When people are frustrated beyond endurance because their quality of life has deteriorated, it becomes as natural as breathing to blame everything that goes wrong on the government.

It happened to Margaret Thatcher during her 11 and a half years in government, and locally it happened to the Mintoff/KMB administration after 16 years in power.

So the fact that it is happening now under Gonzi (who has carried on where Fenech Adami left off), is probably inevitable.

A whole generation has grown up since the Nationalists were first elected in 1987. I have younger friends who don’t even known what a Labour government looks like (there seems to be a general consensus that Alfred Sant’s two years as Prime Minister weren’t long enough to make a dent).

The dark mutterings I hear and the general feeling of being fed up with the whole lot who are still clinging to their ministerial seats with the edge of their fingertips, is I think, the natural outcome of what happens when the same party has been in power for too long.

Of course, it doesn’t help matters that Malta seems to be falling apart at the seams. Like a worn out former star who keeps trying to camouflage her flaws and wrinkles with too much make-up and garish clothes in a desperate, pathetic effort to still look good, the country’s feeble attempts at a makeover is being done in fits and starts. The roads are patched up here and there and once in a while there is a half-hearted stab to clean up around 200 metres of road until boredom or the heat take their toll and the cleaners vanish.

The only time I have seen workers finish a road in record time was this week, in our little stretch of road here at Birkirkara Hill – much to our astonishment, as we peered from our office balconies – they literally tarmacked it all in one day. No, no there was no Queen or Pope in sight – it was the next best thing, this weekend is the village festa!

But this was a fluke, a one-off, and will probably not be repeated again in my lifetime.

As last minute consultative groups are hurriedly formed to try and salvage what is left of this year’s tourism figures, the rest of us silently fold our arms and tap our fingers with mounting impatience at the folly of it all.

For who, we ask each other, is really to blame for this monumental froga?

Are we justified in turning to The Government and complain (to quote Stan’s famous phrase to Ollie): “Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve got us into...”

Most people in this hot, sticky summer of August 2006 will probably say yes.

Even if, on a rational level, we know that it’s not the government’s fault that there’s a heat wave in August, and that jellyfish are preventing us from swimming in the sea, and that foreign students are carrying out outlandish pranks in our hotels... the 1001 other things which are the government’s responsibility but which have been left undone, have made us grit our teeth once too often. Some of us have even developed lockjaw.

And, as if to confirm the extent to which the Gonzi administration has lost touch with the ordinary citizen, we bring you, ladies and gentleman, the ultimate fiasco of the year... ta da! Brand Malta.

Apart from the fact that it is a silly, childishly written booklet (did someone actually get paid for this? I am definitely in the wrong job), for many people, it really was the last straw.

Thatcher’s undoing was the poll tax, while KMB with Mintoff pulling his strings stumbled from one gaffe to the other.

In years to come, Gonzi, unfortunately, will probably be best remembered for the summer when the word ‘brand’ became synonymous with all of us laughing our heads off.

The problem, of course, is that the joke is on us.