It seems that Labour just aren't getting it, are they?

Up to a point, they were right: the party in opposition doesn't really need to tell us what it's going to be doing eighteen months prior to an election if the electorate hands them the keys to power. The Nationalists were continually taunting them with the emptiness of their leader's promises, it is true, but from their point of view, especially since one of the required elements of their plan (assuming there is one) is to keep their own supporters happy, the "yah boo, sucks to you" response was fit for purpose.

This would also have had the advantage of frustrating the Nationalists, again a result that would have pleased Labour's grass-roots, who have a greater penchant for tribal politics than the other bunch, who tend not to give a monkey's about politics except when elections roll around.

Labour's thinkers, however, have shafted their own tactics big time.

Instead of simply hiding behind the "when the time is right" smug-faced response, which is irritating and shows shallowness to the nth degree, but which at least has the advantage of not really being able to argue with it, they've come up with the astoundingly audacious line that for Gonzi's ten questions to Muscat, the latter came up with fifty-one replies.

Yeah, right, let's just adopt all those solutions, as they are. Leaving aside that quite a bunch are already done or being done, most of the others are simply pious hopes, statements of the bleedin' obvious and barefaced vote grabbers.

What will now start to worry some people is that even while lying in their teeth about these being answers to Gonzi's questions, when they patently are not, Labour is trying to backtrack frantically on quite a number of them. Students' stipends, for instance, are not actually going to be increased, as the so-called "answers" tried to give the first-blush impression that they were, but will be maintained, if things don't change, such as the economy going down tubes.

Which it very well might if Muscat's pies in the sky all come home to roost at the same time (chicken pies, that makes them, I suppose) unless there's something he's not telling us, like perhaps a VAT-hike to make up for the cash he's going to pump into Enemalta to bring down those ruddy bills, albeit that they're lower than many people spend on their mobiles anyway.

Or is Citizen John's investors' solution parked out on Hurd's Bank, ready to steam into Marsaxlokk and save the day?