Ms Marlene Mizzi has been pleased to allow it to be put about that she is one of the more cerebral players on Labour's team, and an entrepreneur to boot. Her campaign photo, amusingly, has had more work done on her image than it takes to keep the Forth Bridge painted. I mean, she never was difficult on the eye, but a lass of eighteen she ain't no longer, except in her recent Photoshop manifestation, but this could be forgiven.
Militating against this perception of braininess has been her constant presence on Facebook, generally acting in a way that brings to mind not a lady of a certain age (she's about my vintage) but one of more flighty disposition.
That which was reported in another section of the media finally puts a stop to all this loose talk about Ms Mizzi being some sort of intellectual, to say nothing of starkly lowlighting her grasp of basic democratic principles.
What was she thinking, you really have to ask, that is if she was thinking at all? With brains like those, she doesn't need to be got up to look like a film star, Labour's faithful will trip over themselves to vote for her.
Apparently, La Mizzi has posed a number of EPQ (European Parliamentary Questions, of the sort that Europhobe Dr Alfred Sant wants to desperately to be putting in a few months' time) asking whether the Commission is aware that the Opposition in Malta is - wait for it, wait for it - actually daring, horror of horrors, oppose the Government and is it right for them to do this?
From the tone of her questions, apart from 'cusing the naughty Nats to the Headmaster (she still seems to inhabit the schoolyard) it is clear that Marlene Mizzi thinks that it is undemocratic for the Opposition to exercise the democratic function of an Opposition in a democracy.
Because, you know, when a Labour Government wants to do something, everyone has to toe the line. Labour always knows best and if you don't bow your head and do Labour's bidding, you are undemocratic, a traitor to your country and generally a pariah.
Oh well, you can't really blame the poor woman. Mintoff used to rant in precisely those terms and Alfred Sant recently made it known that in the light of Labour's stonking majority, the Nationalists should just shut up.
And in the meantime, Evarist Bartolo tries to get one in under the radar, taking us a step closer to Labour's 1984 Dystopia, with information on hordes of individuals to be available at his touch of a button.