Same old, same old

Attentive readers will have noticed that I haven't been getting at the Lil' Elves' favourite politician for some time. Actually, it's the Lil' Elves' favourite politician's successor who I haven't been getting at because the Lil' Elves' favourite politician was actually Doctor Alfred Sant, if you remember him.

Dragging myself back from that convoluted little detour, it's Joseph Muscat at whom I haven't been getting, just in case you hadn't twigged it. Both here and in my blog, I've been discoursing on things other than the young hero of the Smart Set, that paragon of all squeaky clean virtues, the Leader of the Republic's Loyal Opposition.

But it occurred to me that I've been being a tad too kind with the dear chap, almost ungratefully so, he having been so kind on his part as to give me so much grist for my mill of late.

Where to start, such is the panoply of riches made available to me? Should I recall, with not a little disapproval, the lapse from normal standards of protocol and courtesy shown by leaving the King of Spain waiting for 15 minutes or whatever it was? In the good old days of Labour, it was Dom Mintoff, a less than couth type (when he wanted to be), who resorted to crassness to make his points, but at least he had the advantage of truculent Olde-Worlde socialism as his roots to fall back on. The current edition of the leadership of the Labour Party has nothing of the sort: on the contrary, he's trying to appeal to that segment of the population that prides itself on knowing how things should be done. Whoops, back to the drawing board.

Or should I gaze in wonderment on the sight of the shadow Prime Minister failing to take questions from the press after the Budget speech a couple of weeks ago? If there ever was a golden opportunity to show nimbleness and smart thinking, it was then and he ducked it. And then to make things worse, he didn't even speak in the House when the PM's own vote was on the agenda, giving horrid people like me the chance to ask snide questions on the lines of what was he scared of, then?

As if his star wasn't enough on the decline already (he's got many years to go and already the gloss is dimming badly) up popped the Data Protection Commissioner to kick the Labour Party's complaint about the Nationalists breaking the law well into touch. To give Labour their due, they've made quite a fist of spinning this reversal into not such a bad thing for them but, after having hauled so many people over the coals, the DPC's verdict was quite damning for them and there's no two ways about it.

And, of course, no hint of an apology for having been so hard on people who hadn't, actually, done anything.

Moving on, I was more than slightly confused by the way Dr Muscat's Labour Party tackled the BWSC/power station story.

First, they came over all sanctimonious about the spectre of corruption looming over the story and then it came out that what they were relying on were newspaper reports, of all things, and newspaper reports, to make things worse for them, which the Danish police had discounted.

Then, just to confuse me even further, young Joseph's bunch of genii got into a sputteringly high dudgeon about the way the government stuck up for the contractors. I mean, just what the heck did they expect, first they use BWSC as a stick with which to beat the government and then they come over all "shock horror" about the government defending itself.

Precisely what did they expect? Who is advising these people about how public perceptions are managed, for Heaven's sake? They just don't change, do they?

You'll have noticed my fair visage, of course, last Tuesday, with a burger on my bonce, in the middle pages of this estimable paper. I've had to answer the "why" question so often that I thought I'd better tell you all the story.

The thing is, the missus and a couple of artistic friends do portraits every week and one week, when the son and heir had already confected some rather delicious hamburgers, I was press-ganged into sitting, the booked victim having failed to show up. Such was the amount of bitchin' and moanin' that spewed forth from the Beckian cake-hole that Ms Caruana Dingli, a lady whose portraits are among the finest in the land, thought it would be a wheeze to depict me with that which was uppermost on my mind, viz and to whit, nosh.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

It's almost Christmas: you need to buy presents. This year it's easy: you've got Francesca Balzan's superb book on jewellery, which is probably among the best that Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti has ever produced and if you're feeling particularly generous, you can add Judge Giovanni Bonello's most recent book, which is a "goes without saying" as always.

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