As I write this, Mario Monti has been asked to form the next Italian government, taking over from that Berlusconi joke, whose machismo has failed to render him impermeable in the eyes of the electorate.   So important was it for someone like Monti to be handed the baton that he was created a Life Senator, sidestepping the little problem of his not actually having been elected.

In the meantime, over in Greece they're trying to do the same, getting some technocrats to  run the joint, after the politicians messed it up.

To hear Labour's Lil'Elves, it's about time something on the same lines was done here, though the idea being mooted by some is to have a national government, as we have a flipping cataclysm looming, all hands being needed at the pumps.  Yes, right, that's what we need, a taksforce with people like Karmenu Vella and Anglu Farrugia on board, to give the government the benefit of their collective wisdom.

There are a number of things wrong with this idea.

In the first place, we don't have a cataclysm looming.   Not of our own making, anyway.

In the second place, Karmenu Vella's credentials are - to put it kindly - rusty. 

In the third place, Anglu Farrugia's qualifications to contribute to a constructive process were well illustrated on BondiPlus, when he told us that Citizen John Dalli gave us the benefit of his own wisdom (completely selflessly, of course) but we're not to know what it is because it doesn't matter that the citizenry at large has to pay through the nose for water and electricity, as long as Labour can carry on playing silly games.

And on and on and on go the soundbites.

Joseph Muscat's first budget move, if he were to become PM next week, will be to lower water and electricity rates.   Asked how by his interviewer in a blindingly obvious supplementary, he said "in a sustainable and effective manner",  but without going into detail, because this is the extent to which policies are policies in Labour's world.

It's such a relief that the President doesn't actually have to try to find a Mario Monti here, both because the current bunch aren't doing too bad a job (for all that for some of our enormous political brains, the buses and the telly are things to get huffy about) and because the alternatives are worse than dire.