Speakers of Maltese will notice that my headline is a direct translation of the time-honoured epithet directed to those of a stubborn disposition. I asked those more erudite than me whether I’m right, to try to be sure that ras taż-żonqor (RtŻ from hereon) translates literally the way I wrote it but got no answers, so I’m going with it anyway.

It is yet to be seen whether Premier Joseph Muscat will turn out to have one, and if so, two.

Will he, in other words, have a shiny new ‘university’, no doubt to be opened by him with great pomp and ceremony, with a granite plaque bearing letters of gold commemorating the inauguration of the “Premier Joseph Muscat University of Żonqoria”?

Meaning that he will have been proved to have a “RtŻ” and get an everlasting monument to it, all in the same handy package.

Or will he turn out not to have a “RtŻ” after all, pull a neck-wrenching U-turn and come over to the great unwashed, bewildered and bemused that we are, as the Premier who listens?

Meaning, of course, that he won’t have his Premier Joseph Uni but that might have to be the price he pays to have his U-ie pass muster as the mark of a listening Premier.

GonziPN is no longer in power, so the megaphones can be put away

Just as I was writing this a dear friend told me that żonqor is coralline limestone and sent me a picture of the relevant page of the dictionary to prove it but I’m sticking with granite; it’s catchier.

And I can’t use the picture because one of the other words on it is not appropriate for a family audience, even if it might also be ironically appropriate.

There are so many reasons why Premier Muscat should put the dampers on the Żonqor Point project that it’s difficult to know where to start, really.

From his point of view, the PR card is probably the only one that is going to cut any ice, but there are more.

The environmental mortal sin that is going to be perpetrated will worry him not at all, I venture to say, because he’s had his way with that lobby and a few screeching tree-huggers aren’t going to put him off his feed.

Had the idea been, say, to slap a golf course onto the countryside in the South (‘the South’ being that place approximately five minutes from ‘the North’, of course) there would have been all manner of hell to pay, with party bigwigs pontificating about the rape of the garigue, as I remember happening when someone had floated the idea that there would be a golf course near Ta’ Ċenċ.

But times change and the level of screeching changes with the times: GonziPN is no longer in power, so the megaphones can be put away.

That said, it’s heartening to note that the real environmentalists are coalescing and that the PN is starting to think about taking pole position.

Simon Busuttil made this clear last Sunday: the PN will be different and not only from Premier Joseph’s Labour Party but also from previous PN governments.

The mediasphere still being what it is, this really rather significant declaration didn’t get much attention, certainly not as much as it deserved. Another reason why Premier Muscat should, but probably won’t, have to eschew the frisson he will get from cutting the ribbon on opening day is that the American University of Żonqoria to be named in his honour will be no such thing. It won’t be American but Jordanian (nothing wrong with that, per se, but let’s be accurate, ok?) and it is unlikely to be a university, at least not as we know it, Jim.

And that’s notwithstanding chairman Martin Scicluna’s assurance that the legal notice wasn’t tweaked to accommodate the Jordanian entrepreneur.

That’s as may be, I won’t bother to argue, but the fact remains that universities, real ones, that is, not degree factories where you shove a load of dosh and a few warm bodies in one end and get mortar boards and rolled-up parchments out the other, are not set up in a couple of months.

Scicluna and his committee have a great responsibility on their shoulders: they have to assess the credentials of the promoters of this so-called university and if they do not measure up, they have to stand up and be counted.

If they don’t, they will be rendering a disservice of cosmic proportions to the country because the real University of Malta, the one that’s been around for rather more than a few months and that survived even the excesses of Dom Mintoff and his peculiar notions, can’t afford to have its degrees devalued, even by casual and ignorant geographic association.

While on the subject of the University of Malta, let’s not have any twaddle about monopolies and elitism and such, shall we?

Tal-Qroqq is a reputable seat of learning and research that is accessible to anyone with a brain, this being just about the only prerequisite of getting a degree from there. You don’t have to have three surnames or loads of cash: just a brain.

Perhaps that’s why Mintoff hated us when we were there and perhaps that’s why Premier Muscat remains able to evoke analogous antediluvian sentiments even today among his tame trolls.

There will be those of you who are wondering why I’m rabbiting on about the Żonqor Point issue and ignoring the concrete problems raising their heads elsewhere, such as in Valletta, where the Land Department seems to have set itself up as a provider of oodles of cash to deserving causes, though why they are deserving is something on which I invite my readers to ruminate.

Or at Mater Dei Hospital, for that matter.

My answer to that is that this is my column and I’ll cry if I want to, or rather, write what I want to.

Onwards and upwards to more important things, on Tuesday we went to Umami, on Saqqaja Hill to celebrate a friend’s birthday, belatedly but enjoyably.

I remember the area when the only watering-hole was the Black Cat, to which we used to repair on our bikes back in the day to have a glass of the stuff that cheers and a bite of good, if homely, food.

Old age has crept up on me, so when biking the pleasures of the grape or grain are foregone but that’s not germane to the point that Umami is a place that repays a visit, with interest.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.