Supporters and opponents of this government who saw and heard, or read, Lawrence Gonzi’s up-beat apologia last Tuesday applauded, or booed. It is difficult to dialogue with the latter, silly to give them up as a loss to persuasion.

If judges and magistrates think the conditions they work under are unacceptable, less acceptable still is the length of time taken to conclude cases

The art of politics is to reach out to those who disagree with you in the hope that one day they might appreciate your achievements. The majority of them will never do this; some will, though; but there is a third audience – the floating voters whose numberhas become an important psephological factor.

This species holds the key to victory or defeat at the next election; this group and another that has fallen into the temptation of making a point that may be pointless in the context in which it is being made. I refer to those who go around muttering that we need a change. OK; to what? More specifically, to whom? Will he improve on what government has so far delivered? Nobody knows because nobody is telling.

Gonzi spelt out that context on the Granaries last Tuesday, a context in which few European governments are operating as well as we are doing, be it finance, investment, employment, deficit-control, economic growth (the highest rate in Europe) where elsewhere the word we hear is contraction.

What change can be offered that measures up to the changes wrought by this incompetent, visionless government? What new horse to mount midstream?

Roman Polanski, no – Fr Polanski, yes

Two years ago Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland. The film director was wanted, has been wanted, in the US, for having raped a 13-year-old girl some 30 years ago.

He pleaded guilty at the time to ‘unlawful sex’ – then scarpered to France before sentence was due to be passed. France did not accede to requests for his extradition; she was legally entitled to refuse them.

After his arrest in the land of the cuckoo clocks and not so strangely, the victimiser metamorphosed into victim, this change wrought by Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, MonicaBellucci among many otherHollywood celebrities and, it goes without saying, the Huffington Post. Polanski, now crowding 80, remains free.

Had he been Father Polanski, I do not have to bet my last dollar, nor you yours, that he would be within bars, no Celebs agitating on his behalf, no wrong-headed liberals downsizing his crime; au contraire.

But hang on, need we be surprised? The way things are, the anarchy of sexual behaviour elicits a positive response in an I-do-what-I-want-when-I-want-world.

A fortnight ago I referred to a conference that addressed the soon-to-be-no-longer problem of paedophiles and pederasts, or as the miniscule B4UACT group put it, “minor-attracted adults”. The attempt was made to remove the ‘stigma’ attached to paedophilia. This is not surprising, Justunredeemably shocking.

We have a man called Kinsey to thank for much of this, Judith Reisman for bringing back his gross proposals to our attention and Lifesitenews.com for carrying her article ‘Sexual Anarchy: The Kinsey Legacy’. The sexologist has many champions in high places, today.

One, Carol Vance, lesbian activist and Columbia University anthropologist, told a Kinsey symposium some years back that if Kinsey were discredited, “200 years of sexual progress (sic) can be undone.”

What she did not publicise was the fact that Kinsey systematically abused children under cover, so to speak, of scientific research. What greater cover-up can you have? He spent years clobbering together material that had as its objective the removal of sexual restraints and sex laws he considered no longer valid in a ‘sexually enlightened and honest era’.

The Kinsey legacy continues, the many billion dollars sex industry it created a fatted calfat which profane altar three generations of Americans haveworshipped.

It is not surprising Polanski found so many defenders of his rape of a 13-year-old; which is rape when committed by a priest or a parent or a relative or a minder (correctly so), but a guiltless act when perpetrated by one who belongs to the enlightened.

Judge and be judged

Judges and magistrates, it was reported, are angry about their working conditions. So what do they do to improve them? They stay away from celebratory Masses on the occasion of two national holidays.

I understand this futile and gauche gesture improved the conditions under which they work, which is what the reporter meant, no end.

One magistrate claims he soldiers on “out of respect for others”, which is jolly decent of him. But he expressed sorrow that he had ever accepted his nomination to the Bench. Listen, Your However-It-Is-a-Magistrate is addressed in court, there is a way out. Step down. Others may even respect you more, if you do; but as life sucks, I would not bank on this.

Same magistrate took on the burden of every other judge and magistrate to inform us that these were all demoralised, adding, more than a mite significantly, and that their low salaries did not help. Theirs was a far cry from what the British judiciary earned.

Let me share a secret with this whining whinger; so are the salaries of accountants, actors and actresses, baby-sitters,baby-minders and bus drivers, clergymen and consultants, dancers, designers, doctors and dog-­sitters, electricians, equestrians and exporters, footballers, freelancers and figure-skaters, gardeners, guardsmen and gunners, hackers, hostesses and hoteliers, importers, interior designers and impresarios, janitors, jockeys and journalists, kleptomaniacs (I imagine) and kidnappers, oncologists, ladies-in-waiting and ladies of the night, minstrels and mistresses, neurologists, newsreaders and – what the hell – news writers, ophthalmologists and opticians, paediatricians and pedagogues, queans and queens, restaurateurs and restorers, soldiers, lawyers and surgeons, tailors, tinkers and thinkers, urologists and usherettes, vintners and violinists, waiters, waitresses and wardens, xerox-dealers, yachtsmen and – er, yachtswomen, zoologists and zymologists – so are the salaries of all these a far cry from what their British counterparts earn. Try living in Britain.

If the Maltese versions of these professions behaved like our muddled magistrate and the odd, jaundiced judge, we would be in a right silly mess. Perhaps members of the judiciary who stayed away from formal functions to which they were invited by virtue of their office should have taken that office into account when they took such a preposterous decision; and get a life that includes dealing with their case load a mighty tad faster than is the case today.

For if they think the conditions they work under are unacceptable, less acceptable still as far as the public in general and litigants in particular are concerned, is the length of time taken to conclude cases that should be settled in one or two sittings and which last for years.

The perception of the general public is that what should be exercising the minds of Our Lordships is the apparent contempt of their courts displayed by lawyers and litigants forcing sameLordships to defer cases month after month – instead of concluding within days.

As for the nurses union...

You will have noticed that I left nurses out of the alphabetic, alliterative lot above; with good reason. Paul Pace, the president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN) was soundly wacked, verbally, by the I-Go Aid Foundation.

Pace issued a press statement last Tuesday to say that Malta was not in a position to support any influx of patients; this in the context of 14 seriously injured Libyans brought to Malta for treatment at Mater Dei, 10 of them in a critical condition.

Let other countries “with bigger healthcare facilities address such problems” was the I’m-all-right tenor of the MUMN statement, which also told the government “to keep in mind the welfare of the nation and not resort to decisions just to please the international community...” than the level of which louche remark it is difficult to descend further.

What is happening to this union?

And to...

...the Church authorities who involved themselves in discussions dealing with financial compensation to victims subjected to pederast activity by three clerics, two of whom have appealed against the verdict reached by the court that tried them, and one of whom no longer inhabits the land of the living.

Quite apart from the merits or demerits of the decision takenat the end of those discussions,why were these talks going onat all when the case remainsself-evidently sub judice?