It had to happen, didn’t it? Labour is now reaching for the stars. It took our esteemed Parliamentary Secretary for Competitiveness and Economic Growth, José Herrera, to break the astounding news that the International Telecommunications Union has allocated to Malta two orbital satellite slots. And guess what? We’re going to peddle them, just like they were European Union passports. Malta could get around a million euros a year in rent for them. Well, better than a poke in the eye.

Herrera says the government will be doing what “others have failed to do”. He must be referring to the Nationalist Party but he won’t stoop so low as to mention them. He says Malta will be seeking partners to exploit “space assets a small step for a humble Herrera but certainly a giant leap for Malta.

Herrera is the man who had promised us to revolutionise the warden system by doing away with sneaky wardens, who lie in wait behind corners to catch drivers on their mobile phones. He promised a new warden system that would focus on educating people first and, yes, taking care of the environment, which probably meant they’d try to stop people littering. None of that has happened, of course. The wardens are back, in starched white uniforms, and they’re issuing parking tickets just like before.

So, having failed there, Herrera is now reaching out for space assets. One would have expected that the parliamentary secretary would time this better, considering that news from the space world has not been so great in recent weeks.

Maybe, Herrera was initially encouraged by the news that the European Space Agency probe Philae has successfully landed on a comet, after a 10-year journey crossing four billion miles of space. However, it appears to have landed in the wrong place and things have become complicated. There was much hope in Philae, as there was in Labour.

Virgin boss Richard Branson too suffered a terrible setback to his dream of commercial space tourism following that crash of Virgin Galactic’s test craft SpaceShipTwo in California.

But neither Philae nor Branson has dampened our energetic parliamentary secretary’s enthusiasm to rent away satellite slots and boldly take Malta where no Nationalist has ever gone before. He’s going to rent those slots, come what may.

Looking back, quite a few strange things have been happening on this little island since Labour came to government, which make you think we may not be alone is this vast universe. True, apart from the spaceship spotted over Vittoriosa and reported with front-page prominence by l-Orizzont, we don’t see much strange lights in the sky. Under Labour, the lights tend to go off, not on, even at a children’s Eurovision contest.

There were other mysterious goings on. Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli’s husband has had little green men falling out of the sky to work on a farmhouse he owns on the outskirts of Żejtun.

Patrick Dalli said he had no idea there were workers on his property down the road from where he lives, a property served with a planning authority enforcement notice because of infringements.

Some people have all the luck, don’t they?

The Prime Minister is too busy selling to see what a terrible responsibility he will bear when this joy ride is over

My wife has been praying that some of the cleaners recently recruited by Transport Minister Joe Mizzi would descend on our house and give it a good cleaning. We certainly won’t snub them but they never come. So sad.

Our disappointment may be due to the fact that we are living in the wrong neighbourhood. Strange things do seem to happen around that Dalli farmhouse on the periphery of Żejtun – the farmhouse mentioned by the minister in her declaration of assets, not the other one. Some time ago, two sleeping policemen and warning signs appeared on both approaches to the Dalli farmhouse. Eerie, isn’t it? Extraterrestrial.

Dalli’s husband was irritated when contacted by this newspaper about the little green men on his property. He asked: “Is there something behind it? Is it because who I am?” The answer is simple.

He is the husband of a government minister, a public figure that should set example. So, yes, it is because of who he is and it should be so. It is called public accountability, an alien word to Labour, no doubt.

Funnily, Labour MP lucky Luciano Busuttil, came very much to the same conclusion as Dalli’s husband when an appeals court ordered that he should be investigated over serious allegations concerning an advice he gave to Cospicua’s Labour council over the adjudication of a tender. The court has referred the case to the Commission for the Administration of Justice, the Attorney General and the Director of Contracts to investigate.

Busuttil says he looks forward to clearing his name but thinks that the fact that he is an MP also played a part in the matter. What is so wrong with Labour that they cannot understand the most basic of things: public accountability?

Busuttil may assert whatever he likes about that damning court sentence but the fact that he is an MP has everything to do with it, otherwise, people would not care if he is being investigated or not.

In a normal, civilised, mature and democratic country, Busuttil would have long been assigned to the annals of political history and rocketed into space to join the vast expanse of debris that pollutes our atmosphere. Not in Labour Malta, however.

There are no such things as political standards, values and accountability. There is just a national plundering by a greedy class of people parading as socialists.

So we cannot expect Interior Minister Manwel Mallia’s storm troopers to go charging into Busuttil’s home with a search warrant any time soon.

No, Mallia’s police are too busy issuing lengthy statements absolving the minister’s own chief of staff, Silvio Scerri, of accusations he was behind the alleged plot to murder his estranged partner’s boyfriend.

Our local version of Darth Vader is standing by his top man and now his police are doing the same. They say Scerri is a victim, not a suspect in the alleged assassination plot. That there is still a magisterial inquiry in progress is apparently irrelevant. Talk about in-your-face arrogance.

The Prime Minister is aloof from all this, too busy goofing around selling pie in the sky to see how his amoral policies are corrupting this country. He is too busy selling, just selling, to see what a terrible responsibility he will bear on his shoulders when this joy ride is over and done with.

Muscat is a man who catapulted to power with an incredible majority. He is the one man in our modern political history who could have taken the necessary bold measures to radically change this country’s subservient mentality and transform it into a true modern Europe state.

Instead, he regresses this country, exploits and institutionalises that curse of submissive colonialism, Malta’s eternal plague.

For power, Muscat has thrown away all ideology and political principles. It is already late in the day but there may be still time for him to phone home for some sound advice.

A few days ago, he received a public call from 18 left-wingers calling for a bit of sanity from his leftist government gone far right. Muscat is still to return that call.

This is a government with no moral compass. You cannot govern by impulse or by political exigencies. Above all, you cannot please everyone.

The likes of Scerri and Busuttil must go immediately and without debate if this country is to restore any dignity to itself.

Muscat thinks he can still pull through, and he may very well manage to do that until the next election, through promises of glitzy Dubai-style iconic projects that shall ruin this country’s terribly wounded environment.

The truth is, without political values, this country’s soul is being destroyed.

Sadly, Malta Today surveys still show Muscat riding high. He is still as popular as ever and that does not reflect well on us Maltese. It just shows how degenerate this country has become and leaves you with little hope.

As Captain Kirk would say: “Beam me up Scotty, there’s no sign of intelligent life down here.”