NO, YOU SHOULDN'T

On Thursday, while Italy were about to start suffering the fate virtually half the country's football supporters were wishing on them (this country's, I mean) the Israeli Foreign Minister was helping the PM avoid the angst attendant on watching his favourite team.

Diverting slightly, the fate the Italians eventually suffered was the same as that which the English, were there any justice in the World Cup, should have suffered, but there ain't no justice, so the English got away with it while the (now erstwhile) Campioni del Mondo had to slink back home, their tails very firmly between their legs. I'm not sure if they suffered the same (apocryphal?) fate as their French cousins, who had to travel back to the Republique in cattle class.

What a come-down for all those fine gentlemen, accustomed as they are to having everyone fawn on them and heap all manner of largesse on them, to have to turn right on entering the plane. And then to be summoned by their diminutive President, not to mingle with his delectable consort nibbling canapés and quaffing champers but to get a dressing down from somewhere below their waists.

It is not entirely clear, either, if they were given to understand that the Bastille awaited them, with Mme. La Guillotine rubbing her hands in anticipatory glee. The worst that awaits the Italians, as I write this, is an Inglorioso Rientro, sun-dried tomatoes poised to replace the ripe ones that greeted them in ‘66 after the Vicenda Nord Coreana.

Back as Castille, though, while the PM and the Israeli FM were having a bit of a confab, a number (apparently about ten) of youths from Graffiti thought it would be a good idea to have a bit of a demo, pointing out that not everyone loves the Israeli way of doing things at the moment.

Now, you may or may not agree with everything that Graffiti does, and you may or may not be four-square with them on their take of Middle East politics, though I defy anyone to unravel that particular Pandora's Box and with hand on heart say that it is certain that Graffiti's take is incorrect.

You may or may not agree that standing on the corner of Castille Square with a flag and mildly insulting posters is a good way of expressing your displeasure with the Israeli way of doing things.

And you have every right to agree or disagree.

But, and the but here is an enormous one, just as you have the right to agree with Graffiti or not, equally they have the right to have their opinion and - and here is the rub - to express it, in a public place and in any way that does not constitute a clear and present danger to the safety and security of anyone in the vicinity.

Yes, fine, there are - writing from memory - archaic laws that require advance permission to be given for public demonstrations but these laws need to be treated with a healthy dose of respect for the fact that, if you don't mind, this is a free country, and if I want to stand on a street corner, minding my own business but waving outward signs of my disapproval of anyone who happens to be in the vicinity, I should jolly well be free to do so without having to trouble the Commissioner of Police by asking him, pretty please, for permission to do so.

Now, if I obstruct the free flow of traffic along the thoroughfares of the Republic, or if my mildly insulting attitude towards the object of my (mis-)affections is likely to cause a breach of the peace or - heaven forfend - constitute a breach of the law in his regard, then the boys and girls in blue should, politely, move me and my mates on. This having been said, the not-quite-a-dozen Graffitists standing at the top of St Paul's Street at half-past three on a hot summer afternoon in late June, holding a flag and waving posters were not obstructing the traffic and were not any sort of threat to the esteemed guest.

Nor were the journalists who tried to ask him questions afterwards, for that matter, but that is a separate story which they can write for themselves.

So why, pray, did the guardians of the peace think they should adopt the heavy hand in the sweaty glove approach, with pictures and video of moderately burly coppers playing tag (and British Bulldog, it seemed, at one point) with a bunch of skinny youths whose only crime was pointing out to the Israeli FM that his country wasn't the apple of everyone's eye?

Frankly, I'd much prefer the world to see Malta as a place where politicians, be they ever so exalted and fine, are blown raspberries, than as a place where the raspberry blowers have their collars felt, sometimes less than gently, by large policemen.