Hi, I'm back - sorry about the absence, Xmas was inconsiderate in coming half way through the week, though it did mean a nice long break. New Year's was as bad, unoriginally.
As you'll have noticed from my ex-Beck column, there's not been a heck of a lot to write about, but things are picking up, with our esteemed politicians coming back from being all nice and fluffy and raising money at the behest of the Presidency. I suspect that the limit that there is to the extent to which the State's representative can pitch up to raise money for all and sundry is soon to be reached and it might be about time for an assessment to be made about whether this is such a good thing.
You'd think people would be prepared to give money without the President and assorted senior politicians haranguing them to do so all the time. Imagine Her Maj., during breaks from hitting Prince Andrew about the head with a rolled-up copy of "Celebrity Lechers" and muttering "You. Blinking. Inbred. Twerp.", going on the equivalent of Omnibus or whatever with the electronic equivalent of a begging bowl.
Getting back to the political scene, is Minister Owen Bonnici going to resign now, or what? No sooner had he tweeted that convicted, and unrepentant, rapist Ched Evans, should be given a second chance that his (Bonnici's) boss tweeted that he was not of the same mind, though he did refer to Chad Evans, not being one to worry about details.
I mean, this is a serious matter, a Minister of State comes over all rehab and cuddly, oozing compassion and cuddliness, while the PM, perhaps having had time to look at the way the comments-wind was blowing, let it be known that these overly-P.C. notions could go hang themselves, Malta doesn't need this sort of negative publicity.
Well, that ship has sailed, PM, your pimping of our passports, getting us into a race to the bottom with places like "Our Passport is Cheaper than Yours" Cyprus, has got us a less-than pristine image already, along with your misplaced wisecracks about push-backs.
On the Evans case, I'm rather of the same opinion as the PM, strangely, though not because of the harm to Malta's image. Here was have a guy who, even though convicted, has shown not an iota of contrition or regret that he acted in a manner that many deem to be thuggish in the extreme, at best. The wooly-thinkers on the comments boards and on Twitter, sadly including our Minister for Justice, seem to think that by serving his sentence, or part of it, the slate is wiped clean and Evans can be rehabilitated in the public's consciousness as if nothing had happened.
It doesn't work that way: a footballer is in the limelight, even if he's only playing for Hibs, so he's got to be treated differently.
Over and above the predictable fluffiness of thought that often accompanies debates about rehabilitating criminals and getting them back into the main stream, there was an equally predictable, and sickening, wave of comment about how he wasn't guilty of all that much and how the girl must have been asking for it and similar expressions of oafish ignorance. Honestly, is there some sort of rule that in order to post a comment under a story, you have to be a total idiot without the slightest hint of self-awareness and capacity to be embarrassed by what you write?
I suppose the trick is not to read the comments, but it's high time that keepers of the portals took a good long look at the sort of stuff they allow to filter through. On the horrific story about the New Year's road fatality, which MaltaToday chose to break with names and all very early on (that's another debate altogether) there was an online argument about wearing seatbelts, as if this was what was important in the circumstances.
Seriously, a young man is dead, his family and friends plunged into unimaginable depths of anguish, and these supercilious fools debate the ins and outs of wearing a seatbelt? And someone sitting in front of a computer representing the media-house concerned thinks that this is the sort of thing that enhances the house's prestige?