While the Middle East burns, Italy worries about what its Prime Minister did with what to whom and where (and how much he paid for it) and we worry about whether divorce is going to be discussed in Parliament this week or next or the one after, with the chap who started all this behaving like little more than a spoilt brat who wants his shiny new toy now, immediately, if not sooner.

It seems that by hook or by crook, our dearly beloved Representatives, on the basis of the convenient argument that they don’t have a mandate to legislate about divorce, are going to chuck the warm spud into our laps.

So be it, the reason for this is clear in my mind: so scared out of their wits are the politicians that by appearing to go against what they think are the diktats of the Church, they will lose votes, that even people like the Leader of the Progressive and Liberal Opposition (ha!) who had previously declared that this is not a matter for a referendum, have pulled a u-ie of neck-wrenching proportions and are now going hell-for-leather for a referendum, sooner rather than later.

Now we have the spectacle of people debating not whether the civil law should have a system for people whose consciences admit the dissolution of their contract of marriage to divorce (i.e. go a single step beyond legal separation and be allowed to re-marry, which is the only difference) which is the important issue, but sniping at each other about when (not even about whether) the great unwashed should be consulted, for all the world as if said great unwashed has the right to tell me or you or Joey down the road how to live our lives.

Guys, I don’t know if you have any connection with the real world any more, but out here, delaying the debate by a couple of weeks or months or whatever isn’t going to mean anything at all, though it might mean that Pullicino Orlando will have to come up with something else to be annoying about.