Just for the ill-educated, the "ars" above lacks an "e", so it's not rude. That said, if this wasn't a portal that is accessible by all, including kids, I'd have been sorely tempted to add the "e", as it is about Jason Micallef that I will be musing.

I hope you're able to read this and the electricity hasn't gone again, again. Of course, it's all GonziPN's fault, shame on you, Minister, that you spent a goodly chunk of the night without lights, fans, ACs and all the other accoutrements you've become used to, you spoilt brat, you.

So, Mr Micallef is getting all het up about PBS, yet again. Not only is he mightily aggrieved that the CEO has been kept in place, thereby blocking out a nice little earner for some Taghna Lkoll poster boy (perish the thought that our Jason wants it for himself) but he's also got this beam-sized chip on his shoulder about the rumours he's chosen to hear about some Song Festival or other having its scheduled slot changed.

Why Micallef should be so annoyed about a song contest, I have no clue, maybe he'd thought it might be a good idea to include it in the V-18 Foundation's weird and wonderful projects to ensure that the City of Culture 2018 status of Valletta and the rest of the country is kept at the highest of high levels.

After all, we've had such a good start here: a kiddies' football tournament, done and dusted, a few hundred potted plants (the irony of having potted plants to the fore after Labour's enormous victory at the polls is lost on him, of course) strewn over the Palace Square and a childish mural, of which more later.

Micallef is also, from what I saw on the papers, getting a bit annoyed because PBS is getting an orchestra together. Again, why the dear chap is peeved is lost on me. One must assume that he thinks he's got a monopoly on all things cultural, because he's been to a village farce and read a whole book, with real words in it. Oh, and he gets his clothes from abroad, almost exclusively, undermining his commitment to the Maltese fashion industry, despite his previous threat to have a fashion show as part of the V-18 programme.

PBS thinks, on its part, that Micallef has been firmly put in his place by their statement that every major broadcaster should have its own light orchestra, ignoring the fact that, actually, PBS is little more than a minor telly station with a reach little larger than Tele Vigata or Jolly TV in Sicily. There's hardly enough talent to keep the National Philharmonic up at the excellent standards it's reached, so perhaps on this one, Micallef might be right, even if for completely the wrong reasons.

But back to that mural, for Heaven's sake. For those of you haven't seen it, the thing, established at the Passenger Ferry Terminal under the auspices of V-18, using your money and mine, is a garish representation of scenes such as a red (and I mean RED) haired babe in a bikini lounging on a cartoon beach eating an ice-cream.

Insofar as it's a touristy thingy it's not badly executed, so the students who put it together shouldn't have got as teed-off as they got when the association between their oeuvre and V-18, but the blinking thing is not appropriate by a country mile and a bit.

Sadly, in a cultural environment that has to come to resemble the misbegotten offspring of a coupling between a teledramm and a marc tal-festa, worthy as these are in their own context, such travesties go unremarked by the Taghna Lkollers, even those with an artistic bent who were so quick to be down on GonziPN in their particular precious way.

The tragedy is, as always, is that not only have the switchers got their wish, and nothing to switch on, thanks to Konrad Sai Mizzi, but the rest of us have to live with the fruit of their whines.