I have no problem with ministers getting a salary increase because I am a firm believer in the peanuts and monkeys theory of remunerative strategy. I have a problem with part-time MPs getting a rise because I’m not entirely convinced they deserve it. That having been said, for the amount of time they waste and because of the significant drain on their resources that their position requires in a social context, it’s more than likely that they do deserve a rise after all.

It is a fact the timing of the increase could have been better, mainly because any amateur political strategist (nowadays known as a spinner) should have seen the opportunistic reaction the opposition (and I use the lower case because it’s not only the Labour Opposition that is playing silly) would adopt. Given that, sadly, the predominant sentiment within the make-up of many citizens is envy, the reaction of blogosphere should also have been easily predictable, which it clearly wasn’t.

Or if it was predicted, the decision-makers decided to ignore it, which is not a completely unacceptable position to take but then you have to live with the snide remarks and whines.

The thing is, Labour, since they went into election mode on Joseph Muscat’s elevation to the leadership, have adopted the strategy of repeating and repeating and repeating everything, presumably working on the theory that if you say it often enough, people will believe it and it will become fact.

You needn’t go far to get the idea: they’ve been going on about the BWSC episode for so long and with such persistence that, despite the fact that the Auditor-General and the police have found no evidence of anything that resembles corruption, many people make like sheep and go along with Labour’s whinging.

A microcosmic example will serve to crystallise what I mean. Under a story about a jump in the number of patients being admitted seriously ill to Mater Dei Hospital, someone calling himself “mario gellel” wrote that Malta, or rather the Maltese, are faced with crises from all angles and he then proceeded to list the usual whines in which Labour and its cheer leaders luxuriate.

According to our hero, we have a problem with “Bad Governance”, though he fails to demonstrate he has the slightest grasp of what he’s talking about, quite apart from the fact he’s clearly living in a different country to the rest of us.

This analytical genius goes on to tell us we have a “bad standard of living”, to which I can only shake my head in awe at the levels of self-delusion to which Labour’s lil’elves can descend. In “gellel’s” defence, I have to wonder if he’s ever been outside Malta because, on the evidence of this inane comment, he can’t have been. We are plagued, according to “mario gellel”, with “forced cheap labour” and here I have to wonder whether whoever this person is hasn’t actually relinquished whatever tenuous grasp he may have had on reality.

We don’t, any longer, have labour battalions of genuine forced cheap labour, which was a reality when Labour were in power.

Moving on, “gellel” tells us we have a bed shortage in a state-of-the-art hospital: at least he doesn’t resort to the cheap trick of putting it in inverted commas. Frankly, I don’t know if there’s a bed shortage or not but I do know there’s something of a flu epidemic on and systems get strained sometimes. I wonder what “gellel” would say if he lived in Northern Ireland and found himself without water for a couple of weeks.

We then get the sweet-meat at the bottom of the pie, just before he goes all capital on us and asks “what the hell is next the country is suffering from high unemployment and inflation. Clearly, this economic and social commentator par excellence has dipped into his compendium of economic and social ills and come up with a couple of sound bites, thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to chuck them into the mix.

Suffice it to say that not even the Labour Party has spun the line we have high unemployment and high inflation because we patently do not.

To put it bluntly, we’re not suffering the way so many Europeans are suffering. We’re not in paradise, for sure, but, by a combination of luck and judgement, we seem to be getting by. It goes without saying the commentariat will leap down my throat and cite energy prices, promoting Labour’s upcoming childish walk in the park at the same time, for all the world as if we have oil pouring out of the seabed and fix our own price for the stuff.

Depressing? Of course it is: all Labour seem capable of doing is carping and squealing, a bit like Ed Miliband in the UK, without making a single constructive suggestion.

Even though I know it will annoy people, in fact, because it will annoy people, I’ll note we had a pretty good lunch last week at Arzella in Marsalforn.

And for intellectual nourishment, you can get hold of a couple of CDs – three actually, one being the latest album by Red Electrick and the other two being the compilation of old, old stuff put together by Andrew Alamango.

I’ll end on a sporting note: as I’m writing this, Chelsea are mere minutes away from a humiliating defeat by Wolves, currently residing somewhere at the bottom of the table. The words “disgraceful”, “deplorable” and “disgusting” don’t even begin to describe what I think of these over-paid fools and if Carlo Ancelotti survives to the weekend, there’s no justice.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/blogs.