Yesterday (Wednesday) evening, instead of watching Chelsea's triumph, I was having a fine dinner with finer friends and I rudely took myself away from the table to have a quick puff on a small cigar, at the same time taking a look at timesonline.

Lo and behold, I found the revelation that Joseph Muscat has finally accepted that there is an independent media in this country, thereby giving the lie to a consistent train of thought that chugs out of Labour's railway station. Muscat told us that some clandestine group (perhaps the one that meets in Room 7 - is he starting to believe his party's own spin?) had "tried to entice journalists in the independent media to publish" some emails of his that had come to light.

Leave aside the content of the emails, what is very interesting is that Muscat has finally accepted that "independent media" exist, so when components of this media criticise Labour, they are doing so independently, and not as an extension of the PN.

In its proper context, this is an earth-shattering revelation.

But he went on to make another, unconnected, interesting point, when he remarked that "last week a former judge concluded that he could not exclude that the Cyrus Engerer case was taken to court only after Mr Engerer resigned from the PN."

You might ask, what is interesting about this?

Well, by giving credence to this single point, Muscat of necessity gives credence to the rest of the report, which conveniently Labour's lap-dog media (as opposed to the independent media) ignored. And the rest of the report makes it crystal clear that Mr Galea Curmi was exonerated, resulting in yet another dollop of egg on the faces of all those precious posers who squealed like stuck pigs because he had made a call to the Commissioner of Police.

And, incidentally, the report does not make a connection between Engerer being charged and his resignation, but simply points out that the latter preceded the former and that there was no reason why it should have, which is something for which the police have to answer, not the Government. Or the PN.

On went the interesting points, one of which might have had a solid base. Muscat complained that medical records appertaining to him and his wife had been made public, which if true is very wrong.

But then I remembered that Muscat himself had been forthcoming about the subject himself in the not too distant past, which makes it a bit strange that he's having a tizzy about it now, don't you think?

I mean, as far as I am concerned, family life and whatever are private and all that, but if you choose to make these things public yourself, with which I don't have a problem either, how can you get all hot and bothered about it when it's convenient so to do?

And then he closed with a doozy, which I will quote in full.

Muscat said that "... he could not stay silent any longer. Democracy was being eroded, and there was in this country a parallel secret service which was spying on politicians and journalists, trying to hinder their work or even trying to blackmail them."

Democracy was being eroded, quoth he, on the evidence of a couple of pretty wild assertions made by people who had heard some clicking on the line. Yeah, right.

Insofar as hindering journalists in their work or even trying to blackmail them, that's as may be (that is to say, a figment of someone's fevered imagination) but what is not a figment of anyone's imagination is the rank intimidation attempted by people like the Brothers Grim(a) and their like in their "discussion" programmes.

And, to close with a lesson in elementary geometry, for something to be "parallel" to something else, there must be two elements involved. Is Muscat trying to say that there are two secret services operating in this country, or did he get a bit muddled while chucking his toys out of the cot?