It is true that lies and modern-day spin are part and parcel of the political scene, but there comes a time when it all goes down the gutter and into oblivion. Tony Blair and George W. Bush can vouch for that as, I’m afraid, also destined to one day follow suit on the local front is Simon Busuttil.

One of my all-time favourite quotes on lies and spin in public life was expressed by Adlai Stevenson during the US presidential campaign of 1952 when he said: “I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling falsehoods about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.”

The Sai Mizzi Lang story, full of spin and conjecture by the Nationalist Opposition, was well and truly buried in Parliament last Monday when the Prime Minister revealed her salary as exactly the amount of that received by ex-ambassadors and ambassador-class representatives in China during the previous administration. The matter-of-fact arithmetic is €3,748 per month. The lie, according to the Prime Minister repeatedly perpetrated by the Opposition leader, had said Sai Mizzi Lang was receiving €13,000 per month.

Of course the Opposition was quick to insist it had been right in its €13,000 estimation, which also took into consideration the whole ambassadorial package Sai Mizzi Lang is to receive over a period of three years. Not surprisingly, the Opposition retort did not say what packages the ex-ambassadors to China and other special envoys and golden boys nominated by the former government received.

In the end, however, it is not just the contrasting figures that count. Lies and spin eventually expose those who resort to such tactics, not merely within the bosom of public opinion but also at the polls. It just doesn’t work anymore when the instigators of that spin have already been exposed far too often on other matters and issues. What the Opposition seems to be unable to grasp, even after two consecutive electoral debacles, is that politics in Malta has changed forever. Politicians will always be willing to wrap barbed-wire rows of lies and spin around their opponents, but – in this day and age of instant information access – with very short-term results.

Serious debate and a more transparent way of doing things have now been taking precedence, at last. It is not yet a 100 per cent fool-proof system, but we’re on the way there. I hope future generations will continue to sustain it and to make it so. Is it all a Utopian pipe dream? I hope not, but we have already experienced an enormous breath of fresh air from the pungent years during which the likes of Austin Gatt et al thought they could always take the rest of us for granted.

I am confident that the new generation of Maltese politicians, on both sides of the political arena, will see to that. There are indeed promising young men and women already involved in the party hierarchies who are ready to forego all the obsolete methods and tasteless tactics in paving the way for a consolidation of what Joseph Muscat has started in Malta and Gozo. And that means less lies and spin and more commitment and results.

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Sola solution

At a time when we are at last witnessing a concentrated national effort to introduce as many solar panels as possible on the roofs of family homes, factories and offices, it is good to learn that, for the first time ever, scientists in Australia have managed to use the sun’s rays to create the same energy as is currently produced in coal or gas-fired power stations.

Never mind the switch of the Delimara power-station plant from heavy-fuel oil, as mysteriously commandeered by the previous administration, to gas, as wisely chosen by the present one, the Aussie breakthrough means one day the sun could compete with fossil fuels to provide our energy needs. Using solar energy, the Australian scientists have reached temperatures and pressures never before achieved to create “supercritical steam”.

This breakthrough demonstrates that instead of relying on burning fossil fuels to produce supercritical steam, the power plants of the future could instead be using the free, zero-emission energy of the sun to achieve the same results.

Many of us, however, are rightly preoccupied over the impact the new solar panels are having on the long-suffering Maltese urban skyline. This had been the immediate victim when one-two-and even three-storey-high TV antennae started sprouting everywhere on these islands since late in the 1950s. Now that most of that steel jungle has been, or is about to be, dismantled, the solar panels are fast taking its place, as ugly and obtrusive as ever to the eye.

Is it the price we have to pay as a society suddenly aware of the benefits of solar energy? The panels are just too big, alas, to camouflage with white-painted screens as is being successfully done in the case of rooftop air-conditioning units and water tanks that have also become an environmental eyesore.

                                     

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Bigger, higher, older…

I really cannot fathom the psyche behind the parochial obsession of some people with comparisons and so-called records, especially in a Maltese festa setting. This idea of festa and village band rivalry as to who has the bigger street decoration, the highest flagpole and the older statue fascinates me by the sheer stupidity of it all.

In Gozo, for example, they have “the oldest titular statue (St George) on the sister island” and are marking its 175th anniversary with a lot of fanfare. On 10 June, the “biggest church chandelier in Malta” – weighing 240kg, 5.36m high, 2.30m in diameter and made up of 26,200 pieces – was inaugurated in Zejtun, at a time when the Catholic Church is supposedly committed to downsizing its ceremonial accessories and decor.

In the meantime, flagpoles continue to get higher, street decorations bolder and fireworks costlier. Can you make any sense of it all?

 

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Francis sales on

While the battle for the bigger, higher and older statues, flagpoles and chandeliers goes on here, in the rest of the world Pope Francis continues to sail on in his remarkable voyage of change. Only last week he was condemning child sex abuse as “leprosy” and even said he believed one in 50 people in the Church is involved in paedophilia.

In an interview with Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, he also promised “solutions” to the issue of priestly celibacy and raised the possibility that the Catholic Church may eventually lift its ban on married priests.

The Pope, who has previously said he would show zero tolerance for clergy who abused children, cited his aides as saying that “the level of paedophilia in the Church is at 2 per cent, which includes priests and even bishops and cardinals.”

Not to be outdone, last week the Anglican Church approved the appointment of women bishops. Francis still has to seriously address the issue of women priests, but I’m sure he will one day.