I hate summer. The only good thing about it is that the pace of life slows down somewhat and you have time to smell the roses, if smelling roses is something that gives you a thrill. You never know what gives one a thrill, after all, that silly boy Ian Borg, parliamentary secretary for something or other, seems to think that some people are turned on by parliamentary questions.

Oh, well, there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose, and inane remarks like his are what you get when youths of callow age are given more importance than they perhaps merit.

We had an instance of that on the Wednesday when I wrote this, when the views on abortion of an 18-year-old PN-inclined bloke hit the headlines, with everyone and his sister suddenly descending into great spluttering and fulminating.

To be fair, all the guy said, really, is that while he is pretty much against abortion, he wouldn’t judge anyone who needs it. An eminently facile and shallow remark that, perhaps, should have been better thought through before being made but since when do teenagers always think things through before saying something?

This latter consideration, though, seems to have escaped the holier than thou brigade, who immediately and with colossal gravitas demanded that the Nationalist Party reaffirms its stance against abortion, with angelic pinheads being danced on concerning whether this was a core value or a fundamental principle or whatever.

All I can say is: oh for Heaven’s sake, stop fussing, who cares what a single individual, a kid no less, thinks? He has the right to his opinion and to shoot his mouth off when and how he wants to but, seriously, do we have to bash bibles every time someone dares to even say the word “abortion”?

On to more important things, I was having a chat over a light lunch with an erudite chap who asked a rather fundamental question concerning the Gaffe-in-the-Arena scandal.

The question was: if governments normally expropriate property for a public purpose, what logic is there in only a portion of a property being expropriated?

Frankly, I was not able to give an answer, which gave my lunching interlocutor even more reason to give vent to his thoughts about how this whole thing stank to high heaven and beyond.

Oh well, as long as no-one has to resign about it, then that’s all fine and dandy and just because things could have been done better, that’s no reason why anybody should expect heads on a plate.

A serious charge was levelled against Premier Joseph Muscat a couple of days ago. From what I could glean, while responding to Simon Busuttil’s pointed remarks about the amount of folding euros Sai Mizzi Lang’s husband’s wife was being paid for achieving nothing much that we know about yet, Premier Muscat fell into his now-normal schoolyard knee-jerk mode and said that Claudette Buttigieg used to earn the same from Super One, yah,boo and sucks to you.

What is the Labour Party trying to achieve with the constitutional case on the couple of parliamentary seats they were given for nothing?

Quite apart from the fact that Premier Joe’s point was about as relevant to the matter at hand as the price of quails’ eggs in Slovenia, no sooner had he said what he said that Buttigieg, outside the House and, therefore, without any privilege, made it known that it was not true that she had earned that sort of money.

Now, far be it from me to pass judgement on Premier Muscat and it should be a given that it is unheard of that a Premier would knowingly mislead the House, much less knowingly utter a porky to it, but what does one call it when someone says something that is untrue?

Do the math for yourself, I’m not about to expose my beloved editor to the wrath of the House for calling anyone, much less Premier Muscat, a liar.

While on the subject of not knowing what’s going on, I wonder if anyone has figured out what it is that the Labour Party is trying to achieve by means of the constitutional case it has filed in connection with the couple of parliamentary seats that they were given for nothing? From what I could understand, they’re whining about having been left out of the case originally, said case having been appealed and sent back to the lower court, during which proceedings they seem to have been sticking their hap’orths’ worth all the time.

So what are they moaning about now? I mean, if their idea is to stultify things as much as possible, fine, I can get that, but isn’t there the chance that people will start thinking they’re running scared? Can’t see why, myself, but there you are.

Isn’t it gratifying that our mediasphere is populated by such fearless heroes that they think nothing of risking their necks?

From what one reads, ex-ex-Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit ended up in hot water after some juicy bits of paper reached the chaps from MaltaToday, leading the Data Protection Commissioner to conclude there was no doubt the documents “were effectively obtained from the personal file of [Police Inspector Elton Taliana) held within the human resources department of the police force”.

The Data Protection Commissioner also noted that such personal dossiers can only be accessed by the Commissioner of Police”, adding that Taliana’s personal file was last requested by the former Commissioner of Police, that is Peter Paul Zammit, between July and August 2013.

Speaking as a plougher of a journalistic furrow of sorts, I don’t quite see where people get off saying that MaltaToday shouldn’t have made use of these juicy little titbits, any cheap and tawdry hack would do it, so why not MaltaToday?

It’s at the point where the border between journalism and personal interest gets blurred that I start to question whether this sort of information should be used but, at the end of the day, the only person at fault is the one who saw fit to leak it, not the one who grabbed it with both hands and made a gooey sandwich with it.

I wish I had been in court on Wednesday when the magistrate threw out the case against the Birdlife people, who had had their collars felt by the fuzz on the instance of the federation of bird killers. I mean, talk about supercilious, cynical bullying: a bunch of people whose main aim in life is to kill birds try to get a different bunch of people, who try to save birds, convicted of being in possession of protected birds.

Had I been the magistrate, I’d have invited the complainants to take a very long walk on a very short pier, with a bag of cement tied around their necks. It’s lucky I’m not a magistrate, then.

One of the consolations of summer, hate it as I do, is the Victoria International Arts Festival that is held for quite a few weeks over June and July, this year being no exception.

We went to one of the free (they’re all free) events every day last weekend and it was - as always - great stuff.

imbocca@gmail.com

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