I.M. Beck - quote unquote

I'm writing this after having made a point of not watching the Budget Speech.

It's not that I've got anything against the PM - far from it, I count him among my old acquaintances (it would be presumptuous to call him a friend, for all that we played a bit of footy together when I was starting university and he was finishing) but I know that by the time you read this on Saturday, you'll probably have had the proposals analysed for you every which way from Wednesday by better men (or women) than I, so whatever I have to say will be a) boring and b) facile.

That's not to say that I won't have an opinion when I read the details, especially if one of the measures is a reduction in that perfidious travel tax - I'm all in favour of travel, it broadens the mind, not to say ridding my environment of pests, if the right people take it up. And, yes, one does have in mind the perennial question about whether one's interlocutor likes a certain carnal activity and travel in the context of the latter half of the previous sentence.

So, I'm writing this, as I said when I started, after not having watched the PM doing his thing and, even more so, after not having watched Doctor Alfred Sant do his own thing, that is to say give his reaction to the speech. I mean to say, it would have been pretty silly of me to forego the ineffable pleasure of hearing the PM's mellifluous tones only to inflict upon myself the torture of listening to Doctor Alfred Sant.

Or vice versa, for that matter.

That being as it may be, I am morally convinced that Doctor Alfred Sant's reaction, which I have not watched as I write this (believe me if you will or don't, I will hardly lose any sleep about it) will be a mix of "I told you so" and "not enough", with a fair dollop of "I would have done it better" thrown in to leaven the mix.

This moral conviction of mine stems from the predictable - and unoriginal - way that the dear fellow led up to the budget. As soon as the date of the speech was announced there was Doctor Alfred Sant, hogging as much camera time as possible to tell us all that he was expecting this to be a vote-catching budget, that this would be a tax-cutting budget and that this would be a this and a that and a t'other budget, in an attempt to steal as much of the PM's thunder as he could. Not that I blame him, of course, since he hasn't had much to justify going in front of the cameras with, frankly.

I mean to say, those policy papers are pretty pristine when it comes to original ideas, aren't they? When it comes to any ideas at all, for that matter, other than the general idea that any photo op is a good photo op when you subscribe to the New Labour way of doing things.

Forgive me if I seem to contradict myself almost immediately - I didn't watch Doctor Alfred Sant delivering his reaction to the budget but I did, on Thursday morning, which is when I am adding these few words, see his comment about the PM producing an advert for Viagra. I'm all for silly remarks and I can double the entendre with the best of them (in other words, my level of humour is Fifth Form at best) but is this the sort of comment a Harvard and Sorbonne educated man should come up with, especially if he is trying to convince us that he is worthy of governing the country?

Do grow up, why don't you, my dear fellow?

H'away T'lads

I took a 90-minute break just then, did you notice? I had the pleasure of watching the best team in England, and therefore Europe, take apart the formerly best team in Europe - notwithstanding that Chelsea almost had to play me in goal.

Which would have been a sight to behold, I'll have you know.

The pleasure of watching Drogba score a goal was rendered even more pleasurable by the sound of teeth being gnashed.

The gnashing teeth belonged, of course, to the snivelling columnists who took such gleefully hypocritical pleasure in the fact that Chelsea's two world-class keepers had been well and truly bashed into the middle of next month. These columnists, many of whom even had the gall to cry crocodile tears over the horrendous injuries, while preaching at Mourinho that soccer is a contact game and that he should stop whining, generally support some middle of the table (the lower table, of course) provincial squad plying its trade somewhere north of the M25 and they probably see themselves as real ale swilling salts of the earth. Their gross disdain of anything southern and flash oozes out of their every clichéd utterance.

Still, we won, and we should have won by more than one, so there's an end to it.

Family matters

You'll forgive me, I know, for abusing of your patience and enthusiasm for this column and giving a couple of column inches to the Missus, who has an exhibition of her paintings on show at the Museum of Fine Arts, in South Street.

Just not to put too fine a point on it, South Street is in Valletta and you can go along there at any time, to have a look at the paintings 'Er Indoors has put up for your delectation.

Got it?

Actually, joking apart, they're pretty good, even if I say so myself, which I can 'cos I had absolutely nothing to do with them. I'm not even in them, which is probably a good reason to look at them.

Spotted

I'm happy to say that there are those among you out there in Reader Land who have such a fierce love of the language that they spring into action as soon as I bloop.

Thus when last week I mumbled something (bumbled, more accurately, since you can't mumble in print though you can probably bumble) about "off of" being used colloquially instead of "of" it was swiftly pointed out to me by Mr Chivers (again) that what I meant to write was "off" not "of" - he kindly gave me an out by wondering whether it was a simple typo rather than your truly being an idiot, but I'm mildly (very mildly) embarrassed to say that I responded by using the "Glad you spotted the deliberate mistake" line.

In connection with the "off of" controversy that has now taken over the world, to the extent that the Security Council is threatening sanctions in my regard, one Delia, CJ of that ilk, also saw fit to educate me somewhat, by letting it be known in my general direction that Mr Sinatra wasn't to any extent at all one of the crooners of "I can't take my eyes off of you".

Many thanks to y'all - now go out and play in the fresh air, why don't you?

Right v right

It's such fun when you can sit on the sidelines and watch people with whose ideas you don't much agree, if you'll forgive the understatement, fall out among themselves.

Last week, Mr Martin Degiorgio filed another libel suit, this time against Ms Arlette Baldacchino, apparently because she made some comment or other, with which Mr Degiorgio clearly found quarrel, about a party whereat was a representation of the late and much cursed Adolf Hitler.

Far be it from me, of course, to comment on the merits or otherwise of the suit, especially since the details of where it was anyone was doing what and why, if he or she was doing anything at all, but the fact is that one of the Right is taking swipes at another.

The cracks in the façade have finally become apparent.

Replete and content

On Friday, a group of us lads (and one ladette, though not in the pejorative sense) repaired to Figaro's in Merchants Street (across from Heritage Malta) for a nosh up. We didn't bother with a menu, trusting instead in the talents of the gentlemen in the kitchen to serve up some good stuff and, verily, disappointed we were not.

We were told we'd be getting mezè, which is something of a catch-all phrase. We could have been told we were getting tapas (which would have been slightly more in line with the name of the place, when you think about it) and, quite honestly, we could have been told to shut up and eat the stuff, which we did, and not call it anything, which we needn't have, because the quantity and the quality spoke for themselves, poetically.

The day after we were in Valletta, half the country seemed to have been there. A combination of inertia and the compulsiveness of watching Series Two of Lost kept me horizontal for most of the evening and from what I heard, even if I'd bothered to rouse myself, I'd not have got into town, since it is well known that I am highly allergic to being stuck in traffic and having to schlep around trying to park.

The Notte Bianca initiative seems to have been a rousing success despite my absence and Toni Abela's moan about parking wardens and cars being towed. It just goes to show that if you give people stuff to do in Valletta of an evening, they'll go there.