You'll have noticed, since you're Net-savvy, what a noise was generated by the debate at the University between the four party leaders. When I say "party", of course, I'm being generous with Josie Muscat who from the evidence of his Sunday mini-meeting, seems to have gathered unto himself the proverbial two men and a dog. I'm not too sure about the dog, though, he might have been just passing by.

Of course, AzzNazz's virtual irrelevance didn't stop Alfred Sant and Josie Muscat joining hands, in what must have been the most Freudian of Frueudian slips.

The "noise" I mentioned above wasn't a reference to the noise the students made when faced with Sant and his slavish spouting of the party line come what may. You have to admire the man, really: he has a message and it is going to be delivered, whatever the question, whatever the circumstances. You ask about the weather, you'll get "Gvern Laburista gdid ser jaghmel minn kollox ...." To this sort of intellectual arrogance, because you can't call it anything else, the students reacted in a typical, if not unpredictable, manner.

But the "noise" that caught my eye was the noise made by Labour's admirers in the comments section below the news item. From the spelling and the syntax, it's pretty clear to the tutored eye that a vast majority of these comments weren't written by Uni students. Equally clear, from the sentiments expressed in most of the pro-Labour (more precisely, anti-student, shades of the 70s and early 80s) comments, was the fact that as soon as any opposition to the Party-line is expressed (even if, horror of horrors, it is expressed impolitely) personal insult and thinly-veiled threats become the order of the day. I well remember that when Uni students in the late 70s had dared question Mintoff's plan (plan?) for higher education, we were paid a visit by his philosophical brethren.

It was an experience.

Sant's public affairs training-mask slipped at Tal-Qroqq, badly, and no amount of holier-than-thou posturing by his apologists is going to disguise that fact. Yes, sure, in an ideal world, you'd have a civil debate, with the Queensbury Rules applying, but that means that Sant would have to forego playing to the gallery and, considering that's all he does, frankly, I don't see him accepting that.

Of course, that's not to say that he won't pretend to want "only civil debate" in order to avoid having to go head-to-head with Gonzi.