I.M. Beck quote unquote

The secretary of the Balzan local council recently made much of her council's endeavours to regularise, standardise and logicalise (yes, I know the word doesn't exist) parking in Balzan.

I have no doubt the lady in question means well and that she actually believes that parking in Balzan has improved and, as such, I hate to blow away her illusions.

Parking in Balzan, at least at the end of it where I try to find parking, has been rendered horrendous by the way the council, whether of its own motion or not I don't know and care less, has arranged the pavements, removing thereby, at a stroke, as it were, something in the order of four or five parking spots.

To add insult to injury, when you park the chariot in breach of the regulations because there's nowhere else within reason to park (but without causing obstruction to neither man nor beast) some officious little git in a police car stops at 3 a.m. and gives you a ticket, just to be able to prove to the Commissioner that he was at work.

Improved parking my donkey.

CHOGS away

OK, I know the phrase used by the boys in blue (that's a reference to when the guys who flew planes wore blue) was "chocks away", but with CHOGM fast approaching, it's about time we turned our thoughts in that direction, hence the stupid pun.

We have already seen some extremely welcome benefits dropping on to our heads like the gentle rain from heaven, unstrained (or even stained) by the quality of mercy. I am referring, of course, to those rather neat roads that have been built in the general direction of Ghajn Tuffieha, where the nobs are to be bedded down for the night and where they will be having their discourses on high matters of state.

Work is proceeding at what (for public sector employees) is breakneck speed to get the roads heading in to Valletta up to scratch, too, though part of this eagerness is to have the area ready for the jolly old Park'n'Ride which is so irking everyone and his brother, not least of whom is Doctor Alfred Sant, who has added traffic management to his many supposed skills.

All these shenanigans on the roadways lead me neatly to what I believe is something of a significant point: Is someone going to make it well known to us, the great unwashed, who are unworthy to be in the same roads as the Very Important People while they transit hither and tither, which roads are going to be blocked off and when this is going to happen?

I really don't want to be sitting there, staring up someone else's tail-pipe, while a traffic cop stands with his hand up, indicating that I and the people around me have to bide there awhile, while convoys of the great and good zoom past at their leisure.

I especially don't want to be doing this when I have to be at some meeting or other that requires my presence, unimportant as I am compared to the High Panjandrums who are going to descend on this fair isle.

And while on the subject, as we are, of CHOGM, I trust that the youth of this country are going to get off their behinds and foreswear contemplating their navels or the navels of their fellow students while some over-the-hill lecturer recycles his notes.

In other words, are we going to have some demos which demonstrate that Malta's students are not any different from their colleagues elsewhere? Just in case people are stuck for ideas, here are a few.

Let's have a demo against Mugabe for being a disgusting racist, for instance, coupled with one against the Australian PM (whatever his name is) for having a pretty reprobate immigration policy.

After that, we can another demo against Tony Blair for being George Bush's lap-dog and staying in a war no one wants, following which the Canadian PM can be told in no uncertain terms that Malta's students demand to know, erm, um, just who the heck he thinks he is because, sure as sure, no one here knows him.

See, with a bit of creativity, hours of endless fun can be had and the cops can get some exercise, too.

Under the stone

There I was, thinking that this week I could get away with writing a whole column while ignoring the Radically Revolting Rightist Racists. After all, my usual evening glance over their postings in that website had brought in a meagre harvest in the "Let's Bash Beck" field, though I have had some amusement watching the bigots beat each other over the head over some obscure tenet of their obsessions.

The way anyone who dreams of expressing a thought that does not meet the immediate approval of the RRRR Thought Police is stamped on, insulted, called all manner of names and generally exposed to ridicule would be scary if it weren't so funny. In fact, whenever I see a thread that contains input by or about Mr Jean Govè, who you will remember as the moderately callow youth who put up something of a defence for the Right on Bondì+, while publicly disavowing some of Lowell's more rabid theories, I stop to have a look, because there's sure to be some invective directed at the poor fellow which is worth a look.

But if it was only this sort of thing and the geekiness and pseudo-science that fills up the threads that aren't infested with horrendous writing masquerading as "literature" (you have to read some of this bilge to believe it) I wouldn't have troubled you with the Rabid Right this week.

But this was not the only stuff I read, and you'll forgive me for putting the following in front of you on this Saturday morning.

So, here goes, with renewed apologies.

Mr Lowell, under his modest nick, Imperium, had written (remember the verse-form): "They come in their tens: we.../ They come in their hundreds: we.../And should they ever dare/come in their thousands:/It will be our pleasure to..."

A member of the forum, apparently moved to disgust, had asked: "to .... what????? Do you have the guts to say outrightly what you would have done to them? To them???? People like yourself? These are not mere things - they are people....watch my lips... men and women, ... and children!"

And to prove, if proof where ever needed, that he and his followers can never expect to be welcomed within the forum of ideas, Lowell replied (always in verse, of course):

"Use your imagination!/You Christian cretin!/You dolt!

They are not people like myself./They are invaders./They are taking over our country.

When they are numerous enough:/they will do what they have always done:/in Rhodesia, SA, New Orleans...

They will slit your sons' throats from ear to ear./They will rape your daughters and torture them for days:/ Then slit their throats.

Watch my lips, o crazy one!/You Christian cretin!/You dolt!"

People tell me that I should shut up about these bigots, stop sticking up for the immigrants and stop betraying my country. I'm sorry, but there's no way this level of hatred can be allowed to exist without it being exposed for the vileness that it is: letting it would be betraying my country.

Because if we ignore this hatred, it will not go away, it will just carry on bubbling under the stone and people like Kenneth J. Paris, who for all I know is a reasonable type, will start comparing refugees being given sanctuary in tents with people moving in to your home to share your bed and board.

The bottom line is that the people Lowell and his adherents want to keep out or kick out are human beings and they will be treated as such, whether the RRRR like it or not. There simply is no choice, unless we want our country to be controlled by Mr Lowell and his three-line stanzas.

For sport

I don't generally go on about sport too much in this column unless it's to remind you that Chelsea are the best team in the world (I'm writing before the Champions League game against Liverpool) or to pull legs that are connected to an Italianite, but I spotted a full-page ad this week, ironically opposite the obituaries, that gave me pause for thought on sports and sportsmanship.

Some Sliema ASC supporters apparently felt it would be a good wheeze to take out a full-pager extolling the achievements of their club, which are no mean achievements, to be sure. On further research, it transpired that this moderately expensive piece of publicity was occasioned not by simple pride in their own achievements but more by the fact that Sliema's arch-enemies, Neptunes, had beaten them a week or so before and this seems to rankle more than slightly with the True Blues.

Even more research led me to Sliema's website, which compared with Neptunes' is truly state of the art. The only snag is that when you click on to it, you get first some triumphalism, which is fair enough, and then some childish crowing, in red, at Neptunes' lack of success in recent years.

Now, I'm an Exiles man myself, so I don't even pretend to know anything about waterpolo, but this sort of showing by the Sliema clan really does deserve more than a couple of raspberries. Is this what passes for sportsmanship, down Ghar id-Dud way? What's to be next, broken bottles and razors strategically slotted into potatoes, for chucking across at the other tribe?

Sliema supporters will probably come back at me and say that the Neptunes' mob are just as fanatical as they are. To that I would respond that I've seen them in action, members of so-called polite society screeching like fish-wives, but they haven't taken out full page ads and created websites to insult their rivals.

Like the man said, it's sport, Captain, but not as we know it. Let the flood of e-mails in blue begin. They'll go nicely with the ones I get from the bigots who hate black or brown.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt