The trolls who actually read my last regular Saturday column (I doubt they all do, some of them clearly spring into action only when their buttons are pressed) will have had cause for pointless rejoicing if they spotted the editor's note about the column being discontinued.
As in all things in life, things change and a column that has been going for nigh-on 25 years (I was I M Beck before being me, as anyone who knew anything knew all along) is quite obviously a prime candidate to be hit by the on-rushing New Broom Choo-choo.
I won't be disingenuous, though this is the position of choice by those who should know better than to adopt it (Edward "Peanuts" Scicluna, take a bow) and pretend that my weekly appointment, on a late Wednesday or very early Thursday, kept without fail through normal and "less normal" circumstances for all those years, will not be missed.
However, you will be happy - or not - to see that my more "immediate" medium, this blog, is to carry on and I will be upping the dose, if for nothing else for the therapeutic value of being able to shoot my mouth off and rid myself at least partly of the distaste and anger I feel for the way our lords and masters disport themselves.
In fact, a blog, and the electronic medium that carries it, is a mechanism that is more responsive to the news, so it will be that much more fun.
I've never had much time for the way people in public life seem to think they're worthy of our respect (spelt R-E-T-I-C-E-N-C-E) and I've never shrunk for having an opinion and expressing it, being quite a fan of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, even when its guardians are backward in coming forward to defend them.
Not having gone anywhere, I can't say I am back (geddit?) but you know what I mean.
The boys and girls in blue seem to be doing their level best to have us wonder what is the point of them, aren't they?
The boys and girls in blue seem to be doing their level best to have us wonder what is the point of them, aren't they?
What is it, do they have too few warm bodies to do their job (the queue at the Cirkewwa Terminal the weekend before Easter is evidence of that, only two coppers were there to control the chaos that ensued when one of the ferries went off-line) or are their priorities all skewed up, for whatever reason?
A infinitesimally marginally questionable (questionable only if you need a diversion, of course) level of consumption of petrol by the Leader of the Opposition, who consumes way less of the stuff (and within his allowance) than the Leaderene of the Country, "Evita" Muscat, even though she has no official reason to do so, led to an immediate flexion of the long arm of the law and a police investigation, while the "consumption" of many, many more euro to pay Panama Hats' wife to stay in her own country and produce very little, if anything, is of no interest to them.
You can, if you are so minded, also compare the zeal and alacrity with which they leapt into action to investigate Simon Busuttil's fuel gauge with the ponderous gait adopted by the plods when they were forced to investigate the links between that Gaffarena lad and our own "No 10", Castille, also referred to by the more rigorously inclined as the Office of the Prime Minister.
A couple of teenagers scrumping for oranges (apples off season, perhaps?) led to a magnificent legal victory, with the two evil, perhaps only coincidentally foreign, miscreants being sent down for two years, while people in high places setting up highly dodgy, if very potentially very fiscally rewarding, mechanisms is of no interest to the fuzz.
There's plenty more, as we all know, and there's been precious little evidence that much is going to be done about it.