Sadly, the little feature that sometimes demonstrates how little things actually change is not available online, so I can't give you chapter and verse, but there was an item in the 50/100 Years Ago spot a few days ago that really proves my point.

A Labour MP, speaking in the House of Commons fifty years ago, seems to have got himself slightly worked up about the idea that television was to be introduced in Malta. His point was that he could not quite see how beneficial this would be, when it was well known that the population was poor and could scarcely afford television sets.

Now the Hon. Gent. could have had a point about the benefits that the goggle-box brings to society in general, if you think about the sheer scale of dross that is pumped out for the Great Unwashed to ingest, but doesn't his arrogant assumption that the poor peasants in Malta can't afford to buy a telly remind you of someone?

Another Labour MP, this time plying his trade in Malta and some twenty years later, would also make a habit of coming to the conclusion that he knows best about everything, even about things that he was manifestly incapable of grasping.

It is, of course, to Mintoff that I refer, the one who once declared that colour televisions would be allowed into Malta over his dead body. It may or may not be coincidental that the fervent demand for colour televisions to be allowed into Malta peaked around the same time.

Mintoff also, at various junctures, banned the importation of toothpaste, pasta, chocolate, Japanese electronics, sports footwear, the Times of London (this because they dared criticise the Sublime Being, of course) and so many other products that the shops were starting to resemble Communist-bloc outlets.

Which, given Mintoff's understanding of democracy and proper governance, was merely symptomatic of a greater malaise, I suppose.