In his preciously prefixed preen of a Wednesday, Doctor Alfred Sant has something of an obsession about titling each particular week's effort with a word starting with "pr". Precisely why the dear fellow insists on this is not something to which I am privy, though perhaps it betrays a sense of humour, vestigial though it may be.

This week, I thought I had him (that was before I read on) because he used the word "prolicide", which even as I type this out causes Bill Gates' money-printing software (Microsoft Wordtm) to generate squiggly red lines beneath it. "Ha" quoth I, and even perhaps "Ho" (it was early in the morning) and just to make certainty doubly sure before I started extracting the Mike from Doctor Alfred Sant, Homer having nodded, as it were, I googled the word.

Disappointment washed over me like the surf on a particularly swell-infested day - the word exists and it refers to the killing of one's offspring, as the hero of the Labour actually went on to point out, had I but bothered to read on. By feeling he had to explain the word, of course, Doctor Alfred Sant was acknowledging that it was only those with vast, nay galactically enormous, brains (or those having access to a dictionary and some patience, on the other hand) who would have even a nodding acquaintance with it, so I suppose I was in good company.

Reading Wednesday's piece with care, the attentive reader will prise probably precious pickings from the proposed arguments. Quite apart from the sheer delight of counting the words starting with "pr" (I gave up) and the Sudoko-like fascination of trying to spot where he could have used even more words starting with "pr", there were quite a number of Freudian slips.

For instance, by characterising Lawrence Gonzi's administration as being like its predecessors in putting to death its own offspring, Doctor Alfred Sant (un?)consciously acknowledged that his own government, being itself a predecessor to that of Dr Gonzi, had been guilty of prolicide. Doctor Alfred Sant also un(consciously) yanked the rug away from under Labour's electoral machine's feet when he implicitly underscored the fact that the Mater Dei Hospital will be launched next summer - a direct reference to the known trait of governments worldwide to save up their best photo-ops for pre-electoral days.

While on the subject of Mater Dei, Labour's Head Honcho just had to have a little swipe at the now dead and buried "scandal" - more precisely, the scaMdal that he, along with most of the media, seems to have swallowed hook, line and scaMdal monger (and yes, Mr Proofreader, that is an M in the middle). Doctor Alfred Sant, like most proponents of pristinely pure (leave out the "u" and that's three "prs" in a row - what's a u between friends?) New Labourism just loves scandal when it serves a purpose and even when the scandal is shown to have no existence other than in the fevered imagination of a scam-artist, he just won't leave it alone.

Here yesterday

I was stumbling around the interweb superhighway a couple of days ago (you download a small program and give it your tastes and it does the rest - excellent for the wee small hours when you can't sleep) and I came across a story about humour in the old Communist bloc that gave me a frisson of "there but for the grace of godliness".

The tale told about the prosecution of a joke-teller in Czechoslovakia in 1967. A refugee from that corner of liberal thought had brought the news West that a worker in a liquor factory had been arrested for telling the following joke: "Why is the price of lard not going up in Hungary? So that the workers can have lard on bread for their Sunday lunch."

Apparently, this was a reference to the fact that the economy had been so bollixed-up by the regime, that lard was all they could eat instead of a roast on Sundays. Not exactly Ben Elton, but there you are.

The "joke" had been overheard by the party secretary of the factory, who immediately reported the worker. The joke-teller was arrested on charges of "Incitement and defamation against the People's Democracy". After six hearings, the employee was fired. The sentence was, apparently, relatively lenient.

My frisson resulted from a flashback I had when I read the story. In the mid-1980s, I along with a few other like-minded idiots had been responsible for producing Mhux fl-Interess tal-Poplu (yes I know I've told you) and one week we had cobbled together, without the aid of a net, or even Photoshop, a picture of Mr Dom Mintoff wind-surfing in Msida, not in the Creek, of course, but next to the GWU monument. It was pretty harmless stuff but it had got a BoV employee well into the mulligatawny and then some.

This was a bank that in those enlightened days was fully owned by the government, a government that was in the hands of the Labour Movement, as they liked to call themselves then and the employee in question had taken a fancy to the picture and run off a few photocopies.

You can guess the rest. If the employee in question is reading this and would like to get in touch, I can guarantee an honourable mention.

Lies, damned lies and

Statistics is the word that follows the "and" in the sub-title above and it is (they are?) statistics that seem to have annoyed the MLP Deputy Leader for Party Affairs recently.

He said that for the party it was the people that came first and not statistics. Here I am as one with him - people count more than numbers, way, way more. It would behoove quite a number of politicians to remember this, though, of course, it would also be quite appropriate for the warm and fluffy amongst us that at the end of the bottom line it is numbers that count and if the numbers don't stack up, then the people don't get fed.

But that is not the point.

The point is that Dr Michael Falzon, for it is he that I quote and unquote, added that Malta had one of the highest unemployment rates, one of the lowest female employment participation rates and one of the highest rates of inflation.

I'm not arguing the toss here, because I'm sure he has the correct information at his disposal. But I do have to point out, as gently as possible because I'm really just having a bit of fun here, that in order to arrive at the conclusions to which he arrived, Dr Falzon had to have recourse to, erm, what'em called, oh, darn, the word is on the tip of my tongue.

Oh yes, that's it - statistics. It's the mark of the man that I can only poke a bit of fun at him on something like this: generally he's quite difficult to catch out.

And while on the subject of statistics, is this one relevant? By the early evening of Wednesday, the PN had made about six times in donations what the MLP had made. Leaving aside the distaste I have for political fund-raising, are the numbers significant? I leave it for the number-crunchers amongst you to crunch these.

Not priest ridden?

Someone, I recall not whom and whose name I could be less interested in trying to dig up, has been getting at Mr Revel Baker for daring to call this country priest ridden.

It seems that it is not so much the pejorative that has irked Mr Barker's interlocutor but more the fact that RB is a gaijin, a foreigner daring to tell us things about our own country.

I thought we'd grown out of all this - isn't it bad enough that the insular mentalities of our political masters on both sides of the fence have caused the virtual demise of the English language as a tool of efficient and correct communication? Now do we have to have someone's views discounted because he isn't Maltese, even though he chooses to live here and pay tax here?

And, incidentally and just to be going on with, who says this country isn't priest ridden? So many talk shows on matters non-political have a clerical gentleman on board that you'd be forgiven for thinking that they're the only class that is decently educated - though perhaps that is too close to the truth to be comfortable. And then, what say you to the way that pseudo-religious arguments, when proposed, have everyone jumping to the tune being played? Take the anti-abortion lobbying that's going on, with everyone and his brother signing petitions all over the place - abortion was never a really hot issue in this country (perhaps because we're priest-ridden) but these people have conjured it up into one.

I do so dislike fundamentalism.

On nosh

Not much nosh was had over the weekend, due to social engagements in private homes of which I should not discourse, excellent though they were.

On Tuesday, the onset of festivities, not to say the 51st anniversary of my appearance amongst you, was celebrated in some style by the denizens of my work-place at Chez Philippe, in Gzira.

Excellent place - as was that pizzeria last week, which, it has been pointed out to me politely, was and remains the Al Ponte in the Maritim Hotel, in Mellieha.

And there you have it - so long, and thanks for all the fish. Let's see if there's anyone out there who is better at spotting quotes than my colleagues, over whose head it swooshed like there's no tomorrow.

imbocca@gmail.com