Fragile, dainty and powder-puffed Maltese egos got rather upset when an air steward on a Ryanair flight they were on advised passengers not to patronise our “inefficient bus system”.

They got all short of breath, refused to finish their complimentary croissant and rang up The Times to expose this disastrous affront to national honour.

Letters lamenting the slapstick inefficiency of our bus service – of people stranded on stages and buses rolling by filled to capacity, of the trundling behemoths taking hours to reach their destination and of bendy buses causing traffic

congestions and uprooting telephone poles – are an almost weekly occurrence, so what these injured henriettas were really complaining about was the perspicacity of the air steward and his fortitude in pronouncing himself so publicly.

Our pride has been punctured, they whined, but only because Johnny foreigner has outed the truth with such a candid disregard for our overhyped and PR-driven national image.

Fine thing indeed, this hypocrisy and yet another reason to look up to Franco Debono for laying into the Government’s failures, the Arriva contract being just a drop in the ocean. If Brand Malta is to mean something, let it mean strength of character and courage under fire, not weaselling out of responsibility or photoshopping the reality to suit the brand.