Come on, is Joseph Muscat having delusions of grandeur or what? It’s bad enough he seems to have that ruddy podium surgically attached to him, making you wonder how he can walk sweetly hand-in-hand with the missus as well as lug that contraption around with him. Incidentally, and this is addressed to Muscat somewhat in fond jest, could you please stop it with the smooching stuff? The rest of us are getting agro from the significant others about how we’re not “romantic like Joseph, look, how sweet he is with Michelle.”

Leaving aside the domestic bliss, Muscat seems to be off on a bit of a flight of fancy just at the moment, calling for discussions on amendments to the Constitution leading to a Second Republic being proclaimed. I doubt he meant that he would be anointed Emperor after the barricades come tumbling down and the tricoteusses had packed up their knitting and polished the guillotine prior to putting it into storage, but come on, this is the twenty-first century, not Paris as the setting for Les Mis, and our Constitution is trundling along nicely, thanks all the same.

The two Constitutional issues that were reported to be exercising him, in the coverage of Muscat’s blocking Transfiguration Avenue with his podium, were neutrality and the Broadcasting Authority.

Insofar as concerns the matter of neutrality, I would venture the opinion that it’s something of a dead letter, because given the current world scenario, being neutral is hardly relevant. Neutral in the face of Al Qaeda? Not really. So we needn’t really concern ourselves with this, frankly, and the goodwill generated by the Prime Minister’s excellent handling of the North African situation is proof positive that we needn’t.

The Constitution worked just fine then and it should continue doing just that now, the pernickety griping of political dodos notwithstanding.

Of more concern, though, is the question Muscat was reported to have put, which was in three intimately connected parts. He asked: "[1]Should the BA regulate public broadcasting? And if so, [2]how will private broadcasters be regulated? Should it stick to just broadcasting, or [3] should it be broadened to other media, such as the press? These are all questions worth asking.”

Let me give him some pithy answers, in the order he put the questions: “[1] Not if it intends going on as it is”, “[2] Not at all, we prefer freedom of information, pretty please” and “[3] ***** splutter **********”, which is the sort of answer anyone who values freedom of opinion and expression must give to anyone who proposes, Heaven help us, any form of censorship of the press. It’s bad enough we have the Broadcasting Authority decreeing that TV presenters must act simply as time-keepers and not dare, on pain of the wrath of the BA, argue the toss with anyone, all we need now is some officious twerp trying to regulate the press in the same way.

I can just imagine some jobsworth taking a ruler to my Beck column, for instance, and decreeing that I have been nasty to Joseph Muscat for three point seven three column inches and I must therefore be nasty to the Prime Minister in an equal amount of space.

Muscat said these are questions worth asking and, truth be told, I’m glad he asked them, because they showed him to be taking a first tentative step onto a very, very slippery road and I, for one, don’t want to go sliding down that hill with him.