Who is to say that whoever tampered with those meters was not – unlike the meters – smart enough to have rigged other meters to give an inflated reading so as to cover for those showing only a fifth of the actual consumption?

The fact that this has been going on for so long seems to point in that direction.

So there is a strong likelihood that there are consumers out there who (goodness knows for how long) have been paying through the nose to unwittingly bankroll this caper.

Are you listening, Enemalta?

Any chances of running checks to find out if there are? And if there are, will they get refunded?

You know, go ahead and run these checks to see whether you have to make out any cheques.

One point I don’t think is amiss at this stage: when the new utility rates came out some years ago, I thought this was when the lights were going out again in Malta. (The last time the lights went out was when there was so much lead whizzing about one’s ears, and that is leaving out the bird hunters – that one could barely make out the sunlight on a midsummer’s midday.) And I was so wrong.

Large retail outlets that were to spring up ubiquitously, especially along the by-passes, would be left in a blaze of light throughout the night. Night after night.

That, of course, set me wondering: how can they manage it, the dent these rates must be making to their profit and loss account?

As the months became years, and these outlets soldiered on being left ablaze all night till dawn, I came to this conclusion: they are dealing in stuff that must have fallen off the back of some lorry on some Calabrian autostrada.

Now I think that most of us would know why.

Can we ever imagine, let alone hope for, the day we receive clean energy from Enemalta?

The whole shebang just seems to be all awash in sleaze.