Tapestries of finely-spun webs

It’s fascinating how the public agenda is driven by the whiners and whingers, generally on the premise that good news is no news and, anyway, if it’s good news, we can’t blame the government for it.

Make no mistake, the government makes as many messes as the next man, being as it’s a human construct without grounds to aspire to infallibility, though if you consider your common or garden minister, you’d think that the Pope took lessons from them on the subject. I was watching an ancient episode of Top Gear a couple of days ago and Boris Johnson was the celeb in the reasonably-priced car and his candour and “oh well, I’m only human” were refreshing. Honourable gents, please note.

So it came to pass last weekend that the news that there are quite a few thousand more in employment than there were the previous year, of whom around a couple of grand and a half were women, whooshed past the common perception like those deadlines of which Douglas Adams, good soul that he was, was so fond.

We have a labour force that is low when it comes to female participation, we all know that, so much so that Joseph Muscat mouthed a few platitudes about it, in one of his “family and apple pie” speeches, saying that if Labour came to power, it would do something, though what we know not, to improve the situation.

Well, there we have it, the situation has already improved, even if slightly, without the need for Labour to come to power.

The whiners and the whingers must hate it when things go right, though, luckily for them, the media, driven as it is by the “good news no news” mantra cited above, to say nothing of the personal and/or political agendas of many operators in the field, doesn’t really go out of its way to report the good stuff. For instance, you wouldn’t really think we’re in the process of weathering the economic storm adequately, though I hesitate even to write this, given that if some banker or other (and that was a “b” I wrote) makes yet another dog’s dinner of it, there’s no saying we won’t get hit as well.

And, of course, it will be all the government’s fault, because Lawrence Gonzi controls the world’s economy, doesn’t he?

Just as he controls the media, to be sure. I had to write this at a pretty ridiculous hour because the daily meeting we have in the bowels of Castille was delayed, Dr Gonzi having been at the Spanish Ambassador’s and I had nothing to write before he (Dr Gonzi, not the ambassador) gave me my instructions.

Just so the conspiracy theorists know, we meet in Room 6 on the second basement level, right next to where they keep the phone-tapping equipment used specifically to listen to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s conversations. This strikes me as quite a waste of money, incidentally, because every time he opens his mouth, he’s guaranteed to have a tame journalist with pencil licked and pad poised, ready to take down every morsel of wisdom that drops from his lips. And that’s quite apart from the fact that he up-chucks all over Facebook all the time like an angst-ridden teenager.

This fantasy of Labour’s is getting beyond a joke, frankly. They and their apologists have been chorusing this tune for many, many years, generally with people like Richard Cachia Caruana featuring somewhere in the background.

Let’s put a couple of cards on the table, then, shall we?

RCC, as everyone knows him, is an old friend from back in the days when we used to have sparring matches with the nation’s finest and their hangers-on, thugs one and all (and some of the boys in dirty khaki weren’t much better). This was the time when Dom Mintoff and his cuddly little chums were treating the University and its faculties and students like mortal enemies, probably because we had a brain or two between us and there’s nothing that annoys your average Socialist control-freak as much as someone with a few little grey cells.

But this old friendship doesn’t give RCC the right, or the wherewithal, to tell me what to write, who to write about and when to write it. In fact, he doesn’t, whether Labour’s little fan club wants to believe it or not, and I care not a jot what that sad little bunch believes. I speak only for myself but I’m pretty much convinced that the rest of the conspirators are very much of the same mind and the stark fact is that we write what we write because we believe what we write and that is the only common factor.

Back in the real world, if you want an example of a cosy little cabal, you need look no further than the current line-up on the MaltaToday front. Their legal eagle is Labour’s deputy leader and he does both jobs excellently, as I am sure he would agree, but doesn’t it strike you as moderately convenient that a media stable that seems to revel in doing down the government and all things Nationalist should be so buddy-buddy with aforesaid deputy leader?

I am sure that both Toni Abela and Saviour Balzan find the mere hint that they are perceived to be hand-in-glove to be a gross insult to their finer sensibilities but they’re always so eager to point fingers and embroider tapestries of finely-spun webs that there’s no reason why a liberal dose of tar shouldn’t be applied with the same sort of brush.

If you want to look further at the wheels within the cogs and pulleys of Labour’s little glove puppet show, you’ll find a whole shed-load of backs being scratched, axes ground and agendas served. And then they have the nerve to say that there’s a concert at this end of the spectrum.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/blogs