I.M. Beck - quote unquote

I got a few responses to the question of whose statue to put up in Parliament Square.

The one I enjoyed most, frankly, was the suggestion that there should be an addition to the Mandela memorial - a representation of Mr Norman Lowell, making obeisance to the great man.

There were two other suggestions, Mahatma Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom I couldn't find fault and one other, which is quirky, to say the least, which was of the bloke who invented the Supermarine Spitfire, the e-mail concerning which has fallen off my radar, for some reason. I couldn't really say that the first two are equalled by the last one, but anyone with an eye for design must agree that there's plenty to be said for it.

So there you have it, not many people fit to stand next to Mandela, which is pretty much as it should be.

A great victory

What a great victory has been won by the forces of conservatism and binding of hides - the European Union has given up on trying to drag the Brits into something approximating the 20th century and resolved to allow them to carry on using pints, feet and all those other tediously eccentric units of measurement which made us all despair when we tried to remember how many bushels could be multiplied by an acre in order to make a quart of haystacks, if the train left the station and was travelling at four furlongs a minute, with a following wind.

Actually, I'm rather pleased that the EU has backed down, because one of the least attractive traits of the EU is this control-freakery that imbues virtually everything that emanates from Dulls Ville, as the cognoscenti know Brussels.

I know that we need to standardise, I know that it's important to have a unified outlook on life in the face of the hegemonistic threats that loom from the West, the East and the South (and the North, if you want to include penguins) but it wasn't all that important that the Brits wanted to keep their feet when all around are losing theirs.

After all, if the Brits want to remain rooted in the past, clinging desperately to the remnants of Empire, saluting the Queen and standing when a lady enters the room, who are the rest of us to gainsay them? Isn't the minor inconvenience of having to multiply by seven and four thirds to establish how many sandwiches make up a picnic worth suffering in order to preserve the eccentricities that make life such a rich tapestry?

I admit, it is irritating when you read about how Colonel Blimp has raised himself to a lofty height to chunter on and on and on about how disgraceful it is that the Queen's exhortation is to be removed from the front of United Kingdom passports, but at the end of the (non-metric) day, the irritation is more than made up for by the happy thought of a bevy of Brussels mandarins having to have sat themselves down for a slap-up meal of humble pie.

Shavering the language

Before some pedant reaches for his keyboard to inform me that, no the word "shavering" does not exist, I'm using it to make a point, the point being that I am past the point of irritation with the way the Americans have turned the English language into some sort of infinitely elastic bit of gum, with words and phrases being vomited into the hearing of civilised men without a thought for the fact that said words and phrases are meaningless.

I submit for your consideration two such phrases, namely "extraordinary rendition" and "troop surge".

The former was employed some time ago to disguise the fact that the world's cops had started to feel the collars of various miscreants and yank them over to Gitmo, where they were detained at the pleasure of Mr Bush indefinitely and without due process. Fair enough, you can see where the Yanks were coming from and all that, but, please, the phrase "extraordinary rendition" doesn't mean anything, even when used by Ms Rice, Condoleeza of that ilk.

When you think about it, someone who uses the name "Condoleeza" probably doesn't even know that "extraordinary rendition" doesn't mean anything.

And why wasn't the troop build-up in Iraq described as, erm, a troop build-up, rather than using the moderately ridiculous image of a wave of young men surging merrily towards their death, repeating the Vietnam adventure?

It's something that would drive a man to extreme perdition, were it not for the availability of exercises like this for venting kidneys. And yes, I know it's spleen that one vents, but I like to invent my own language, like the cousins from across the puddle. Which I suppose is better than inventing an alternate reality, like the bearded Bin Laden, who thinks that by appearing in front of a camera and exhorting America to "embrace Islam" is going to be interpreted as anything other than hate-filled threats.

Truth, where?

Iassume you're following the McCann story, that last week took a couple of interesting twists. I've no idea what the truth underlying the story is - for all I know, by the time you read this, the parents will have been shown up as conniving, supercilious middle-class con-artists or confirmed as decent, innocent people going through a nightmare.

Being as the world is blessed, or plagued, with 24-hour, seven-day week news channels that just have to fill up the space between the advertising, and since opinions are like belly buttons, in that everyone has one, we've been regaled with everyone and his brother telling us all about what he thinks the Portuguese police have done, should have done, failed to do and might be thinking of contemplating doing, while at the same time informing us what the dear old British Bobbies would have done to do it right.

Do you find this sort of attitude as irritating as I do? Unexpressed by most people is the thought that, don't you know, these silly dagos don't really cut the mustard, don't you see? And, my dear, their legal system, it's based on laws and things, would you believe it, not on a series of random decisions taken a couple of decades ago.

I suppose you can't blame the victims'/perpetrators' families and friends for standing up for them, really, and to be fair, the Home Secretary is saying, most of the time, that she's satisfied with the way the Portuguese cops are doing things, but the general gist of it all is that if this had happened in Blighty, we'd all know what was going on and therefore it would all be happening the way it should be.

Measuring weights

Let's get ourselves back to the little village on the banks of the Po that is our beloved homeland, the very best place in the world, according to the erstwhile mayor of Mosta, shall we?

If things get interrupted, I'm watching England trying to beat Russia, so forgive me - they creamed Israel, so they think they're going to have a stroll in Wembley Park. By the time you read this, reality will have bitten - in passing, an "attaboys" to Malta, good one.

So, back to the village-pump, which is where we play politics in this neck of the woods: even if you'd just crawled out from under the rocks you'd know that an election was coming, wouldn't you? The MLP spin machine is ratcheting up like there's no tomorrow and if there isn't enough dirt available, someone will shovel a few bucket-loads into the mix and create some more.

What really gets my goat, though, is the way the MLP machine insists on measuring everyone by their own particular yardstick. Just because in their day, far-off though it now is, people got jobs because they were good party boys and hung on to these jobs like grim death, because they weren't capable of cutting it in the real world, they try to imply that everyone else is this way.

How else would you explain the shock horror that greeted the news (news?) that a couple of executives had moved on from their jobs with a government-owned company?

Then there's the notion, strange though it may be, that to get anything from the state, you have to have corrupted someone along the way - never mind that you have rights at law, if you get given your rights and you happen to be a Nationalist minister at the same time, this is corruption.

England really want to win, they've scored already.

Seaside food

We had a rather good, informal, meal last weekend, up North. The service is quirky (have I used that word already today?), the décor basic but the food was very acceptable, and the sound of the lapping sea and the gentle breeze relaxed us right to the point of falling over.

Just in case you were wondering, it was a pizzeria in Marsalforn that we were at, Neptune, as I said, nothing special but worth a visit.

We also went somewhere else, but my lips are sealed, as I was threatened with grievous bodily harm by the rather selfish person who told us about it, because she wanted to keep the place to herself. To be fair, it needs no advertising, so I'll keep my mouth shut - I won't even tell you which part of Malta it was in.

And to keep the Southern aspect going, Shisha's in Marsascala remains very good - we went there and tried out the Arab cuisine, this time, as I had promised we would.

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