Precisely who is advising the Labour Party on its tactics at the moment, if anyone? I'm not talking about maltastar.com and the way it is being used to give the impression that Labour is populated by a bunch of people whose grasp of the English language is tenuous at best and whose grasp of logic is equally feeble. If you ever needed confirmation of that, all you had to do was take a look at the comments that lie below most of my columns or blogs.

That's when you get past the ones who say that, this week, they've only read the first few lines, because it's as boring and fundamentally Nationalist as always. Strangely, these particular paragons of written excellence always seem to be able to comment on my oeuvres, although they say, patently falsely, that they haven't read them.

Let me focus on Labour's political tactics, the way they decide to act in the political fora, the principal one being the House.

The last couple of weeks have been illustrative on this front.

On the preceding Thursday to last Thursday (just a small apparent conundrum to perplex the Lil'Elves, that) for reasons known only to themselves, Labour chose to switch the nation's focus away from the Enemalta contract that was being debated (I use that word loosely: shouting does not necessarily a debate make).

Instead of concentrating on the merits, such as they were, of their arguments, Labour's constitutional experts led us a merry dance down the alleys and by-ways of Erskine May, a delightful experience at the best of times, so that we could examine the earth-shatteringly important question as to whether a no (or was that a yes, I couldn't quite hear?) was a yes or the other way round.

Forget about the contract, forget about the votes in favour of families (and Mom and Apple Pie, no doubt), forget about the Auditor-General and his failure to discover real evidence of corruption: what's important now is whether someone said yes by mistake and - given that it seems that according to the oracles that populate Labour's benches you're not allowed to make a mistake - how this was a vote against the government.

Are we to spend another three or however many years it is with this level of childish behaviour? Forget about "I'll thkweam and I'll thkweam and I'll thkweam", we're used to that, now it's also "And if I want to run away I will and that's all there is to it, so there, and all my little friends have to come too."

Move ahead a few days, to Wednesday (I'm skipping a few bits but there's a limit to the fascination arguments about slips of the tongue have for me) and it came to light that Labour suddenly decided to back-track on a gentlemen's agreement made about vote-taking and the government-side members being away on official business.

Now I'm prone to being an adherent of Mr Goldwyn's dictum about unwritten agreements not being worth the paper they're written on, but I would have thought that, with all their trumpeting about the House being the highest institution of the land and with all their reliance on proper parliamentary behaviour, Labour's political helmsmen would have been jealous of adhering to the primary rule: a word once given is sacred.

Apparently not, and apparently too, they have no qualms about maltastar.com, bless it, taking pains to try to smear the MP who wasn't in the House for the vote on Mepa as a renegade, when he was patently and obviously doing his duty and relying on Labour keeping their word.

Follow their train of thought on this: let's spring a surprise and go back on what we agreed and then let's pretend it was all the fault of those silly fools (that is, the government) after they relied on us, that one of their members was away.

No-one, not a single one of their public affairs geniuses, spotted the fatal flaw: by doing this, we're going to appear sleazy and smarmy and, to boot, we're going to solidify the government's ranks even more.

Seriously, guys, is this the level to which you've crashed, in such a short time?

Onwards and upwards to matters more important, matters of nourishment.

A text message at some unholy hour of Saturday morning from a young(er) colleague importuned me to forget about diets (too late) and try out a place in Mġarr, Bella Sicilia, where the pasta is sublime. The evidence tendered for this assertion was that Sicilian guys run the place.

We did, they do, and it was.

imbocca@gmail.com
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