It is admirable that, once more, the PN has taken the moral high ground. It is unacceptable that a few rogue policemen should bring shame on their colleagues the way some have done last Wednesday. I hope it’s a few and that they’re rogue and that it’s not that the incident was symptomatic of a deeper malaise within the force.

That ugly bigoted racism is endemic within certain segments of the population is hardly arguable: the way that shrieking harridan reacted because the person trying to instil some sense of order into the mayhem that was the bus terminus was a) foreign and b) black is proof positive that, much as we would like to think that we’re civilised, many of us are many miles from there.

Thankfully, there were onlookers who remonstrated with the idiots in uniform who turned on the victim rather than the aggressor, ensuring that he wasn’t chucked into the back of a van, there to assault coppers’ fists with his face and abdomen.

I have it on good authority that the whole range of wanted posters displayed at the police general headquarters is monochrome, in that all the people who the fuzz are eager to interview are black or shades thereof. Being black or brown is no guarantee that you’re not a criminal, of course, but seriously, all of them?

The Police Commissioner has a job on his hands: he has to clean up his men’s act properly, ensuring that “OK sieħbi” is consigned to the dustbin of bad jokes once and for all.

He has to turn the public’s perception towards the idea that his senior investigators are there to investigate and prosecute, not to collaborate and protect.

It may be that the interlinking commercial enterprises that have been publicised of late are the very epitome of sterling rectitude and innocence and that certain ‘connections’ nothing more than unfortunate happenstance but the fact is that the public doesn’t see it this way and it falls to the Police Commissioner to address this.

He also has to root out anyone within his body of men and women who thinks that there is any class of society that is less deserving of service and protection than any other. If these people don’t like the fact that they are there to carry out their duty without fear or favour, then, well, they should be careful that the door doesn’t hit them on the way out.

And they can forget all about cosy little ‘boarding-out’ arrangements and jobs with their snout in the trough. They might aspire to being made directors of a company that is going to supply security services without the benefit of having any employees to do that little thing and they could imagine that, with a minister who seems to have little idea what’s happening around him, their bed is made. But it’s up to the Police Commissioner and his top men to ensure that this will not be the case.

And they can whinge and whine all they like about being politically targeted like that callow youth who, poor lamb, was forced to resign from a job he wasn’t going to be paid for (yeah, right) because people kicked up a fuss about 18-year (barely) olds not being fit for purpose.

It is unacceptable that a few rogue policemen should bring shame on their colleagues

If they’re racist scum, they’re not fit to wear the uniform and that’s all there is to it.

Talking about kicking up a fuss, did you see the lack of one when the reincarnation of Arriva (Arriba?) messed up the introduction of season tickets or whatever it was they were supposed to do on Wednesday?

Had this happened under Austin Gatt’s watch, he’d have been called all manner of names by (un)lady-like students put up for that exact purpose, a train of thought continued in the House by that other vulgar youth, Ian Borg, and his failure to achieve physical ecstasy, poor dear.

Back in the day, a route bus getting a puncture merited the presses being held and experts like Joe ‘Smart Casual’ Mizzi perceiving the sky falling in and the earth being engulfed by fire.

Today, that same Joe Mizzi, apart from plummeting to the depths of sartorial inelegance (I’m a fine one to talk) because he seems to have forgotten that a significant portion of the reasons why he’s paid by you and me to govern the country, God Help us, involves him being in the House of an evening, can go off to Spain to talk directly to the as-yet ‘unchosen’ contractors and give them a subsidy that Premier Joe Muscat would have balked at, though given the way he smells the coffee, maybe not, and it’s as if nothing had happened.

I suppose it’s because he’s special, in the same way that so many other Labour politicians are special.

Sai Mizzi Lang’s husband, for example, can promise the earth, the sun and the moon, and insult everyone as being unfit for purpose (even adopting it as his obsessive mantra, along with screeches of “shame on you”) and his only sanction is for his lady wife to be paid oodles of our cash to do nothing much that we’ve seen.

Michael Falzon, for instance, is so special that his employers give him a rather sweet deal to leave but are so star-struck by the fact that he’s a Cabinet minister that they have kept his job open for him. And that’s apart from the fact that he seems to be immune from any retaliatory action in connection with the Gaffe-in-a-Gate Affair.

I’ve just had a long and splendidly enjoyable day (motor)biking around a corner of Sicily, so I’m not about to dredge the depths of my memory to recall all the other Labour ministers who are ‘special’ but whose only specialisation seems to be making hay before the sun shines on the particular field they might be ploughing. While mentioning biking, can I add my couple of cents’ worth to the excellent points being made in the social media?

Some bright spark thought it would be a good wheeze to start up a survey asking whether buying a bike means buying death. Another, equally a dim twit, saw fit to propagate a survey about whose fault it is that so many bikers seem to be getting hurt or worse.

In 300-odd clicks around Sicily, not renowned as one of the most disciplined parts of the world, I didn’t have to slam on the brakes or react rudely once: here it seems to be a regular feature of my driving to work. If on the way in, less than four people try to get me, I consider it a good start to the day.

On Sundays it’s worse: boys will take out their toys, it’s the way of the world, and morons will see to it that they confirm that they’re morons by deciding to pull a U-turn just as a biker is cruising past them. Let’s have no guff about bikes not being supposed to lane-split or overtake, that’s the whole point of having a bike, you get into places other beers don’t reach.

On the other hand, drivers of steel cages with a wheel at each corner are not supposed to change lane or direction without taking into consideration that other people, bereft of the benefit of an environmentally-unfriendly steel cage, might want to occupy that space.

Open your eyes, why don’t you, you might actually see a biker and save a life. That’s if you can keep your sweaty fingers off your blasted mobile, of course.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs

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