"M'learned colleague" Charlon Gouder appears to have been chosen to react to my Opinion Piece about the PN Loan Initiative.    His piece needs some response.

Clearly, Gouder's forma mentis is that the initiative is wrong principally because I find nothing wrong with it.  Why else would he kick his piece off by characterising mine a  "fervent" defence of a "dubious" act?  When an advocate starts his arguments ad hominem, you can rest assured that what follows is not going to be up to the mark.

Gouder does not disappoint.   In fact he even ends his piece by dutifully referring to my DNA crack on TV a couple of weeks ago. 

In the manner of Labour's trolls, Gouder chose to pretend not to notice that I was merely making an ironic reference to a famous line by none other than Labour's own Notary Dr the Hon. Charles Mangion, heroic defender, of late, of Dr Konrad Mizzi.

In the substance, such as it is, of his piece, Gouder betrays worse than an irony by-pass. He switches, either out of failure to adhere to the laws of logic or out of intellectual sluggishness, between calling the transaction a donation and a loan. 

It is clearly, to anyone who bothers to check these things, a loan, one moreover that is entered into voluntarily between the consenting adults concerned therewith. 

Labour has consistently sought to interpose Big Brother into our lives, and Gouder dutifully laments this perceived lapse, spouting the immortal line that there will be no "reliable regulator" to oversee things.

Even a first year law student knows that it is the prime regulator, the Courts of Justice, that "oversees" civil transactions such as loans.  Why Gouder pretended to miss this point (or did he?) is a question only he can answer.

Gouder asserts that the Nationalist Party has found it difficult to "effect its workers' wages", whatever the use of that particular verb implies in English, and that commercial banks are refusing it financing.   

One wonders which banks have divulged this to him: it takes no real leap of the imagination to think of one in particular, but still. 

Oblivious to the sweet irony of muttering about due diligence when the country, except for the portions of it left in the dark by Labour's tame media, is transfixed by PanamaGate, Gouder chucks into the mix a peculiar reference to money-laundering.  He also pretends to have concerns for "genuine PN supporters", as if he actually gives a damn, m'dear.

Gouder displays a smugness in his line of argument that can only be explained by the warm fuzzy feeling that Labour activists get when they remember the sweet "coming into Government" Australia Hall present the party gave itself on being voted in.  This went quite a way to supplementing the proceeds of the smoky deals made on their "Fourth Floor", deals whose pigeons are now coming home to roost with a vengeance.

The PN loan initiative is what it is: no amount of red herrings liberally strewn about by people like Gouder will turn into a "donation", however fervently he would wish this to be the case. 

Merely calling something "dubious" does not make it thus, it's like Konrad Mizzi and his boss repeating the "tax audit" mantra, fooling no-one (not even themselves) that this is what matters.

And if this leads to Notary Mangion telling me that my DNA is somehow faulty, then so be it, I'll live with it.

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