Heading towards it

Happy Christmas, war is over - no, it isn't, not by a flipping long chalk, but it's 28 years since John Lennon was murdered by some delusional sicko and we're heading towards Christmas, so I thought it would be a good way to start on in, this week.

Who said I've got to be Shakespearian all the time?

I've been pretty annoyed this week because, at every turn, I seem to have bumping up against that totally stupid story that Joe Muscat and his assorted Lil'elves have seized on like so many diminutive Rottweilers, if that's how you spell it.

I'm referring to Paul Borg Olivier's rather silly hitting of the "send"' button before making sure he was sending his missive to such as to who he meant to send it, rather than to people to whom he would have preferred not to send it.

The syntax and grammar of that previous paragraph may have had something wrong with them but no green wavy lines appeared, so I'm assuming that Bill Gates approves, anyway.

Getting back to the story, now that I've read the e-mail concerned, it is obvious to me that the story is - not to put too fine a point on it (I love that phrase - I really should stop using it) - just a construction, a bit of smoke and mirrors, all sound and fury signifying nothing.

Why do I say this?

Well, it's clear to anyone who bothered to read the darn thing, rather than assuming that what the massed ranks of Lil'Elves were going on about was Gospel-like, that what was being promoted by Dr Borg Olivier was a standardised system of information on complaints being made by citizens to be sent to (note: to - a preposition signifying a uni-directional direction of flow of, in this case, information) the Office of the Prime Minister.

Read my lips: nowhere in the blasted e-mail is there any mention of any information being sent to the Nationalist Party by anyone, at any time, in any circumstances.

It is the Nationalist Party that is going to send its information to the OPM and it is the Nationalist Party that is sticking the boot into the ministries to do the same, and efficiently, too, a concept with which the public service is not entirely familiar.

It is precisely the function of the political wing - before everyone starts whining about why PBO was involved - to ensure that the executive wing gets off its behind and does what it should be doing, that is to say sorting out the citizenry's issues. Yes, of course, there is an ulterior motive: the political wing wants to get re-elected, a statement that has so much of the bleedin' obvious about it that even Homer's "duh" is not enough.

Quite apart from anything else, what in the name of all that's beautiful would the Nationalist Party do with the information? It's not as if it doesn't know who is moaning and groaning (that's pretty much everyone, folks) and it's not as if it had the power to do anything other than moan and groan on behalf of the moaners and groaners themselves, after all.

All of the foregoing is absolutely as nothing, of course, to the people who have clutched their temples and swooned in lady-like shock at the news. Sadly, even a number of editors and columnists in papers that are not normally prone to swallow Dr Muscat's bait hook, line and sinker seem to have fallen for it and come over all holier than thou.

This I would expect from the less astute but it's annoying when otherwise perceptive people are so gullible. Now for the barrage of comments that I'm sure will rain down on me.

No matter, the truth is the truth and the truth is, the e-mail under scrutiny did not say what the Lil'Elves are saying it said and they will be proved wrong again, as they have been so often recently.

In the real world, the forces of righteousness are descending on everyone and his or her brother who wasn't covered by a permit to have stuff on the public highway.

Not even my favourite eatery in Xagħra was spared.

It now behoves everyone concerned to ensure that we get a properly regulated environment and that we don't swing from one side of the spectrum to other.

Fine, what is illegal should not be tolerated, and the entrepreneurs have had a free ride for long enough, but this does not mean that the local councils and the central government should make it impossible to have decent outdoor operations going again and not at an exorbitant cost in time and money, either.

And if it means that Mepa and the myriad other regulators are told to extract their digits from wherever it is that they bury them, then so be it.

To close, anyone who enjoys music and was not at the Manoel last Tuesday for the magnificent Kate Aldrich and the equally magnificent Philharmonic should obtain a bushel of sack-cloth and ashes and adorn him or herself accordingly.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs