SAY WHAT YOU LIKE

In a comment to my "Beck" column, one V Laviera gave further credence to the thesis that men of the left have no sense of humour, when he chastised me for wrongly accusing Doctor Alfred Sant of plagiarism. I thought that by putting the word "self-" in front of "plagiarism" it would have been clear that I was kidding, since not even an out-and-out schizoid can plagiarise himself, much less Dr Sant.

But plagiarism seems to have become something of a fashion in Labour circles, if the weekend's spat of press releases is anything to go by. Not many hours after the PN PR machine, if it can be graced with a name that implies that it works, exhorted Dr Muscat not to imitate an ostrich, out came the LP version telling the PM to pull his head out of the sand. I'm not too sure if the original PN crack came after Muscat might have implied an ostrich-imitation on the part of the PM but somehow, I doubt it, and anyway, using an ostrich analogy three times in a row is puerile even for Labour.

Leaving aside who called whom a big grounded bird first, the whole sorry episode illustrates precisely the difficulty anyone with a brain must have in giving Labour's economic (or any other) policies any credence whatsoever.

Labour's only aim in life, understandably to some limited degree, is to gain power, however it does so. So they can say what they like about what they like, because it will have no effect on anyone except on the people who are prepared to believe anything most of the time, while on the other hand, what the Government says, and more importantly, what it does (because the Opposition can say up a storm but it does nothing) affects us all, because people who matter take decisions based on this.

So when the PM says that Moodys' downgrade is significant but only to a limited degree, and follows this by saying that the current policies, which have allowed us to weather the storm so far, will be left in place, he's not "burying his head in the sand" but telling it like it is, as opposed to Dr Muscat, who is ignoring the realities and mouthing platitudes designed to please the ear and little else.