In my "used-to-be-Beck" column on Saturday's paper version, I ruminated on the manner in which words have been deprived of their meaning by Labour's good men and true.
Gozo Channel's Chairman, one such, is reported to have remarked, in connection with the brawl that went down on Friday, that it was "nothing out of the ordinary". I have been travelling on Gozo Channel's excellent service on average at least twice a week, at varying times from the loftiest of peaks to the lowest of troughs, for something in the region of seven years, and I have not formed the impression, by even the lengthiest stretch of the imagination, that brawls on board are anything approaching ordinary.
It has been pointed out in the past, when I dared write that the company's service is actually very good, nowithstanding the sporadic moans by the ungrateful, I had quite close connections with the company, apart from being a regular, and satisfied, traveller. So when I hear the highest official of the company saying something is "nothing out of the ordinary" when it quite patently is, I have to wonder why such an effort to play things down was made.
But it's hardly his fault, he's been given really bad examples by the Great and the Good of the Nation.
The Speaker, for instance, had let it be known that the elections he was responsible for monitoring in Azerbaijan were "democratic and transparent", though admittedly he was being reported in MaltaToday, so take that with a few cellars of salt.
Oh well, at least we can rest easy in the thought that when Dr Anglu Farrugia, before becoming Speaker, had said that the elections in Malta were not democratic and transparent, he was saying this in the context of the fact that his grasp of what is democratic and transparent is, to put it charitably, ever so slightly arse over elbow.
The Prime Minister, in a different context, had said that the Government would be following the Commission for the Administration of Justice's ruling in respect of Judge Farrugia Sacco.
Quite clearly he has a different intepretation of how one follows a ruling. In the PM's dictionary, "follow" seems to be defined as "verb, intransitive, meaning to shelve or materially ignore".
Oh well (Part II) (rock reference anyone?) his way of following a finding will allow him to ignore, blow raspberries at and generally extend two fingers, splayed, in the general direction of the US State Department and its conclusion that our treatment of immigrants is a serious human rights problem. He will eventually tell us that the State Department was sayiing quite the opposite.
Whatever, as long as his best buddies, China, the People's Republic of and Azerbaijan, and Henley and Who's It (yes, I know they're not a country, but they act as if they are) think he's the best thing since sliced bread, that's all right then.