I.M. Beck - quote unquote

Last week, the Court of Appeal changed a libel judgment, stinging MaltaToday a couple of grand because the judge agreed with Mr Dom Mintoff, appealing (though not much), that the amount awarded by the lower court was too low as compensation for the honour that Mr Mintoff had had besmirched.

The lower court had felt that 250 quid was sufficient unto the libel, but the Court of Appeal thought otherwise, upping the ante to the couple of thousand I mentioned above. That's why there's a Court of Appeal, of course, so people who think they haven't got what they deserve further down the food-chain get a second bite at the cherry. It was perfectly possible for the folk at MaltaToday to have appealed against the finding that the publications in question were libellous of the Grand Old Man of Maltese Politics (and before anyone reaches for his brief, I've got my tongue in my cheek) but they didn't, so by implication, they have to be deemed to have accepted that they had trampled on Mr Mintoff's honour.

The increased contribution to Mr Mintoff imposed by the court on MaltaToday raised the hackles of this worthy publication, understandably. They were moved to making public pronouncements about the whole sorry affair, among which pronouncements was one about how they would not be throttled.

And so say all of us, all of us in the commenting classes, at least. This judgment would seem to give the lie to the old journalistic adage that comment is free, though the problem is, actually, that the second part of the old chestnut may, sadly, have been ignored. That is the one about comment being cheap or whatever (or even free) is all very well, but there's another side to that particular coin, the one about facts being sacred or worth their weight in gold or something like that.

The sad thing is that MaltaToday was stung for two large ones not because it made scurrilous comments about Mr Mintoff but because - according to the court (and by implication according to MaltaToday, since they didn't appeal) - the facts that made up the story were wrong. Had accurate and well-researched facts been reported, there wouldn't (better say shouldn't) have been a libel and had comments been made based on these facts, equally there wouldn't (again, better say shouldn't, given the uncertainties of litigation) have been a libel.

To illustrate, I am perfectly free to say that in my (even if singularly untutored) opinion, Mr Mintoff, when the analyses are complete, is on the debit side of the equation when it comes to judging his political contribution to the national good. In fact, in my opinion, Mr Mintoff's governance was negative and if he doesn't like that, he can sue and try to prove that my value judgement, a value judgement that depends on nothing but the fact that I made it in order to have a valid, and constitutionally protected, existence, is libellous.

In brief, I might be wrong in holding that opinion or I might be less right than I could be, but I have the right to hold it and express it.

On the other hand, I don't have the right, and nor would I expect to have it, to write that the editor of this newspaper is murdering swine who passes his free time walking through Paceville shooting people in the back to rip their jewellery off, because it isn't true. The mere fact of its untruth would make my statement libellous.

In other words, if MaltaToday made assertions of fact about Mr Mintoff that were untrue, even if many people, on reading them, would not have recognised them to be untrue and even if many people would have been prepared to believe them as being true, then MaltaToday only has itself to thank for getting dumped on by the Court of Appeal.

Which does not mean, of course, that the people at MaltaToday aren't allowed to feel annoyed at the fact that Mr Mintoff wanted some more and felt moved to go the courts cap in hand asking for some more, clearly not satisfied that his honour had been un-besmirched to the tune of Lm250.

Flying about

Last week's column provoked a flurry of e-mails. Many of these e-mails were in response to my light-hearted challenge for people to tell me all about the astronomer Lassell, about which more later, but there were a couple, and even a text message, gently pointing out to me that my position on cheap flights and cheap tourists was, not to put too fine a point on it, a load of tosh.

On reflection, I have to say that I might have been reacting not to a sensible assessment of the realities of travel but to the whinging and whining of the people who do their level best to bang their own particular drum.

In fact, I retract the implication: cheap flights do not necessarily result in cheap tourists, though my detractors have to reciprocate by accepting that our experience of cheap flights in the past led to an influx of tourists whose class could be determined by whether their tattoos were spelt correctly. Those who worked in tourism, as I did when I was a student, remember with some distaste the hordes of lager louts who infested Bugibba and similarly salubrious localities, having poured out of the charter flights that landed every Tuesday.

When I wrote my column last week, I totally ignored my personal experience, which was pretty dumb, and chose to react, instead, to the arrogant moaning of certain people who run a couple of jets into Luqa every so often and think the government should lay out a red carpet for them.

What I should have remembered to take into consideration was the fact that I would rather like to be able to hop on a cheap, but efficient, flight and slope off for a couple of days, with a bit more cash in my pocket to spend than I would be left with after taking a more conventional flight.

One way I could be allowed to do this, it occurs to me, would be if the jolly old government were to restrain its enthusiasm for getting its hands on my dosh. Air Malta, being smartly reactive to competition just like any other small airline, is easily able to supply more reasonably priced seats onto which I could plonk my posterior, but such is the level of taxes that I have to pay for this privilege that the exercise is pretty pointless.

One can only live in hope that with a tweak or six having been promised in the tax system this pretty sad situation will be ameliorated.

Observe please

At 7.18 on Saturday morning, the first e-mail of no less than 24 such epistles found its way to my laptop (more accurately to be described as bed-side) telling me that Mr Lassell was a beer-making astronomer from Liverpool who had come to Malta at some time or other in the 19th century in order to benefit from the clear skies that we had then.

Some chance of his descendants doing this now, what with the diesel fumes and all.

Anyway, the first e-mail was from one Albert Petrococchino, who gets a mention for being first but not for telling me anything Google and Wikipedia couldn't.

The ones that were important, however, were the ones that told me where Mr Lassell had stuck his telescope. The first to tell me that it was Tignè was a gent by the name of Alex Mizzi who used as his source a speech delivered by the Minister for Tourism some months ago. See, ministers do have their uses.

About five hours after Mr Mizzi, Ms Christine Borg Bartolo gave me the same information, though in more expanded form, but then a couple of days later, up popped a certain Christine Cassola to tell me that the thing had been put up at St James' Cavalier, with the Tignè thing being only intended.

Who knows, perhaps the Sliema residents of the time objected?

There were a couple of folk who mentioned Luqa too, just to complicate life, though the e-mail I enjoyed most was the one which responded to the part of my question which asked why we don't know much about Mr Lassell. Ms Daniela Grech wondered whether this was because the dear chap had annoyed the Church somehow or had been derogatory of the Maltese somehow.

Thanks to all who responded, anyway, it was interesting.

Caught

You will remember that I remarked, last week, that I had come across someone who only read the last bit of this magnificent work of literature.

Well, I think that maybe the young lady who told me this was exaggerating just a tad, because following last Saturday's little effort, she told me that she had noticed that a) I had written about her and b) that I hadn't mentioned a certain politician at all.

How, pray, did she know this, unless she had read the whole thing?

Youth has its privileges but trying to make Charlies out of aged scribblers is not one of them.

And so as not to disappoint the people who want advice on where to stuff their faces twice running, I shall remark that Chez Philippe, in Gzira, was as good as always last Saturday, even though M. le Patron was away on holiday.

A sure sign of a good place, that.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt