Marie Benoît thinks we give politicians too much importance and let's off some steam on a hot August afternoon

Of course we do. (I almost used an exclamation mark there!). The papers are absolutely oozing with their photos, their profiles, their pontifications and worst of all their columns many of which are merely useless gunge. If we bothered to read all their opinions, hardly ever a thrilling read, many of them rehashed and recycled, there would be no time to do anything else.

Reporters, journalists, hacks and hackettes whatever you’d like to call us, rush to every press conference, pen and notebook at the ready to try and jot down every word politicians say. Well, wait a minute. Maybe not every word. There simply is never enough space to publish all those words. Local Councils, roads, Mater Dejn, corrupt driving examiners, excessive travel abroad, family values, values and the family, the value of the family. Perhaps none of our politicians are as bad as the late Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, who championed “family values” for many years by maintaining a wife in London and a mistress in Paris. But we all know of the ‘don’t do and I do but do as I say’ syndrome.

One could perhaps, liken some politicians to ‘It’ Boys and ‘It’ Girls which can be defined as having no particular talent but getting your pictures in the paper and on television as often as possible.

And the photographers are there poised like so many eager groupies to satisfy every politician’s predilection for being photographed from every angle, mostly quite unbeautiful, because, on the whole, they are an unbeautiful lot, most of them getting fatter by the month.

There is your politician with scissors cutting a ribbon; with a trowel, planting trees; in some factory or other, at Malta Shipbuilding with hard hats. They never miss a photo opportunity. There’s always time for a plug usually masquerading as news. They’re never lost for words either.

On a routine day in a newspaper and TV and radio stations as well, fax machines are clogged with summons to the press, declarations and counter declarations coming from ministeries and the Department of Information although in these days of e-mail, fax machines can enjoy a long snooze most of the time.

And lest we forget. There are also the communications and press officers, head-hunted some like to declare, or merely party hangerson, ready with summons, invitations to press conferences, corrections, statements and counter-statements. They are the iron curtain between the press and the politician. The special-effects merchants who are there mainly to intimidate the press if they dare ask embarrassing questions, questions which the public wants answered. They have almost as much power as a minister’s chauffeur and are usually well versed in the spinner’s arts. My advice to them would be: ‘Go and spin no more.’ They should toil rather than spin. Perhaps they should advice their politicians to abandon a politics based mainly on appearances, on what will play in the media and instead do things because they are right, not because they look good.

And despite the aura of sanctity which some of our politicians are bent on carrying around, it becomes more and more obvious each day, that they cannot work miracles. They are long on soundbites but short on action.

As if the papers aren’t enough, you go home and put on the TV for some light entertainment. And there is your light entertainment. More politicians. Saturation coverage. You zap away on Super I, PBS, Smash, Net even, if I’m desperate, and of course Euronews and the Italian and British channels and there they are. More of them, as we suffer from politician fatigue. Even the cats will turn up their noses at a helping of yet another politician. Politicians have become almost ‘family’, in the modern sense. They invade our living rooms. They are larger than life.

Parliamentary sessions, which I sometimes catch on radio, are boring and repetitive. There is no ready wit, little humour and no repartee. Everyone takes themselves seriously. Most politicians are simply spouting populist proletarian rhetoric; telling us what we’d like to be true thinking that we believe them.

When it comes to wit there’s no beating the British. Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, Conservative Member of Parliament, has always taken great pleasure in making his entries in the Who’s Who amusing. In several old copies I came across recently he lists his recreations as ‘growling, prowling, scowling and owling.’ In a later copy they became ‘loving beauty and beautifying love’. In yet another tome: ‘draining brains and scanning bodies’ and yet another ‘being blunt and sharp at the same time.’ A serious man but not one who takes himself too seriously.

And I have a complaint. Why can’t we get a better looking bunch to grace our newspapers and our living rooms? Many of our politicians are so unlovely. Why can’t they too, get a personal trainor, go to a cosmetic surgeon and fine tune their bodies. Get a few tucks done, here and there. Why not liposuction their lunches and cocktail parties out of their spare tyres? Why do they always look so post-prandial? They would all cut a better figure at airports, in Naples and all those other places to which they constantly travel, mostly for esoteric reasons.

And can’t we get rid of these lawyer-politicians and have a few economists, managers, environmentalists instead?

Maybe some newspaper should run a ‘Who’s hot and who’s not’ in the looks department and keep them competing and on their toes. But then, I suppose, to a certain extent anatomy is destiny. As I know only too well.

Of course they could always be worse. Look at Mahatma Gandhi, parading around in a loin cloth, drinking his own urine and generally acting the giddy goat. Our politicians are positively conservative compared to him.

Brian Mackenzie, former leader of the Police Superintendents’ Association who was included on Tony Blair’s list of 18 new ‘working peers’ some years ago, was quick off the mark to cash in on his ennoblement. Approached by a Channel 5 News team he demanded £200 for a quote.

Imagine if our politicians were paid that kind of money for every opinion they uttered on TV. But then, Brian Mackenzie wasn’t given a chance to earn that £200. Someone else’s opinion which came free was sought instead. So greed doesn’t always work.

Of course, a job in politics is often inherited here, like some unavoidable disease. A Nationalist disease for the Labour party seems to prefer new blood, which is healthier and certainly better for the country. But in the case of the Nationalists, you get rid of the old guard and you’ll have their children to reckon with since our voters are still largely uneducated and prefer a familiar name. The crowns pass on to them as of right. Freud must have a theory somewhere regarding this phenomena…Plus ça change…