The crisis in Libya, an extension or expansion of the ongoing tragedy that has engulfed Syria, Iraq and other troubled areas, has brought home to us, blithely bobbing about imitating the world’s umbilicus, that the world is not such a nice place, not at all.
Forgive that statement of the way-too-obvious sounding a bit snide, it wasn’t meant to; the fact is that the world seems to be heading towards even more misery and, suddenly, we’ve started to realise this. I don’t mean, either, to sound as if I’m spreading doom and gloom, there’s not very much we can do about it all anyway, so getting depressed and panicky isn’t going to help anyone.
But there’s a gulf between accepting the reality that, as a tiny island-state, there’s not much we can do to affect world affairs and ignoring the other reality that we need to be careful and vigilant not to make our position any more difficult than it could become in a blink of an eye.
When Libya was in flames a couple of years ago, we had the great good fortune to have Lawrence Gonzi at the helm, a safe pair of hands acknowledged Europe (if not world)-wide as such and acknowledged also for his, and by association, our contribution towards getting through the crisis in the best way possible, to the extent that anyone ever gets through these things.
Today, we don’t have Gonzi running things, we have Joseph Muscat and, for every kind of reason, he has to be supported and given room within which to do his job, which is keeping the country and its partners as safe as possible, within the limits of what can be achieved.
Within the context of this state of affairs, however, it is up to the government to do its bit, itself a statement of the bleedin’ obvious of staggering proportions.
It is not helpful, then for one of the Prime Minister’s aides to involve himself in what is perhaps one of the silliest tweets to see the light of day since the Good Lord invented Twitter.
Glenn Bedingfield, because it is of this wine-lover that I write, saw fit to retweet, thus in full public view, a moronic remark in the sense that the Holy Quran is different from Mein Kampf only because the latter is a more moderate tract than the former. He did not retweet the remark disapprovingly and did not in any way disassociate himself from the sentiment, he merely retweeted it.
To make matters worse, even assuming they could be made worse, he then “apologised” by saying he was sorry if well-meaning adherents of Islam were offended by his tweet. The media chose to take this as an apology: the rest of us see it for what it is.
In normal governments, this sort of behaviour is grounds for the culprit being told where to get off, in no uncertain terms. Under Muscat’s leadership, it seems, at least as at the time of writing this, Bedingfield’s ill-judged public utterances are not felt to be embarrassing enough to require a reaction.
There is precedent for Bedingfield keeping his job, of course.
Similar sentiments, though not as stark, expressed by Mario Philip Azzopardi were insufficient for him to be asked to move away from the cultural directorship of V-18 and, in a different context, being convicted of revenge-porn seems to be a pre-requisite to being lauded as a “soldier of steel” by no less a luminary than the leader of the Labour Party, come on down, Muscat.
Today, we don’t have Lawrence Gonzi running things, we have Joseph Muscat and he has to be supported and given room within which to do his job, which is keeping the country as safe as possible
From the gorblimey of Bedingfield’s silliness, we now ascend to the sublime of the way the government has treated the army, with the officer corps being dismembered in order to accommodate the legitimate (they are legitimate if seen through a Tagħna Lkoll lens, what do you mean?) aspirations of what many have described, perhaps charitably, as less qualified and less experienced gentlemen at arms. One can only hope and pray that if the balloon goes up, they will somehow turn into leaders of men.
Muscat, from what we can glean, is eager for Europe and the world to take responsibility for making sure that the Libyan powder-keg, when it explodes, doesn’t knock us, and by necessary extension, him, out of our comfortable way of life but he isn’t as eager to take the hard decisions, decisions that might involve putting our army into the fray.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no wish to see anyone put in harm’s way but sometimes, grown-ups have to take decisions that do just that and, forgive me, the evidence is not overwhelming that if push comes to shove, we have someone who will do that.
Again, let’s be realistic: our military might is not exactly such that will tip the balance and, in truth, having yet another country chucked into the mix if it comes to it will probably do less good than letting the big boys do their job.
But this does not mean that the right sort of noises don’t have to be made. If not, you get left out of statements and generally ignored, which wouldn’t have happened to Gonzi now, would it?
Life will go on, whatever the fundamentalist thugs decide to do in the meantime, so here are a couple of recommendations for nourishment on the south island.
On Saturday, deliberately and with malice aforethought, ignoring carnival and all its cultural festivities on which to build for the future (if the minister responsible for culture will forgive my plagiarising his mildly North Korean sounding tweets) we had an excellent – nay more than excellent – lunch at Chez Philippe in Gżira. Seriously, this is food with taste and aplomb, served with grace and friendliness of the highest order: they should charge higher prices (no, they shouldn’t) because they’re better than plenty of snootier places, even in big cities.
Sunday saw us having a stroll around Landrijiet, some more than others.
The masochists wanted to walk, the sensible ones were just working up an appetite and an excuse for the pre- and post-lunch whisky.
We ended up, the more astute among us, you will have surmised, at Rogantino’s, which was hardly a coincidence since we had booked a table there. You need to, it need hardly be said, because it’s a popular joint and Sunday lunch a popular time slot.
It is popular with more than good reason; we’re talking about seriously generous grub here, cooked to a turn and dished up by scurrying maids who don’t seem to stop to take breath.
If you’re a lover of the Scottish dram that cheers, this is a good place too, because the patron can be persuaded to let you sample some of his own stock, if he is sufficiently reassured that he’ll have some left for later.
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