Power lines and free speech

As I settled down on a chilly, blustery Wednesday to write this, inspiration hadn't yet hit me with the coup de foudre that brings about brilliant, incisive writing.

It's easy to sort this deficit out, of course - just click on timesofmalta.com and see what the great and the good are saying. That's usually a sure-fire way to get inspired and this week was no exception.

There was, for instance, the MCESD meeting that was held earlier in the afternoon, which allowed the very greatest and the really, really good to strike impressive poses and take well-choreographed positions.

Almost, but not quite, hilariously, the General Workers' Union, described by some (though not all) as the biggest union in the country, found itself pretty much in agreement with their natural enemies (I only use the word in the sense that they're opponents, not that they're at war), the Malta Employers' Association, whose president was a tad miffed that consultation was taking place after the event. The MEA chap was at the meeting, though, while the union boys weren't, the latter having boycotted it because they didn't want to be part of a rubber-stamping exercise. The redoubtable Helga Ellul, a leader of commerce and industry, was adamant, it is reported, that the increases are unsustainable, which may or may not be the case.

The question that poses itself to me, however, is how the commercial world, which is usually so eager to trumpet the virtues of competition and the government keeping its hands off trade and industry, reconciles its current squeal for government assistance and the utility corporations ignoring the rules of competition and viability.

As always, principles and theories are all very well, until the pips start squeaking, when they go out of the window even more quickly than the New Year's resolutions we all pretend to make.

This is all great fun for the Labour Party, of course, which has the luxury of standing on the sidelines mouthing platitudes and telling everyone it's all the government's fault, so there.

A side-bar to the story tickles me a bit too: to read people like Vince Farrugia of the GRTU's comments, you'd think it was the fault of the Malta Resources Authority that we're having to dig into our pockets to light our homes and heat them. Precisely how a regulator, that is there to see the proper rules are followed, but does not actually run the utility corporations, gets the blame for something the latter controls is not immediately clear but accuracy was never a good reason to eschew a sound-bite, I suppose.

Switching topics, on rumbled the controversy about that silly newspaper article and the Rector Magnificus's (that's his official title) Superman-like leap to the defence of public morality, to say nothing, which the academic staff certainly didn't, about the parallel attack on freedom of speech.

It's astounding, though not much and not really, how when the Duchess of Malfi was butchered, when Stitching was emasculated and, now, when Realtà has been kicked into surreality, the academics who populate the towers of academe up at Tal-Qroqq kept mum, for all the world as if they don't give a toss about the way some people and their tiny mentalities interfere with basic freedoms.

Which, apparently, they don't.

Now, I'm all for the protection of the vulnerable and I'd be the first to screech for the prosecution of someone who exploits anyone who is genuinely vulnerable, but reporting a young man to the police for publishing a story which, frankly, is tame stuff compared to the stuff you get on the 'net with a couple of clicks (leaving aside the fact that the piece can be described, in a certain light, as Swiftian, which consideration seems to have shot right over the Rector's head) is heavy-handed and ham-fisted in the extreme.

Oh well, it all keeps the courts in business, as does suing people who express the view that using animals for entertainment might not really be such a great idea. It's probably about time a message was passed down the line that trying to shut people up with threats of libel cases isn't so cool.

On Saturday, I distinguished myself by almost achieving a perfect 25 on the Bidnija shooting range. One of my delectable sisters-in-law came up with the stupendous notion of giving us a session on the range, trying to kill flying plates, for Christmas and great fun it was too. I hit one of the darn things by mistake, which messed up my score-sheet.

The son and heir distinguished himself in the other direction, bagging 18 the first time he took up a shotgun in his life.

Seriously, my respect for people like William Chetcuti, who hits many more clay-pigeons than we could dream about, in competition conditions, without any idea of the direction from which the two plates would scream out, increased exponentially. I was shooting down the line of flight, on a pre-determined trajectory, and it was not easy.

We had a pretty good fenkata afterwards, too, which didn't dampen my appetite later in the evening for a fine meal at Tmun, Victoria.

imbocca@gmail.com, www.timesofmalta.com/blogs