I didn’t go to the late Archbishop’s funeral. It’s not as if I’m a national leader, after all, duty-bound to observe protocol and lead the nation in mourning for one of its distinguished sons.

I didn’t know the gentleman personally, either. My only recollection is of visiting him, as an activist of the human rights group Ħielsa (we needed such things in the days of darkness) right after there’d been a piece of the usual ‘knights of the workers’ demonstrations, which, if memory serves, was the attack on the Curia, just in front of the police headquarters.

Or it could have been when a bomb was placed outside his residence, one or the other. In fact, now that I think of it, it was the latter. Whichever, the thugs of the regime had done their usual and, notwithstanding, the Archbishop opened his own door, without even asking us who we were. He was that sort of guy: Dom Mintoff said he was too good a priest to be able to make war on him easily, though if the 1980s were Mintoff’s idea of peace, give me war any time.

The comments boards, a relatively new phenomenon, have also become infested with personal insults

So, not knowing Mgr Joseph Mercieca, and not having duties to fulfil, I didn’t go to the funeral. Nor was I represented there by some underling. In fact, I had been a bit curious as to where Premier Joseph Muscat had got himself off to when the Brussels vileness happened and his face wasn’t in front of a camera. It seems he was off on a family holiday, it being the school hols and all that, so he made do with a Tweet to reassure us that Malta wasn’t in the firing line and that all was well under his watchful eye.

His little minions were out in force, though, prattling on my dime (I pay taxes, therefore, any public servant or person of trust who blogs during working hours is doing so on my dime) about how Simon Busuttil was so inappropriate, daring to talk about anything other than the Brussels tragedy.

Clearly, these shallow oiks are of the ‘it’s a good day to bury bad news’ school of spin and obfuscation because they were hoping that Panamagate, having been blown off the front page for a day, would then fade into the twilight. And there was Busuttil, shamelessly reminding us that a minister, doggedly defended by his boss, in apparent tandem with his boss’s chief of staff, had set up a rather cozy little arrangement in some rather obscure and secretive jurisdictions.

Dear me, how insensitive of Busuttil, they all chorused, not fit for purpose, not fit for purpose. Read my lips, guys: in a grown-up country, which you clearly don’t inhabit, note is taken and due respect given to a tragedy and its victims and then life moves on, sadder and more sober, but it moves on.

If there is the stench of corruption in the air, it will still be there after condolences are given and disgust expressed and no amount of your spin will cover it over. And no amount of diversions by professorial ministers of finance will do the trick, either. Edward ‘Peanuts’ Scicluna, an honourable man, according to the folklore, seems determined to throw in his political lot with the trinity of Premier Muscat, PanamaHats and KK Schembri.

If you don’t think this is the case, I invite you to consider his response, as Minister of Finance, mark you, to journalists’ questions about trusts and Panama and such wily little schemes. Well, pontificated the academic one, you see, you of small brains, there’s nothing wrong with trusts in themselves.

We know that, a significant chunk of our economy, the economy you found in such good nick that you haven’t yet managed to mess it up, depends on trust and other forms of fiduciary work: it’s the way these ones were set up and the pretty darn obvious scope of them (you might say that, I certainly couldn’t, said Francis Urquhart) that has caused Premier Joe’s government to become enveloped in an almighty stench. And to make things worse, the Finance Minister went on to chunter about how, in other countries, politicians set up “blind trusts” and what’s wrong with that?

Nothing is wrong with that, my dear fellow, that’s the way they park their already existing assets and firewall themselves off from anything to do with administering them, lest they are perceived to be in a conflict of interest situation.

Did you notice the operative words? “Already existing” and “firewall” are concepts that are conspicuous by their absence in PanamaHats’ case, though K the K’s case, the ‘already existing bit’ doesn’t seem to be moot, and the firewalling is more Chinese Walling, that is to say paper thin in both cases.

So sorry, Minister Scicluna, if any of your students, when you were exercising your academic functions, had answered the way you did when quizzed about the trusts and linked arrangements resorted to by Premier Joe’s sidekicks, you’d have got a rather large 0 and would have had to resit the exam. Moving slightly away from the scandal that has now, in the opinion of many, changed Premier Muscat’s status from ‘there for 10 years and loving it hashtag making the best of it’ to ‘will we even make it for five hashtag how do I get out of this mess?’ have you noticed the bullying tone that has crept into the media?

It’s not only Premier Joe’s pet rags I’m talking about, they’ve been at this ‘shoot the messenger’ game for years, in the mistaken belief that because they mention people by name, sometimes with inane photos alongside, they’re going to intimidate us from carrying on expressing our opinion.

The comments boards, a relatively new phenomenon, have also become infested with personal insults that were they to be expressed in public would lead the less reticent to fisticuffs. The trolls who populate them the way PanamaHats was going to populate his secret company with his assets have such little class that you have to wonder if they’re not bred for the purpose.

These sad little people should get one thing into their heads and use their brain cells to process it, if possible: we lived through the thuggishness of the 1970s and 1980s, when the aristocracy of the workers, aided and abetted by the uniformed thugs that passed for our police force in those great days, would resort to more than childish jibes.

We’re not going to worry about schoolyard spluttering, now, are we? I can’t let this week go past without mentioning the great time had by all when on the windiest day of the year we were given a tour of the highest points of the island, the western end of the Victoria Lines, under the expert guidance of Judge Joseph Galea Debono.

What he doesn’t know about our military history isn’t worth knowing, though even he doesn’t know why, and by whom, Fort Binġemma seems to have been taken over by some bods who seem to be almost paranoid about their privacy. The tour was organised by Palazzo Falson, with their usual skill and expertise and we got a picnic catered by Matty Cremona, too, which was worth the trek all on its own.

Just a single suggestion to end, once and for all: La Maltese in Gżira, next to GlobalCapital, is a great place for some good cheese and accompaniments.

Editor’s note: A new feature – Question Time – will be introduced next week. The Times of Malta would like to thank Andrew Borg Cardona for his weekly contributions along the years.