In the past weeks I have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to react to the increasing levels of absurdity that passes for political debate in this country. You know, the “skandlu” of Dubai. The cleaning contract “konfoffa”. “Striscia la Charlon Gouder,” and all that unmitigated trash on Net and Super One.

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Honestly, I find myself thinking whenever I muster the stomach to watch for more than five minutes: do the pea-brains behind these and other ludicrous stratagems seriously believe for even half a second that they're fooling anyone? Evidently, they do. And who knows? It could well be that they are.

And all of a sudden, as tends to happen half way through my seventh cup of coffee on a Friday morning, reality swims peremptorily into view in all its undulating ugliness. Of course they're getting away with it. Isn't this exactly what all the so-called “reforms” undertaken since 1987 were intended to achieve? The creation of a grand, nationwide impression that we have somehow “progressed” since then when in actual fact, we've changed only in the finer details, and even then, the change is little more than skin deep?

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The more I think about it, the more it starts to resemble Cinderella and her magic carriage: you know, the one that turns back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. Better still, like Peter Pan: a country stuck in Never Never Land, obstinately refusing to ever grow up. Or even like... hang on, let's make it simpler. Here are a few examples of the many, many myths and legends people my age were brought up to believe. You can draw your own conclusions:

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Once upon a time – and a grim, dark, foreboding time it was, too – there were three little piggy banks named Barclays, BICAL and the National Bank of Malta. Then along came Big Bad Dom, who said: “Oi! You there! Greedy little piggies! Sign over all your shares to me, or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow all your assets to smithereens!”

So he huffed, and he puffed, and hey presto! The three little piggy banks were nationalised, and their previous shareholders were effectively dispossessed. But the story was not yet over. Oh, no. For in typical Little Blue Riding Hood fashion, Big Bad Dom had not reckoned on our hero, Fairy Godfather Eddie Fenech Adami. After 15 years of toil, tension and trouble, Fairy Eddie stormed into power in 1987, promising Work, Justice, Liberty and... did I already say Justice? Anyway, the official version of the story is that his accession initiated a glorious reign of perpetual Spring, in which all the old injustices were rectified, flowers bloomed once more in Parliament, and everyone lived happily ever after till the end of their days. The End.

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The End? Not quite. For despite his claims to have “reclaimed the moral high ground”, Fairy Eddie and his successors failed spectacularly to ever compensate any of the three little piggy banks' dispossessed shareholders, many of whom have now indeed reached the end of their days. And why not, I wonder? After all, these were the same people he himself had championed long ago in the “Dark Days” of Old Labour. So why did he not deliver on his promise of “justice for all”?

Well, one possible reason is that, upon coming to power in 1987, the Fairy Godfather was suddenly less-than-entirely-averse to the prospect of controlling all the islands' financial institutions, bar none. Another is the tiny, weeny possibility that the current privatisation process of at least one of the three little piggy bank's present incarnations might be somewhat jeopardized, should prospective purchasers ever find out exactly how the government came to own the bank in the first place. Or could it simply be that the Good Fairy Godfather suddenly realised that he, too, could now afford to be Big and Bad, because people were too terrified that old Dom or any his descendents might one day reclaim the throne?

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But my personal favourite was Jack and the Broadcasting Authority. Once upon a time, there was a fearsome giant called Xandir Malta, who lived in a castle called Television House in “Guardamangia” (so named because anyone who dared even look at this building would be instantly devoured). Oh, how bravely our hero fought against this fell monster! His henchman, Francis the Talking Minister, even wrote a book about him called The Untruth Game (subtitled: “Fee- Fi- Fo- Fum – TV in the days of Run, Rabbit, Run.”)

Once again, however, Fairy Godfather Fenech Adami did not slay the giant outright upon accession to government. After all, why should he? This fearsome beast, if faithful to its new master, could prove as useful to our hero as it had been to Big Bad Dom. So what did he do? To make sure the creature knew who's boss, he had it locked up in a tower and slowly starved into submission, until this once terrifying abomination is now unable to even squeak without the permission of its gaoler, a certain Austin Grimm.

And to make the tale more surreal still, the Fairy Godfather created in its place, not one, but TWO ghastly, ghastly ogres – Net and Super One – which have since gorged themselves on the new liberties permitted by a politically controlled and woefully inadequate Broadcasting Authority, until the television stations of today are every bit as conniving and deceitful as Xandir Malta was, in that far away galaxy, long, long, ago.

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Like all self-respecting fairy tales, these, too, have a

moral. As an Italian civil servant once wrote: “The important thing is not to be virtuous; but to appear to be virtuous.”

And Oh! How very, very virtuous they all appear! See them genuflect, to kiss that monsignor's ring. Watch them simper petulantly as they talk of Christian values, for all the world as though they themselves could be associated with such things, without inducing a violent bout of nausea.

Meanwhile, of course, there are still some of us who patiently await that grand national awakening, when people, cognisant of their rights as EU citizens, and above all tired of fake skandli and all this artificially created hype, will one day stand up like Ruzar Briffa's celebrated kotra, and shout out loud in a single voice: “Oh, just sod off, all of you...”

We will probably be waiting until the end of our days.