The Alleanza Nazzjonali Repubblikana is another group of people who really need to get a life. They are marketing themselves on their website by means of a picture showing a mounted Crusader standing watch on Dingli Cliffs, lance raised, while on the surface of the sea, way down below in the distance, three boats full of immigrants approach.

We are left in no doubt as to the intentions of the Maltese Crusader, dressed as Richard the Lionheart, with his 11th century weapon and means of transport. Of course, by the time he gallops down from Dingli Cliffs and to the nearest bay, those boats will long since have landed. But why quibble about the finer points?

The whole thing is too, too amusing. Above the hilariously nutty picture is a large slogan: Iddefendi pajjizek! (Defend your country!). To do this, all you have to do, it seems, is join the Alleanza Nazzjonali Repubblikana. I love it! I love it!

I wonder what fresh schemes they will dream up when the seven-year moratorium on the influx of citizens of other EU member states is up (less than six years to go), and Europeans of all shades, colours, ethnic extractions, languages and religions will come here to live and work by right. This is what citizens of Malta of all shades, colours, ethnic extractions, and no particular religion at all are already doing: going to live and work, by right, in other EU member states.

But this little point seems to have blown right over the heads of our home-grown Crusaders with their little lances and their toy horses. They can’t protect Malta’s borders because Malta is part of the EU. Its borders are fairly open now and will be completely open in six years time.

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While Magic Shop and Toyland have been running out of carnival Crusader outfits, I have been chuckling away at the mental image that unavoidably comes to mind, no matter how hard I try to push it away: members of the Alleanza all rigged up as Richard the Lionheart, mounted on their trusty steeds, ready to defend me, whether I like it or not. Then they have the cheek to list staunch Catholicism among their ‘values’ (oh, abused word) in what I suppose we could call their mission statement – the sort of Catholicism, I suppose, that is worn merely as a descriptive label or a badge of identity, but which ignores the central figure of Jesus Christ.

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I can’t imagine what the aims of the Alleanza could possibly be. From a cursory reading of that mission statement on their website, they appear to wish for the return of a mythical golden age of ‘traditional values’ and ‘staunch Catholicism’, free of nasty liberalism and new ideas.

Perhaps they would be delighted to take us back to the golden age of the 19th century when men were men, women were chattels, children were seen but not heard, the paupers knew their place, there was no ‘modern’ art or ‘modern’ architecture but there was a suffocating level of social control that drove countless numbers to misery.

Perhaps they would also like to see the return of that social delight: the parish priest who went round from door to door with a notebook, reprimanding you for your sins and giving you permission to receive Holy Communion (or not), or pointing out that you haven’t received that particular sacrament yet this year, and why not? It was the kind of Malta where priests fully assumed their right to interfere in the private lives of people, because if you were Maltese then you had to be Catholic, and if you were Catholic, then you had to practice what they preached.

They probably imagine that if they transport us all to the 19th century, then they’ll get the respect they believe they deserve. Well, they can dream on, stay in their garages or continue to congregate at their cliffside sunset barbecues, and have their chats in their bubble, while the rest of us get on with the business of living in the 21st century – which is so, so much better than anything they could possibly have in mind for us. What do they know about life?

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It’s George Bush senior and junior who usually make the headlines with their tactless remarks, rivalled only by the Duke of Edinburgh. Now Barbara Bush, wife of one American president and mother of another, has joined them in the oops-I-put-my-foot-in-it stakes. She told a US radio station that the mass evacuation to Texas (her home state) is “working out very well” for the people who have been air-lifted from the New Orleans Superdome.

“So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them. What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas. They’re all so overwhelmed by the hospitality.”

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It’s not only in Malta that the Catholics want to tailor-make the rules to suit themselves, creating a sort of bespoke religion. In Italy, a former religion teacher (the Catholic religion, that is) has been sacked from her job by the Church because she is divorced. She has been campaigning all over the media to get it back. What does she imagine – that she can stand there teaching her pupils that Catholicism does not permit divorce, while being divorced herself? Some people are truly amazing.

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How relieved I am to hear that the Broadcasting Authority has finally decided to lay down the law about the exploitation of vulnerable people on television, for the gain of those who produce the shows. There is one particular programme, apparently Malta’s most popular, which makes me truly sick. Let me correct that: it is not the programme itself that sickens me, because I have never watched it.

It’s the story-lines and the blurbs that tell me what enticements are in store should I choose to do so: an adopted boy searching for his parents (who may not want to be found); a girl whose father ran off while she was still in her mother’s womb, and who has now decided to look for him (again, he may not want to be found, still less found on television, viewed by thousands); the seriously ill, desperate for money for operations; the list is endless. It’s ghastly.

Just reading about this used to give me flutters of anxiety and irritation. Actually watching the show would have made me need to lie down in a dark room for an hour to try to forget all about it.

How can anyone ever justify the televising, to an audience of tens of thousands of gawping Maltese with nothing better to do than ogle the misery of others, the most private and intimate moments in a person’s life?

How can you tell people that you will provide the funds and the research expertise to help them find their father/mother/brother/sister only if they will allow you to film and broadcast that moment of reunion, so private and so laden with confused and turbulent emotions? It’s sick.

The media expert Carmen Sammut wrote an excellent piece about this, which was published in a newspaper some weeks ago. I am delighted that somebody significant appears to have read it and taken heed. What’s happening on our television screens is the equivalent of bear circuses, dwarf-baiting and ‘pay a ha’penny and see the man with three legs’ – and it is just as primitive. We are using 21st century means to satisfy our primitive and unsophisticated 11th century cravings. Watch that show, and you sink to the same level. Watch it dressed as Richard the Lionheart, and there’s no hope.