What is it about a certain type of politician? The one's about whom I'm talking, even if by typing, are the ones for whom their paper qualifications are supremely important, the ones who seem not to grasp that it is by their deeds today that we judge them, not by the Magnae cum Laude or the Form IIC (if not Toddler School) results that they achieved in years gone by.

Exams are all very well, but if my experience is anything to go by, the more you can regurgitate - preferably at some length - that which your Prof mumbled, you will get on. Well. Original thought is not of the essence, as it is, say, when you come to produce something of your own, such as a thesis or, when you join the real world, some real work. Many of us who work with Magna cum Lauda graduates of Forms IIC or whatever have the pertinent information in this regard, and on the matter of theses, it might behove a decent journalist to do some research on the quality of one in particular, which did not have much, apparently. Check put the examiners, while you're about it and see if this doesn't throw light on a recent vote in the House.

As my old pater used to put it, a degree makes a good man better but it fails to change a twerp, however glossy the bit of paper.

One graduate who can't be classified as an utter moron is Notary Dr Alex Sceberras Trigona, a presence not only in the streets of Valletta, where you can hardly fail to see him on most mornings, being something in the region of six foot and loftier, but also within the ranks of Labour parties past and present, with the accent on the past up to a few months ago, when he burst back on the scene within Joseph Muscat's Labour Movement Party or whatever it they call themselves at the minute.

But truthfully, are his academic attributes as pronounced as Muscat seems to want us to believe? AST had the sheer gall, the brassiest of brass necks, to lecture us on democracy, his credentials in this regard being somewhat less than stellar, what with his dalliances with North Korea and Gaddafi's Libya, and his membership of Mintoff and KMB's governments, back in those heady days when democracy was just a sick joke in this country, for reasons with which we are familiar.

Does Sceberras Trigona, grey eminence that he must think he is, not see how his thoughts on democracy, of all things, cannot but be scoffed at by anyone with half a brain?

So in thrall is Joseph Muscat to Labour's steely, and disgraceful, past, that he has found himself in the position that he has to gaze fondly on people like Scebberras Trigona, rather than try to drag his Movement of Labour Partiers into something resembling modernity.

With people like this he hopes to run the country, if and when? Seriously?