The funny case of funny people

Just as I was sitting there wondering what to pontificate about this week, along there came the dear old Labour Party, drawing itself up to its full height and twittering about how the nasty Nats, particularly Dr Simon Busuttil, had been, oh, so dishonest about trying to give the impression that the Labour MEPs, bless 'em, had voted in favour of a resolution, giving immigrants the right to vote.

Leaving aside the silliness of the amendment to Dr Busuttil's report proposed by assorted tree-huggers and Socialists, fellow travellers all, being as fripperies such as voting are not exactly uppermost in the minds of people who are trying to escape the horrors of their native lands, I don't see what the PL is on about.

According to the report in The Times about the whole thing, Dr Busuttil was having a moan about how the Socialist majority prevailed and shoved the amendment through. Now, as far as I know, the Maltese Labour MEPs are proud to be part of the Socialist group but no one has said that they are the Socialist group, so by moaning about the Socialist group and making the statement of fact that this motley bunch voted in favour of the right to vote amendment, he wasn't lying.

Of course, given that the PL in its local manifestation is a past-master at creating media images and giving an impression that is not necessarily four-square with the facts, the whole facts and nothing but the facts (to be fair, all political parties aspire to Nirvana in this regard - the MLP as was and is, possibly because the bar wasn't and isn't as high when it comes to fooling people, is just better at it) it is amusing that they got so offended by having found themselves painted into the frame on this one.

What they should have been offended at, but couldn't be because it's true, was that they were described as being hard-liners without being able to back up their stance on the matter of immigration.

Like many people who don't have the inconvenience of having to govern the country, it's the easiest of easy tasks for the PL to come up with 20-30- or 83-point plans about how to tackle immigration, giving the more gullible among the populace the hope that when they're elected they will solve the problem.

The problem is, they will have to make the transition between yapping about something and actually doing something, and their record in this branch of human activity isn't exactly scintillating.

In fact, bar the blip, the electorate has been telling them that since when Dom Mintoff, that paragon of measured and reasonable actions, was running this country with an iron fist in a bemused glove.

It's pretty obvious to someone like me, who has been watching the political scene for longer than I care to remember, that what the PL was trying to do with its recent twitter (try Twitter, it's got a point - I haven't quite got it though) was obscure the fact that Dr Busuttil is, actually, one of the few who actually does something about a phenomenon that is a problem.

The racists and xenophobes, to whom many on both sides of the fence pander with gay abandon, just pose and postulate: Dr Busuttil actually got down to doing something concrete.

Since he is the greatest threat to Labour actually getting on a bit better in the MEP elections than they did last time, it became incumbent on them to try to diminish the regard in which he should be held by the electorate.

Hence the epithets.

Onward and upward to more enjoyable things than Labour's pretend-annoyance. Three out of three ain't bad and at Spezzo, whereat I was invited to nourish myself for lunch in the company of assorted other media hacks, I took the tagliata again and, again, it was excellent.

Over the weekend, up North, we tried out Il-Wileġ, in Qala and, apart from the babe in the group trying (and failing) to pull off a really neat trick involving a bottle of wine, a double-flip and a soft landing (it was the soft landing part that didn't work out) it was rather brilliant.

I couldn't describe how to get there, you drive around Qala keeping the view to your right, basically, and you should bump into it.

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