Tuesday, 8th April 2008
A LULL
It's half-time and Chelsea are leading, though it's hardly the safest of leads, given that we're playing with the third choice 'keeper. At this rate, I'm going to have to dig out my boots and head off to the Bridge.
Anyway, it's not about footy that I'm going to muse this evening, though it seems that the best league in the world is about to do a pretty good imitation of our elections. Maybe with a bit of luck, the Blues will come in with a late run and win the thing, too.
You will have noticed, every so often, that the MLP, in between trying to sort itself out and put into place a system for choosing a leader that at leaves gives a semblance of fairness, reminds us all about the "affaire JPO". You'd have thought that after the classic defeat from the jaws of victory stunt pulled by Sant (remember him?) when the PN machine countered his expose' of Pullicino Orlando's land deals, the MLP would be eager to forget all about him.
But no, with their classic eagerness to take aim at their own big toe, they go on, and on, and on, harping on about how the PM should come clean and say what he knew and when he knew it.
The PN come back to all this and say a) that this aspect of the matter is purely an internal party affair and b) the investigation should be allowed to take its course and therefore it's useless commenting at this stage.
This is, of course, a tad ingenuous, because while what a candidate said to his party leader is, in truth, an internal party affair, this is not to say that people won't - or shouldn't - comment about it. Where would we all be if we couldn't comment about internal party affairs?
All the fun we're having with Labour's internal paroxysms would have to be foregone. But if we're talking about being naive, let's wonder aloud what all the people who are acting oh-so-shocked at the JPO story really expect to happen, shall we?
For starters, if - and one should stress the "if" at this stage - any irregular actions are found to have been committed by the tearful one, it is up to him to decide what this means for his political future. It is certainly not up to the PM or the Leader of the PN (one and the same) to chuck him out of the party, for pretty obvious reasons.
Does anyone, apart from misty-eyed idealists or hard-eyed hypocrites, believe that the PN is so all fired stupid as to kick the electorate's mandate in the teeth? To people like this, all I can say is, grow up, why don't you? And, just to be going on a bit with this story, JPO can't even be chucked out of the House, because that's his seat and no-one has any right to say "yea" or "nay" to the question of whether he can occupy it.
From memory, if he's convicted of anything criminal which is substantial, he gets to be disqualified, but other than that, it's up to him. It's also up to him, even if he's not been involved in any criminal activity, which I'm not saying he has or hasn't, to decide whether the political pressure he's under is sufficient to allow him to retire from the scene gracefully. In other words, now that all the relevant opinions have been handed down from on high, could we have a little less of these really tedious pieces about the PM coming clean and what price the PN win now?
Really, please, the PN has won and there's an end to it. The people have spoken and the MLP and its little elves should just suck it up.
NEVER SAY DI
The penchant for excorciating themselves that the Brits sometimes demonstrate was brought into sharp focus over the last couple of months when the death years ago of Diana, Princess of Wales was examined by a Coroner's jury in London, allowing that paragon of conspiracy theorists, Mohammed Fayed, a stage on which to make his asinine allegations.
According to this gentleman, a word being used here without a shred of justification, the fatal crash was engineered by Prince Philip, executed by a combination of MI5 and MI6 (MI13, then?) and covered up by the French. The jury came back, of course, with a verdict of death by misadventure caused by the dangerous driving of Fayed's employee and the paparazzi.
The whole thing was a massive waste of time and money, none of which, thankfully, was mine. The whole sorry affair shows that the modern age has developed very much into an age when everyone, no matter how utterly moronic he sounds and irrespective of how ridiculous his allegations are, is given a public platform instead of being told to shut up and go away.
This is the point where wishy-washy liberals usually pipe up and, between mouthsful of muesli, bellow that everyone has the right to an opinion and the fundamental right to express it. This, of course, is a load of tosh - an opinion is only valid if it supported by facts and if the expressing of it is not an offence to civilisation in itself.
A fr'instance would be appropriate at this juncture.
On Monday night, I caught sight of Norman Lowell being given a stage from which to declaim his own particular brand of opinion and thinly-camouflaged racism. Were it not for the fact that Lowell's opinions are based on a philosophy that is reprehensible and backed up by assertions that are the result of something more akin to delerium than scientific observation, I might be tempted to subscribe to the idea that this convicted criminal (saving his right of appeal, of course) has some sort of right to express himself in public.
However, he comes to the table with filthy hands and should not have been given further exposure: there are limits, in a civilised country, to the amount of poison that anyone should be allowed to chuck around. It is, moreover, disturbing to see that many people seem to take Lowell as some sort of freakish side-show, which to be fair, he is.
But is that any reason to put him on stage? As a comedy act? You might say that he's put himself into the frame and deserves to be derided, but that is hardly the point. The blame, frankly, lies squarely with the media.
Whether it's Fayed and his inanities or Lowell and his venom or whether it's some barely coherent pleb captured by a roving camera in Republic Street, grunting "Opinjoni, hux?" at every pause in his thought processes (such as they are) all is grist to the media's mill, ready to be served up in bite-sized chunks, designed to amuse but certainly not challenge the audience.
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Once upon a time, there was an awesome boy called Jeffro. He lived in a spectrum of green sainthood. One day a Domenic came along and Jeffro liked his ideas....not one, but more. Little did Jeffro realise that this shark's name was mispelt. But Lorry, Demonic's ally, helped Jeffro lose his sainthood and abracadabra....Jeffro was seen for what he was, albeit protected by his peers. The moral of the story?
Your turn Boccia.