According to Mr Lino Spiteri, Labour's Mass Meeting in Ta' Qali was impressive, to which all I can say is that anyone who finds himself impressed by the size of a crowd (at either of the party's meetings, actually) should be somewhat careful, lest his perspicacity on other matters falls to be devalued.

I would be more impressed, speaking for myself, if the content of the relevant speeches were to be worth the candle, rather than at the number of individual components of the baying mob that bothered to turn up, whether that mob were to be baying "Gonzi, Gonzi" or "Joseph, Joseph".

A crack by Joseph Muscat caught my eye over the weekend.   The dear young man, though he's not really going to be able to use that epithet too much, he's approaching middle-age, even if he doggedly keeps that look of youthful optimism, smile and all, on his face all the time, took the Government to task about its record, of all things, on job creation.

This really must throw some light on the level of genius Muscat's advisers possess.  They're arguing, from what I can gather, that the Government's claim to have created thousands of jobs is a crock, because, always according to these genii, many of these jobs  are being taken up by people who were already in employment.

So, if you can follow their logic, which isn't always going to be easy, if you lose your job, the fact that there's a new job available means that the new job isn't a new job at all, it's simply a continuation of your old job, which does not, however, exist any longer.   It seems to escape said genii, incidentally, that many, many thousands of graduates have flowed onto the job market over the many, many years of Nationalist government and the vast majority of these have found work.  

Obviously, the job market can always be improved and job content and rewards should always be driven towards the upper end of the market if possible, but when you take a look outside our shores and the percentages of the unemployed there, you have to wonder why Muscat insists on arguing the toss in this area.

Is he trying to look like a loser?

A couple of non-connected points, which I might or might not develop over the coming days. 

Where are the environmentalists, having a nice summer holiday?   The Federation of Conservationist Bird-Killers have let slip that Labour is playing nice with them at the moment, letting it be known that bag-sizes might be allowed to shoot up if Muscat were to get his size nines under the desk at Castille, possibly between his signing off on new development projects (and hang the environment) to get money flowing and people (specifically the developers) feeling all warm and fuzzy.

I yield to no man in my admiration for Mr Martin Scicluna's grasp of English and the elegance of his writing, but is it really so good we have to read it twice?  On September the 10th he penned a "what was so wrong with Mintoff?" piece in the competition on Sunday, and then we had the ineffable pleasure of re-reading vast chunks of the same thing, in the Times last Saturday, under my "Beck" column.   I've never come across someone plagiarising himself before.

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