'ERE WE GO AGAIN

I'm not talking about the confidence vote the PM called for Tuesday: the result of that is as foregone a conclusion as the result of Friday's piece of work, once Dr Franco Debono had painted himself into the corner. Up to a few days before, I was still a bit iffy on whether he would go that far, he had been given so many reasons not to, but he chose to make the Grand Gesture, so the only doubt on Friday was whether he would turn up or just vote with his feet.

He chose to turn up and Labour, oh so altruistically, allowed him to speak for as long as he wanted and gave him a hearty round of applause at the end. There wasn't that much applause out here in the real world from Labour's supporters, though, when they realised that the motion hadn't passed and the Government was still Gonzi's, as it's going to remain. Labour should really try to dampen expectations, the disappointment is almost touching to behold every time this happens.

As an aside, perhaps it's time for the PN to sit up and smell the roses. That we have no real opposition in the country is well known, so instead of letting its backbenchers do the job (and it's a job someone has to do, so good on them) in the current haphazard fashion, the PN should harness the momentum and turn it into something positive for the country, keeping the Ministers on their toes.

The "again" in my title refers to Labour's broad hint in one of the papers that they don't exclude presenting some sort of motion about the public broadcasting service, on which subject Debono waxed lyrical in his 50 minutes in the spotlight.

Labour's modus operandi, because they don't have original ideas of their own (none that they've told us about, except for Joseph Cuschieri's twenty-week maternity leave, anyway), is to suss out which bandwagon is about to trundle past and hop on, for the greater glory of, well, Labour.

PBS has come into the cross-hairs of quite a few worthies of late, and the main target is Lou Bondi's BondiPlus. The main reason for this, whether Labour and others like it or not, is that these are very popular, well made, shows and, more to the point, they are fair, which means that the real picture is portrayed. The real picture, that is, and not the artificially-balanced one that puts all ideas and concepts on the same footing, whether or not they are stupid, skewed, shameful or otherwise unworthy of standing alongside good ones.

As a result of the Broadcasting Authority's compulsive adherence to arithmetical definitions of "balance", it has now become a (hollow) theory of broadcasting that simply because one side says something, this means that it has the same value (note the use of the concept of "value", an abandoned concept today) as that said by the other side.

To put it bluntly, if the truth lies further to one side than to the other, that is where the fulcrum of balance should lie and if someone is talking though his hat, then he should be seen to be doing do.

Another reason for Labour's obsessive and rapidly-becoming tedious whining about public broadcasting is that Lou Bondi has an opinion and is not worried about expressing it and about how he does that, for all that it is his private opinion and not one that he uses his show to promote, unlike many.

For Labour and its fellow-travellers, as I well know because I get the same flak, but they can't do anything about me, since the Broadcasting Authority doesn't have jurisdiction on my freedom of expression, having an opinion that is not theirs is forbidden. The fact, stark and obvious as it is, that in his programmes Bondi is fair and balanced is irrelevant: for Labour, the messenger must be shot because he is not their messenger.

This is where the real "democratic deficit" lies, as it has always done, in Labour's bully-boys attacking anyone who dares to take points of view of which they do not approve. Bring it on, boys and girls, this only means we're doing something right, and annoying the Laivieras, the Mifsuds, the Priviteras and the assorted other Lil'Elves makes it worthwhile and then some.