the chance to feel all heroic and revolutionary by taking to the streets in defiance of the regime.

I know that feeling, I used to get it back in the early 1980s.

While on the subject of CHOGM, can I make a proposal, which echoes one made by means of a placard on the Labour Party club in Republic Street? Could we have a CHOGM every year for the next four years, one in each remaining corner of Malta and then in the centre, with the last one in Gozo?

Just to end on a positive note, a quick congratulations to the veteran PBS commentator, Charles Abela Mizzi, for not succumbing to the temptation to use "il-President u s-Sinjura tieghu" all the time, saying "il-President u martu" instead, and correctly.

He showed up the amateurs beautifully.

Right on

A couple of weeks ago, I promised to mention in despatches the first reader to e-mail with the context of the reference to TPLACs.

Well, it was virtually a dead heat. First in was Mr Darren Azzopardi, who correctly identified the reference as coming from the superb "Yes, Minister" series, while hot on his heels was Mr Colin Camilleri, who also get a mention for reminding me that it was from the "Official Visit" episode.

Excellent, gentlemen - and for those of you who think that being anti-racist means being obsessively politically correct, TPLAC stands for Tin Pot Little African Country.

Those guys were right.

I, on the other hand, was wrong, miserably and utterly and completely. The people who run the excellent Jubilee cafés are not surnamed Vella but Scicluna and I hereby grovel in absolute and unconditional contrition.

All I need to do now is find out who introduced one of them to me as Vella: perhaps it was one of their delectable cousins, down from Up North to celebrate the opening of the Gzira addition to the family empire.

It also seems that I got the Christian (well, you know what I mean) name of one of the contributors to the racists' favourite website wrong.

This philosopher and scholar is Malcolm and not Malcom Seychell and I extend my humble and unreserved apologies to the dear fellow for the shame I have brought on his family escutcheon.

That makes two of us.

Munch on

My efforts to seek out places for you and yours to stuff yourselves silly continued unabated last weekend.

We went off to Can Thai at the Fortina to try it. Having seen quite a bit of advertising for a neighbouring establishment by some Chav Z-List Celebrities, we thought we'd give it a miss and went to this place instead.

The food, I have to say, was pretty good. I like satay and spring rolls and fare of this ilk and it was well cooked and smartly served.

However, when one pays something just south of Lm20 per head (our bill came to 19 quid and we didn't have any dessert, being unable to communicate sufficiently with our serving lady to determine whether there was anything available other than some pretty sad looking cake) without over indulging on the wine and sundry other alcoholic beverages, one expects an experience which is a smidgeon more exhilarating than the one we experienced.

There was nothing much wrong with the meal, let me hasten to add. A plate of rice that came to the table cold was replaced swiftly and the service, small communication problems apart, was perfectly adequate.

It's just that at that sort of price, you expect better than "hotel catering".

At the other end of the scale, price-wise, is Straws, the sandwich bar at the bottom of Prince of Wales Road on the Sliema side, which is what everyone calls Manwel Dimech Street.

I was going to write that the price is wrong, as in it's too low for the quality of food and service, but I thought that would be giving Lino and Mrs Lino ideas about putting the price up, which would not make me popular with the punters who flock there daily for lunch.

I've only recently come back to Straws, now that the son and heir, the one who has given me a banking (withdrawals only) licence without the tedious necessity of getting the MFSA to agree that I am a fit and proper person to hold one, lets me take him out to lunch every so often (that is, when he's hungry, which is always, and his schedule allows it) and I am glad to report that it's as good a place as it always was.

Some things don't change, thankfully: in fact, they just get better.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt