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Junior News

The origins of blogging having been the setting down of the mundane and boring minutiae of one's quotidian existence, I was going to tell you all about our trip to London. You know, all about the plays we went to, the concert at St Martin's in the Field, the good food (seriously) the art, the culture, the multi-culturalism (just to annoy the bigots, that bit) and the way the old, the new, the great and the horrible has been integrated architecturally (that bit just to annoy the tree-hugging knee-jerkers)

London is way beyond being my favourite accessible city (New York is not that easy to get to), it's home, and going there is a trip to the future down memory lane, if you'll forgive an apparently paradoxical set of directions. I lived there, man and boy, for about three years, and the son and heir was born there, being as at the time he was due to turn up, Mintoff's munificence had made sure our medical service was what it didn't used to be. We were fortunate that we could, therefore we did, with no compunctions.

I was going to wax lyrical about Air Malta’s workmanlike service and relate how we weren’t allowed straight into the UK because some fool at Heathrow had left the door through which we were supposed to troop locked, giving the opportunity for some rumination on the sort of comments that would have been made had this been Malta. Stirring tales of helpful taxi-drivers and retailers, species not widely found in the wild here (here being here, not London) were poised to flow from my keyboard into the ether.

Then I realised that if this was to be the main thrust of the argument, the Lil’Elves wouldn’t have been able to comment (and that’s comment, not blog - blogging is what I do, and it’s a sight more engaging than sitting down, filling in a couple of lines and pressing send) The dear little chaps wouldn’t have been able to call me names, the ones I ignore (here one refers to Said, Muscat, Grech Mintoff, Attard and Buttigieg, just for the record, in case they think I’ve forgotten them) would have ignored me instead of twitching every time I yank their chain and, generally, this would have been just another blog of the type you glance at and go “ho hum”.

So instead I’ll take inspiration from the news summary that this very website publishes at a quite early hour.

The Sunday Times, understandably, preens a bit and publicises an exclusive interview with the Chief Justice. It being conventional that members of the Judiciary don’t often bare their souls in public (though some of them haven’t been reticent in coming forward of late) the fact of the interview itself is pretty noteworthy. I haven’t read it yet, being as it’s still virtually the crack of dawn in London, where I still am, but the point that the News Digest tells us was made, that the great unwashed should be told why Presidential Pardons are issued, was well made.

Maybe this way, the conspiracy theorists, which in most countries are to be found in the less “normal” media but here seem to find expression in the mainstream, might find their rabid suspicions assuaged, if assuaging is what is done to rabid suspicions.

The Malta Independent on Sunday runs with a story about how a site out near the harshlands of Mellieha might be a spot for the development of a wind-farm, which is an innocuous enough story. Why do I have this sinking feeling that a few trees will be hugged along the way? Perhaps that might not be such a bad thing, of course, though it will be interesting to see how the sandal-wearing muesli munchers will reconcile their green credentials with their fervent desire to see no construction ever anywhere at all.

Moving on, Malta Today, getting back into polling mode, tells us that Joseph Muscat is topping the charts in the “trusted politician” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) stakes, while Gonzi is trailing. Leaving aside the value of such polls, one has to wonder precisely what it is Muscat is being trusted by so many people about. To be platitudinal, perhaps? To come out with warm and cuddly ideas that give us idle columnists something about which to go on and on? To be all things to all elves, approaching while at the same time distancing?

Oh well, as long as he’s trusted, that’s a start I suppose. Over the next five years, we’ll no doubt be receiving weekly updates, if Malta Today’s corporate obsessiveness over the years is anything to go by.

Veering into the vernacular, Il-Mument gives us the lowdown on Dr Toni Abela’s opinion on the meeting held between Malta’s President and the head honcho down the Jemaherija. Not having read Dr Abela’s piece in L-Orizzont which prompted Il-Mument’s piece, I can’t comment myself, though having perused quite a bit of the fellow’s scribbling over the years, especially when he gets in a few digs at me, I’m sure that the phrase “loose cannon” will have sprung to the mind of many who did.

Plough through the piece, I mean: I don’t envy Joseph Muscat having to try to keep up with the mercurial Abela, though he does have the consolation of a Deputy Leader on his other side who tends to get himself moderately bogged (that’s bogged, not blogged) down in the morass of language. Between them, the book-ends are going to give the encyclopaedic one an interesting time.

Illum, which I’ve never read and currently don’t seem to have an inclination to, is reported in the News Digest as having come to the conclusion that the power of incumbency, Dr Alfred Sant’s excuse for losing his third election in a row, will have cost the country €70 million or so when the chips are counted. Compared with what it would have cost the country if Sant had been elected, this is small beer and chips, so we can draw a veil over Illum’s revelation and hope that they’ll come up with stories that might, one day, get me to read them.

It-Torca tells us about Dr Sant’s fight, hopefully victorious, with cancer, the sort of story that gives courage to many. It takes guts to fight and more to go public, and Sant on this is to be admired.

Drawing up the rear, which it should, we are told by the people who decide these things at the Times that KullHadd’s main story is about a Gozitan couple whose property was expropriated for public purposes and who are going to receive only a third of what they were told by estate agents that the property was worth.
This is, of course, scandalous and the Government should be ashamed of itself.

Ashamed, that is, that after more than twenty years in power it is still clinging to the vicious, classist and downright thuggish methods of seizing public lands pioneered by the Mintoff Government.

So there you have it, early Sunday morning in St Martin’s Lane, which is where I am at the moment, and I’ve put aside my holiday just to annoy you all. Isn’t that big of me?