My ideas on the extent to which personal beliefs should impinge on the governance of civil society are not necessarily those of my old Uni mate Tonio Borg but it would be intolerant of me in the extreme to bash him over the head with this.

In fact, if I were to act like that I would be the very epitome of fundamentalist bigotry, though, hand on heart, I’m sure I’ve been as guilty of this human foible as the next man.

The Greens and other assorted so-called liberals who ply their parliamentary trade up Brussels way, with an interlude in Strasbourg every three weeks, do not appear to worry that their sanctimonious smugness in calling Borg homophobic or misogynist or whatever last Tuesday demonstrates that they are intolerant and bigoted as the very same next man, for all their Caped Crusader demeanour.

Whether Borg will be accepted or rejected remains to be seen. The ways of the Brussels mandarins are arcane in the extreme, and it is to be hoped that he will be confirmed.

Any other outcome would be an injustice, not because he’s a good bloke who deserves it, but because his performance on Tuesday demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is eminently suited for the position.

But for the intolerant and the bigoted, such considerations are irrelevant because unbelievers should be smitten and their names rendered unmentionable, because we are Greens and, therefore, we hold exclusive rights of decision as to what is right and what is wrong.

Human nature is such a leveller, isn’t it?

From the Ivory Towers of Brussels, bring yourself to the Other World that is Malta in the run up to an election.

Back in the day, the General Workers’ Union was the handmaiden of the Malta Labour Party. Things have changed, it’s now called the Labour Party.

The union’s head man, Tony Zarb, recently demonstrated his union’s solidarity with the struggling masses to the North of us, and to the North West and North East, for that matter, by signalling Malta’s participation, last Wednesday, in the Day of Action Against Austerity.

You see, our water and electricity bills are an austerity measure, thinly disguised, according to whoever wrote Zarb’s speech for him. The logic seems to be, if you can follow it, that austerity measures in those European countries that are taking them hit the citizenry hard. Water and electricity bills (let’s accept for the sake of argument) hit the citizenry hard too, so if x is equal to y and y is equal to z, then x is equal to z.

Don’t worry if you didn’t follow that, the point is that, according to Zarb, the fact that people have bills to pay, irrespective of the fact that they have jobs with which to earn the means to pay them, is an indicator of economic austerity and qualifies us to take to the streets in desperate protest.

And that argument leaves aside, you might say conveniently, the fact that, while high, utility bills are comparable to other bills, such as mobile phone bills and a packet of fags a day, and, as such, not truly a banner under which to march on the Bastille.

Though of course, to listen to Joseph Muscat, you’d think that this was going to be an issue on the back of which he was going to be riding a white charger up the steps to his Holy Grail, the Prime Minister’s Office in Castille.

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned appeal to the wallet to get the juices flowing, is there? I shall now do my duty and give you a couple of hints as to where you can nourish yourselves, pompous oaf that I am.

Firstly, I bring you tidings of great joy: Ali Baba is open again, in its original location in Gżira, and it’s as good as it was before Hani’s excursions into different forms of catering. You might want to book beforehand, because even on a November Thursday, it was pretty full.

If you’re in town, say after a mid-week concert at the Manoel, the Cordial just up the road is a good place to drop by and feed the outer man after having satisfied the inner one.

We did that after an enjoyable chamber music concert last Tuesday, sadly in a theatre that was not exactly stuffed to the rafters.

The people who continually whine and make silly remarks about the Piano open air performance space were, it need hardly be said, nowhere to be seen.

If they had felt themselves moved to attend an actual cultural event, they would have seen how vacuous their pleas for yet another indoor theatre are, as empty, in fact, as the Manoel sadly often is.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20