This week, I’m not going to lay into anyone, I’m going to be all sweetness and light, leaving aside considerations of a political nature in favour of messages of seasonal cheer and reflections that are consonant with the time of year.

[Long pause, waiting for inspiration to descend upon me.]

No, sorry, nothing occurs to me, the fact that it’s Christmas time and all that leaves me unmoved, so back to business as usual.

So, let’s start with a short lesson in law, shall we?

The CEO of Transport Malta, that organisation that has covered, and continues to cover, itself with so much glory in managing our perception that traffic is in an almighty mess, tweeted triumphantly that his organisation had won a mighty victory in court last Wednesday when the attempt to stop the contract with the Spanish operators from being signed was denied.

While it’s always fun winning, James Piscopo should be aware that, in the matter of prohibitory injunctions, the court does not decide the merits of the case before it but merely whether, on balance and at first sight, whatever it is that is being requested is vital, to the point of essential, to protect the interests of the person who is asking for the measure to be taken.

Very often, the court, as in this case from what I could see, comes down on the side of allowing things to go on, taking the point that any aggrieved party can seek damages from whoever caused the damages.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Labour’s bright young things are not, really, that bright after all

When the damage causer is the government, directly or at one remove, the danger of dry-hole judgments (winning a case but finding no assets against which to recover damages) is not high, so the court would tend towards letting the aggrieved party go after damages instead of stopping the transaction, whatever it is.

So in this case, while Transport Malta and its political boss, Joseph the Honourable Mizzi, Minister for Perception Management and Phantom Oil-wells, can be happy and chirpy that they can go ahead with signing up with the Spanish but woe betide them, and our money (whose money do you think it is, Mizzi’s?) if the contract and the manner of its negotiation and award are found to have caused pecuniary damage to anyone because they will have to shell out.

I just thought I’d point out that little thing because it seems to be such music to Labour and all its helpers whenever the courts find in their favour that it’s high time someone played the real tune to them.

My columnar colleague’s column last Wednesday featured the tag-line (is that what they call it?) that “Caruana Galizia’s views should be unacceptable to all right-thinking people”.

The line was plumped into the middle of what may, I believe fairly, be described as something of an “auto auto da fe” by means of which Martin Scicluna gave even wider publicity than heretofore to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s views about him, and then enriching the stew by lashing out at her, ending with stamped-foot demand that the Nationalist Party denounces Caruana Galizia and all her works.

Scicluna’s views are his to have and Heaven forfend that I gainsay him (quite apart from the fact that it would be unseemly to do so on the same paper that he writes for) but I beg, with all due respect, and with the editor’s permission, to differ, ever so politely.

I hope I can be described as a right-thinking person, though I would prefer “liberal” to “right-thinking” when it comes to the political flavouring of my thoughts, and Caruana Galizia’s are quite decidedly not unacceptable to me.

For those of you who struggle with double negatives, that translates into “I rather like her stuff”, which to my many detractors, especially those who describe me as a running-dog lackey of the Nasty Nats, will not be surprising. It may, perhaps, come as a surprise to Scicluna that I think this way but, there you are, we all have our little foibles.

The second aspect on which I differ, this time strongly, with Scicluna, is on the disowning of Caruana Galizia by the Nationalists, demanded by him for all that he dressed it up in Anglophilial politeness.

The Nationalists do not own her, in the same way that they do not own me.

The thought that they do might have got legs from the billboard (before the elections) that showed a panoply of journalistic enemies (or former enemies) of Labour, controlled tools of the Nationalist Party (to my eternal chagrin I was not shown among them) the implication being that they were coordinated mouth-pieces of the Nasty Nats.

That this was a lie then, and remains a lie now, is a given but my point here is that Scicluna’s peremptory demand that “the Nationalist leadership [...] now publicly dissociates itself from her unacceptable attack on thousands of hard-working Maltese” (by which I suspect he meant on him) should bemet with a two-pronged response by said leadership.

I don’t mean two-pronged in the time-honoured fashion, either, I mean that:

a) he should be told that no-one, not even Scicluna (or Andrew Borg-Cardona, for that matter) tells the Nationalist Party what to do and

b) the Nationalist Party does not believe in restricting free speech, even mildly by mere disassociation.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Labour’s bright young things are not, really, that bright after all and they certainly shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a car.

After the general ruckus which ensued when former minister Manuel Mallia’s car was dinged, what possessed the Herrera fellow to drive away after he dinged a car himself – was he worried that someone would take a Glock to him or something?

In the greater scheme of things, such as compared to the Gang of Four making nice to the somewhat dubious types hanging out in Baku, and I don’t mean the carpet salesmen who were hovering around Muscat in one of the pictures, these little events pale into insignificance, however, they are symptomatic of the pervading malaise that has struck down Muscat’s Labour, that is, arrogantia supremis.

It’s the time of year for celebratory meals, rather than romantic têtes-à-tête (who, me?) and sometimes standards go south slightly.

This was not the case on four occasions for such meals in which I took part, so take a bow and get a kiss under the Mistletoe (figuratively speaking) from the guys at Zeri’s, il-Fliegu, Sharma and La Nave (at the National Aquarium).

imbocca@gmail.com

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