Monday, 14th April 2008
A stream of consciousness
It's Sunday night, I'm down from Gozo having taken the 10pm boat and United are well on track to winning the Premier League.
Pity, that. We generally tend to stay on in Gozo and catch an earlyish boat on Monday, but this term I have to bore the B.Comm. students at 8am on Mondays, so it's a late Sunday boat instead.
Frankly, I'm amazed anyone turns up at that un-godly hour, but since they make the effort, I have to. Which is more than the Year 2 bunch did last Thursday: apparently lectures were cancelled because of some KSU thing, but did anyone tell me? No, why bother? I've got all the time in the world to waste, after all.
At least, my car didn't get clamped or anything by some functionary employed by the Rector to make life as difficult as possible for visiting lecturers. We're apparently the lowest form of life up at Tal-Qroqq, even though we're the ones who have to get up there at every inconvenient hour to fill in the gaps the exalted Professors and Associate Professors don't wish to take on.
You try parking legally and getting to your assigned hall at noon, having shot up from Valletta because your previous meeting over-ran. But enough of me, even if you can't get that.
Just for the record, I won't be arguing in the comments section with Jo Said any more. It's a bit like baiting that Lowell person - the reaction is predictable, and boring because of that, and getting at people like these smacks of bullying.
This is not to say that Said is malevolent or prone to criminal incitement in the way Lowell is: far from it, Said is merely irritating. But both of them give the impression that all you need to do is push the right button and out will come a whole stream of barely coherent ranting, and I don't like to be seen as a bully. It is said, with I don't know what level of accuracy, that when Stanley Kubrick took stock of his film of Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" such was the level of depravity and violence that had been plumbed that he wanted it removed from general distribution himself.
Times change and you can catch the movie on many channels, as well as buying it for mere euros, but that doesn't make it any less violent and unsuitable for the immature. There is a watershed in advance of which responsible broadcasters are careful what is shown.
As always, the eagerness with which people jump on bandwagons to avoid being sued is such that even shows such as "Frasier" or "That Seventies Show" get bleeped if a character says something an American would deem unsuitable for childish ears before 9pm.
And of course, what an American would find objectionable, once he or she has been told that something might be objectionable, is laughable.
You can imagine my horror, however, when on MGM Classic (I think it was) being broadcast on cable by Melita (I'm sure it was) at 7pm last Friday I was privileged to witness two full frontal rapes, one of which was of a mentally-handicapped girl, who then proceeded to leap through a glass window and impale herself, in glorious colour, on a railing.
Now, I'm as partial as the next man to some gratuitous sex and violence but this was really, really graphic and stomach-churning. The movie was "Deathwish 2", with Charles Bronson and acting that was truly diabolical and it started at 7pm, when parents throughout the MGM catchment area (which is pretty much all of Europe) are allowed to assume that their kids won't be watching the gang-rape of an immigrant woman and then of a handicapped child, and the bloody death of both of them, in nauseating detail.
I know Melita will argue it's hardly their fault, since all they do is relay this stuff, but hey, that's not my problem - instead of wasting its corporate time trying to achieve geometric balance in the local political arena, perhaps the Broadcasting Authority could do something useful?
Do you think anyone will ever get down to writing an honest history of Sant's leadership of the Labour Party and the country, albeit in the latter case for a thankfully brief spasm? I'm asking because in Sunday's Times, George Abela, rapidly becoming the only candidate who could give the MLP the slightest chance of rehabilitating itself (and for this reason probably effectively disqualifying himself from the running) spilt the beans on Sant's opportunism and sheer incompetence with a vengeance.
After booting this country back into the political wilderness with his freezing of our application to join the EU and jamming the economy with his ludicrous substitution of VAT with that so-called taxation system called CET, Sant was, apparently, either about to be booted out by his own people or, more likely, about to pull a u-turn of cosmic proportions.
According to Abela, by as early as 1998, the MLP had realised that pulling out of the Europe-bound track was a clanger of the first order and a change of policy was in the offing. That's as may be, of course, and one wonders if we'll ever get an authoritative version of the fun and games that were apparently being had with our futures, but really, what price Sant as a leader of the country now?
Thanks, mate, you were a real peach. From the Nationalists' point of view, long may you keep tugging the strings of those puppets who lead the MLP, but really, there is a limit and you've passed it. Actually, you passed it about 10 years ago, it has now become clear.
RSS
Comments