I.M. Beck - Quote unquote

I am no industrial chemist or similar expert in the properties of materials, but I submit for your consideration that Doctor Alfred Sant must have an asbestos lining wherever it is one has such a lining. I'm using the word "lining" in the sense of the Maltese exclamation "he must have a lined face".

This is not an allusion to the wrinkles and laugh lines which adorn the faces of those whose face has been lived in for a good number of summers. Doctor Alfred Sant ain't no spring chicken anymore, and he's got lines and wrinkles like the rest of us, for all the preening and preciousness his party used to propose to the voters of this fair land as a reason to vote for him. Now he's the older man, and I'm betting he's as worried about it as Dr Fenech Adami was when he was.

No, the lining to which I'm alluding, now that I've dragged myself back to the point of this segment, is lining as in coat lining or stomach lining or whatever and it's used in the Maltese phrase in the same sense as when one exclaims "he's got a nerve" in English.

And, boy oh boy oh boy, the dear fellow sure does have a nerve. No sooner had the ink dried on the magistrate's judgment on Mr Joseph Zahra, now a convicted fraudster and con-artist (though as I write he still has the right of appeal) condemning him to quite a few months as a guest of the Republic over the Mater Dei saga in which Mr Zahra had played quite a part, fictitious though much of it was, then up popped Doctor Alfred Sant, looking for all the world as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, demanding that the PM explains what was behind the Mater Dei story.

I really do have to ask what Doctor Alfred Sant was trying to pull with this little stunt. Was he trying to give some new life to stories about scandal up Tal-Qroqq Hill or something, notwithstanding the palpable level of untruth now surrounding Zahragate? Was he trying to make the populace at large forget the glee with which the MLP Spin Machine had latched onto the story way back when, eager as always to sling mud with the rest of them? Was he trying, for Heaven's sake, to attract some sort of credit for the truth (such as it was) in the Zahra papers being revealed?

Or was he trying to distract attention from the schisms and shifts in the tectonic plates that are clattering about his own HQ, since it is well known that the Nathalie Attard story is only doing an imitation of a snoozing volcano?

The labyrinthine alleys of the dear chap's political psyche are a wonder to behold, it has to be said, but this particular episode takes the jolly old galletta and then some.

The story continues

We've all been pretty much bored to tears about the way the MLP in its various manifestations has been droning on and on about how scandalous it is that a company with connections with a convicted criminal was given a mop-pushing job at the law courts.

Sure, it was a gaffe of pretty monumental proportions on the part of the executive side of justice, the meting out thereof, but let's not get our collective Y-Fronts in a twist, shall we? Of course, this little suggestion will be blithely ignored by all the spinners, on all sides of the political divide, who seem to have made it their sacred duty to beat their opponents about the ears with anything that comes to hand, even if it resembles nothing more than a dead sheep.

As I put fingers to keyboard, Dr Anglu Farrugia, for instance, is berating the hapless Minister and Parly Seccy over at the Auberge d'Aragon about how a bloke who stands charged with attempted murder was given a security job at the law courts. Note the word "charged", as in not yet found guilty, and, knowing Dr Farrugia as I do, he would normally be among the first with the "innocent until proven guilty" crack so beloved of the Criminal Bar.

But I digress, as one does, and must seek to direct myself back to the original gaffe, the one over which Doctor Alfred Sant made such a fuss. As a result of the exposè being perpetrated by a couple of Labour MPs, it is alleged, the denizen of the Corradino Hilton whose nose was in the frame "threatened" these two heroes of the Labour Movement.

I shall not comment on cases that are still in front of the beaks, but the evidence that is starting to come out does seem to be giving one a pretty good idea of things.

Sometimes, I wonder whether Doctor Alfred Sant doesn't get that sinking feeling cartoon heroes get when they charge off to do battle, only to look back and find that their armies are back in barracks, having a good old booze up while he's facing hordes of baddies all on his lonesome.

There you have it

I am a mere poltroon when it comes to matters of law, as has been less than delicately pointed out to me by a great luminary who shall remain un-named lest I provoke another broadside from her, but when a simple Joe Citizen (more accurately one Joseph A. Muscat from Ta' Xbiex, who no doubt is an expert in his own field) dares to pronounce himself on the highest form of law known to man, constitutional law, then I am emboldened myself to pipe up.

Reading this guru of legal theory, the perhaps-not-so-humble opinion of a lawyer, learned and illustrious though she may be, gains the status of dogma, for all the world as if Pope Benedict had done whatever it is Their Holinesses do to assume infallibility and blessed said opinion with the same attribute.

I shall not stoop to argue the toss as to the legalities of the question raised with an apostate in the art of law as the Muscat fellow clearly is (since he fails to differentiate between opinion and fact). I shall merely limit myself to pointing out that coming from someone of this ilk, the expressed approval of the so-called whistle-blowing debases the value of the blown whistle even more than it was already debased by other considerations.

Just so I can be clear: someone who starts out by saying that he knows nothing much about the law, and then goes on to confirm this by leaping to a monumentally unfounded conclusion, shouldn't really have had the gall to comment in the first place.

Now for a jolly response: just a slight word of warning, however, the sages have long held that it is infelicitous to pick a fight with someone who buys his ink by the gallon.

Not moans

It is the wont of the great unwashed to moan and whinge and whine about most things and, sometimes, this gets on my wick. This week (wick?) I propose to counteract this a little and hand out a couple of plaudits, both of which go to the Transport Authority, not generally a body which is held in high esteem.

The Park & Ride system that is now up and running is the first operation in respect of which the ADT deserves a pat on the corporate back. It works and it works well - now all they have to do is make sure it keeps working. Oh, and if they need to charge money for the service, more power to them, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The other thing which seems to be getting off to a good start is the repairs to the Regional Road bridges. It may be a little OTT to set up diversion signs in Gozo but, on the other hand, it seems to be working.

Food bites

Just so as not to disappoint the individual who glories under the peculiar pseudonym Cornelius Reddick when he sends equally peculiar e-mails to me, I am able to report that this week nourishment was taken at Rubino's in the company of a couple of mates. The food was fine, the service equally so and the evening went swiftly, even though we were forced to schlep up to Queen Victoria Square to view the only surviving fragment of evidence of the French occupation.

A mention in dispatches to the first one to tell me what it is and what it says. I'd recommend that you head to Mellieha for a good pizza, if only I could remember the name of the hotel - it's the one which looks over the valley near the bridge and the pizza is darn fine.

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