Those doctors in the House

From the election result, you have to assume that the inner circles of both parties knew what was coming. A number like 35 K, in Maltese terms, is so massive it would be like the captain of the Titanic saying he didn’t see the ’berg.

Oh, wait a moment, he was an incompetent so-and-so, by some accounts, so, perhaps, the analogy doesn’t stand up – or maybe it does, when you think about it.

Let’s assume that both sides, at least up in the dizzying heights of the leadership cadres, saw it coming, for the sake of argument, anyway. It will explain the smug looks we kept getting from josephmuscat.con’s side of the field, if nothing else.

If they did see it coming, then, what’s all this about a couple of their medical types getting their undies in a twist about having to give up their practices in order to exercise ministerial or quasi-ministerial powers?

Up to about 2pm on Wednesday, I was a touch ambivalent about Franco Mercieca being given a waiver. On the one hand, he’s an excellent practitioner in his field and his patients, genuinely, need his skills but, on the other hand, the waiver included private and not just public practice, so unless some complex system of foregone compensation has been worked out, the public purse is getting a slightly raw deal.

All in all, though, on balance, I was tending towards saying, oh, well, he is something of a special case and patients’ needs could be given consideration, though the extent to which he really is the Mourinho of ophthalmology was being debated as I wrote this.

But, then, we got the spectacle of the other medical gent who made the news on Wednesday, Godfrey Farrugia, having a touch of the weepies when asked what he thought about his colleague’s waiver. This brought home to me the truth, awkward as it is: you can’t have one medical gent being treated one way and another in another.

So the bottom line is, if you want to carry on being a fine doctor, as both these chaps are, you shouldn’t get down and dirty in the political mire. You’ll notice I didn’t fly any flags for the other professions: doctors are special, ask any one of them and he’ll tell you he is, with bells on his toes and rings on his fingers.

That massive thumbs down that the electorate gave the Nationalist Party has had something of an unedifying result, it’s becoming increasingly obvious.

The first symptoms fetched up on the comments boards, the ones that reside below columns such as this and its companion blog, for instance. The general tenor of the point being made is: “Oy you, shut up. Your bunch got whupped and now you have no right to say anything”.

You can see where they’re coming from, truth be told, because after so many years starved of bragging rights, now they’ve got them in spades, and you can forgive the Lil’Elves and Peculiar Pundits their triumphalism, though when they get up close and personal, as some do, then your charitable thoughts soon turn to less benign feelings.

All I can say to yon L’Es and PPs is, sorry to disappoint you, chaps, I didn’t curl up and die when the result came out. I survived quite a number of years under much more virulent examples of Socialism and this has become a civilised country now.

The ineffectual spitefulness of the less enlightened takes on sinister hues, however, when it starts being perceived in those who should know better. The Speech from the Throne, sad to say, was an episode of just that: smug self-satisfied gloating and not on the part of His Excellency, either.

It is a fact - made crystal clear by the President himself - that the speech written for him was an uncomfortable one for him to read, with its partisan slogans and thinly-disguised digs at the Opposition. Apologists for josephmuscat.con, in my hearing, have tried to make the case that there had been similar episodes when the boot was on the other foot but no one gives these types any credence.

The reasons behind the utterly inappropriate speech are not entirely clear. Some have wondered whether there wasn’t a degree of spite directed at the President, who had chucked his hat in the ring for Labour’s leadership back in the day.

Others have mused on the childishness of the episode as a feature of general unfitness for purpose.

Others still have taken a wider view, attributing the nature of the speech to a feeling of “I am top dog now and I can say what I like, so there”.

Your guess is as good as mine, really.

Onwards and upwards to matters of nourishment: we had a boys’ night at the Black Pig a couple of nights ago and it was a genuinely excellent meal.

Not cheap, though that may have been a component of the wine chosen by one of our number, who fancies himself as a connoisseur, but worth it.

You can also try out Ġużè in Valletta (both are on Old Bakery), they serve up some pretty good stuff too and you probably need to book at both, being as the country is not exactly languishing in the throes of a recession, if the number of occupied tables is any indication.

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www.timesofmalta.