FOR SOME VARIETY

I generally tend to leave this blog alone while the comments are still coming in. It's so interesting to watch the little elves spluttering at me, spewing out what they think are insults in what they think is English. According to the latest of these genii, I'm a non-peasant who spews out venom on anyone who is not blue, for instance, which is great fun to read and (try to) decipher. What you have to do is do a word-for-word translation into Maltese and you can see that the writer has Maltese as his first, and almost only, language.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I can't help musing on whether this means that there is an educational divide still in this country. For some reason, the people who write in not to insult me seem to do it in much better English than the ones who do it to call me names.

I thought I'd send in a new one, though, and not go after Muscat, so the little elves can re-group and, perhaps, take the opportunity to ingest some remedial English. Not much of a chance of that, of course, as what they will all do now is write to get back at me for these irreverent remarks, thus confirming my thesis. There's not much to write about in the political arena, really. As I write, the deputy leaders of the MLP haven't actually been elected, though Anglu Farrugia and Toni Abela are in the lead, which must have jogged the machine into overdrive. There's nothing newsworthy about this, though, except to muse, ineffectually due to a lack of insight, about what possessed the relative majority (so far) of the delegates to show that they want these two gentlemen to help lead their party.

Still, there's the run-off to come before we will know if the machine has been successful in insalling its placemen, so discussion is postponed on this one. The sight of Muscat charging about trying to hug anyone who will stand still long enough is also something about which there's not much to say, really. I'd love to have been there when he tried to enfold Mintoff in his fond embrace - hopefully, the old buffer's big stick wasn't within reach.

To jump to a popular tune, I'd succumb to the temptation to talk about the way Joe Debono Grech has turned his back on the current version of the MLP, but here again, there's nothing to be said that hasn't been said by others and better. Incidentally, and not exactly relevantly, I received independent confirmation that Muscat went to St Aloysius in '83 or '84, precisely the years during which Mintoff and KMB were having their fun and games with the church schools. Perhaps that's what he went to see Mintoff for, then, to thank him directly for the great contribution he made to the promotion of educational values in this country.

No, this time around I thought I'd look at something different, just for a bit of variety, if you like.

The MHRA, which represents the movers and shakers in the tourism sector, have a new president in the form of Kevin DeCesare, who was reported to have said that "if you take the first four months of the year, you can see that the gain of the first quarter is practically wiped out".

This was while he was ladling out some cold water over the positive news about tourism. I'm not going to argue with DeCesare about the figures - I'm sure he knows more than many about what's going on - but could someone please, pretty pretty please, tell me how you can use the figures of the first quarter to wipe out the gain of the first four months of the year? Am I missing the point or was something being attributed to DeCesare that he didn't say, or do, again? Perhaps the tourism industry starts the year with the Chinese New Year?

That little conundrum aside, DeCesare's points were quite thoughtful and thought-provoking. One of the thoughts provoked in me, for example, was to have a bit of a reaction to his (fully justified) demand that Paceville be cleaned up, in every available sense of the phrase. Not to put too fine a point on it, the place is a zoo and not one full of cuddly beasts, either, and it is crying out for a stiff dose of zero tolerance. The thing is, why is the place such a dump?

Erm, lemme see. Could it be something to do with the fact that the bar owners do their utmost to attract people to their joints, the shop owners do their utmost to sell anything to anyone that turns a Euro or six in their favour, the club owners do their utmost to drag in the punters, the hotel owners do their utmost to fill their beds and the language school owners do their utmost to fill their class-rooms?

It's a touch ironic, isn't it, that while DeCesare and his mates at the GRTU do their own utmost to point out what's going wrong and demand a solution, many of their constituents are actually a large part of the problem themselves? It wouldn't really be fair to ask the physicians to heal themselves first, but sometimes the temptation to ask these people to stop moaning before they do something concrete to stop their own members from making things worse is quite strong.