The dog-days are here and the news cycles slow down, with people opting to adopt a more manana, manana attitude towards things.

Or are they?

The environmentalists, especially the ones who were so, so vocal before March 2013, are beginning to wake up to the new reality, rather like the fools who voted for Brexit woke up on Friday to the horror of what they had, in many cases without even grasping it, done to their country and, consequently, themselves.

Suddenly, Premier Muscat's Labour Movement, facilitated partly by the self-same environmentalists and their almost visceral hatred of all things PN, has become their nemesis, the agent of a change that means that high-rise is the new deity.

Carbuncles, to borrow Prince Charles' immortal descriptor, are poised to erupt all over the country's hapless body, appearing to render the view from Mdina (luckily not Mdina itself, so far) akin to gazing upon awesomely horrid mini-versions of Manhattan to the left and to the right. All we need is another eruption in the general area of the Addolorata and we will have a hat-trick of hideousness.

Oh well, as in Brexit, the people have spoken, God bless the people, so there's not very much we can do about it now, is there? Favours have to be repaid, support supported back and no amount of bitchin' and moanin' is likely to make much of a difference.

OPM bullying of journalists and opinion-makers will carry on without much of a peep being raised

I seem to remember, back before March 2013, advising a "careful what you wish for" frame of mind and being shouted down by the wielders of megaphones and huggers of trees.

Such is life.

And what price, now that summer is upon us, people remembering that we're still waiting for Premier Muscat's much-vaunted "international tax audit"? You know the one, the one that was to report on the affairs of his two side-kicks, the one who was "punished" by being made a Super-Minister and the one who did not even have to suffer the ignominy of a mild slap on the wrist.

We're simply not going to be told what the international tax audit uncovered, not least because it was never going to uncover anything at all, pretty obviously.

Konrad Mizzi is still going strong, without even the inconvenience of having an actual Ministry to run with pesky civil servants telling what (not) to do and Panama has become again just the type of hat we wear to keep the sun off our balding pates.

Things will go on as usual, Premier Muscat will blithely sail on, doing what he likes and letting his minions do what they like. OPM bullying of journalists and opinion-makers, even mild and innocuous ones like Alan Montanaro, will carry on without much of a peep being raised, although assorted luvvies and artistic "liberals" are beginning to understand exactly what is going on.

All I can say is, 'bout time too, even if the cause they are celebrating (as in "cause celebre") is hardly one that enamours the author of the crass vulgarity to many.

Again, such is life.