OK, so the debate has been had and the result, which no-one except the terminally delusional expected to be any different, is in. The GWU and the Unions Formerly Known as Tec-Cekcik have had their stroll(s) down Republic Street and screeched their insults at the Government's MPs, feeling all heroic and "power to the people", despite any evidence that gives them the right to think that their demos were anything but an entirely normal event in the life of a democratic country.

Are we going to spend the next three years hearing about the price of electricity, now? Or have we had enough now, thank you?

I'm not saying that there shouldn't have been protests, that's a sacrosanct right in a democracy, which is what we live in. A few years ago, well, to be fair, just over thirty years ago, if you dared have a little protest or six, the thugs employed by the regime would beat you round the ears and try to send you to hospital, while the other thugs, the ones in a uniform would, at best, look the other way or, at worst, have a bit of a go at thumping you too.

At the same time, the venerated Dom Mintoff would scuttle up the front stairs at Castille (the ones only he was allowed to use) not lowering himself to dialogue with the protesters, preferring to pronounce himself from on high as the Great Expert On Everything.

That all having been said, I'm a touch confused as to why the demonstrations we have just seen addressed themselves to berating the Government and all its works. Last time I looked, we hadn't found oil or gas, and according to people who know (as opposed to the people who pretend they know) it is the international price of oil and gas that determines how much we pay for electricity. Or at least, what, ninety parts out of a hundred of it, anyway.

Which means that when Joseph Muscat and his lads get to their hind legs in the House and point accusing fingers at the Government, they're doing that little thing knowing (and they must know, they're not dumb) that at the bottom line, which is where reality resides, there's not a heck of a lot that the Government can do.

After all, to save ten per cent of the real cost of supplying power to us, which is the only percentage that is within the Government's control, it would have to cease expenditure on everything that isn't the price of oil. Salaries, investment in plant and equipment, maintenance of buildings, all that sort of stuff, would have to stop, dead in its tracks, and the best we'd get is a ten per cent discount.

Actually, we wouldn't be paying anything at all, because we wouldn't be getting any supplies at all, obviously.

So instead of shrieking and screeching, shouldn't Mr John Bencini, a teacher, after all, be giving consideration to the facts, rather than falling under the spell of people who have an agenda - quite legitimately - that does not include giving fair treatment to the Government?

Because this is the name of the game, ladies and gentlemen, and in the rough and tumble of politics, it's an acceptable game: it's called opportunism and no-one should think any the less of the Labour Party because it resorts to it. Perhaps one could call them naïve because they fell for the MaltaToday school of hopefully selective journalism and actually thought some deluded back-bencher would vote against the Government.

Within this context, you can't really blame the Opposition for trying to position themselves to take advantage of what they seem to have believed would happen, and it became a necessary corollary that having penned themselves into this particular alley, the Opposition had to blunder on, screeching and squealing along with the GWU and its acolytes, although anyone with half a brain cannot but fail to understand that there's not much the Government can do, in the circumstances.

Except move my money and yours around, giving the less perspicacious the illusion that something was being done for them, ignoring the fact that it was their own money that was being given back to them. The Opposition, as oppositions do, did nothing to dispel the illusion that it's anyone's fault but the Government's, while completely and utterly failing to come up with any ideas of their own.

But who can blame them, really? Unless Joseph Muscat has discovered a way to control the price of oil, there are no ideas up with which they can come, so in the meantime, he can bask in the adulation of the people who choose to be dazzled by his oratory or who are incapable, whether they choose to be or not, of telling him that the story is now wearing thin.

So, people, enough already, we've heard it all.