The dust is slowly settling and things are becoming clearer: now, we're starting to see why the Labour Party pulled that "run away, run away" (what movie reference was that?) stunt.

Their arguments about the power station are crumbling as we speak, from what I can make out. Their reliance on the Auditor General's failure to find hard evidence of corruption was already a pretty dodgy set of foundations on which to build. It became even dodgier now that we're starting to see that the Auditor General's comment about not finding hard evidence was itself only restricted to that part of his report where he analysed the allegations made by - you guessed it - the Labour Party itself.

Is that a self-fulfilling prophecy, or what? You scream and shout and point fingers and when someone says he hasn't found hard evidence to back you up, you latch onto the qualifier "hard" and scream and shout that there was something, but it wasn't hard. I think not.

Then we had their tear-jerking plea to the Honourable Members to put aside politics and cast their vote in the House ("yea" or "nay" or "no" or "yes" or "iva" or "le") with families in mind.

Incidentally, can someone with socio-linguistic, or even psycho-linguistic, skills have a listen to the way some Gozitans pronounce "le" and see whether it's possible that the Hon. Justyne Caruana was framed (their word, not mine) by her accent? After all, so many Honourable Members hearing two different things issuing from the same mouth can't all be wrong.

Not that anyone cares, by now, of course, because too much fuss has been made about the silliest of silly incidents.

Back to families and mom and apple pie: here again, the Labour Party's pillar turns to dust. The waste from the proposed power station, I'm told by someone who bothered to read the detail of the thing, is hazardous by dint of it being flammable and such-like but it's of no greater danger to health than common or garden charcoal and soda.

That's the extent of my scientific knowledge, just about, but the bloke who told me has the knack of getting to the point, which is precisely to what we, the great unwashed, weren't allowed to get because megaphone debating was resorted to by the Labour lads and ladettes.

Government procurement being what it is, much depends, when tenders are adjudicated, on the number of zeros that follow the digit that follows the euro sign. Again, numbers make me go all glassy-eyed but from what I can make out, even here, the Labour's planks spring apart and their ship founders because a judicious application of the cost of the darn thing to its emission standards make it seem the best value for money.

I don't pretend to have the financial or technical acumen to pass judgment myself on all of the above, of course, and I propose it to you simply as an alternate way of looking at things, one that doesn't leap to the conclusions to which the Labour chaps, as is their wont, have leapt. Of course, if you're of Elfin tastes and wet yourself at the thought that someone somewhere has his finger in a tasty pie, then it's absolutely useless to point out that people with highly commendable skills have been involved in assessing the tender.

You, on the other hand, will prefer to have your judgement determined for you by people who have axes to grind and who in their real lives are not skilled in anything but producing sound bites and crafting innuendos, to say nothing of drawing themselves up to their full height and stomping out of Parliament.

Far be it from me to say you're wrong and I'm right, much, but if you think about it, the Labour Party itself has given me quite a fillip because instead of quietly and in a business-like manner giving us, the thinking classes, evidence and facts, (amateur) theatricals and (faux) naïvety were preferred.

Onwards and upwards to nourishment, since many of you use this as a handy vade mecum. Sporting passions were well fed on Saturday, when we won the Double (I was there, albeit at the wrong end of Wembley) and while up (far) North, we had a couple of excellent meals, at Yauatcha and Aben Too (forgive the spelling of both) in Soho. Closer to home, we finally went to Il-Ħorża in Christopher Street, Valletta and it was really very, very good.

What you should do, in fact, is book a meal there, but first go, to be awed, to the Caruana Dingli exhibition at the Palace, put up by the Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, in itself a guarantee of excellence. You can stroll around the bastions in between and reflect on the fact that this isn't a bad place, really.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/blogs