Well, it’s nice to know somebody is sticking up for hunters. And surprise, surprise, it’s a Labour MP. Joe Abela stood up in parliament and laid into the government for its horrible treatment of hunters. I thought Labour had its finger on the pulse: what most people think is that the government isn’t strict enough with those who shoot birds to the detriment of the rest of us. Birds in general can now relax, because Mr Abela has said that he has “great sympathy” for them. Oh, that’s all right then.

But he also said that parliament needs to hear both sides of the story: the environmentalists’, and the hunters’. What does he mean, exactly? This isn’t an issue between those two parties alone, with the politicians as mediators. There’s the rest of the electorate involved: you know, the other 390,000 people who live here too. We have an interest in whether birds are shot or not, and most of us have an opinion about it. Again, surprise, surprise that it should be a Labour MP to forget that you have to consider the rights and wishes of people in general, as well as the vested interests of the vociferous ones who are directly involved.

Joe Abela makes the foolish error of believing that all points of view, stand-points and opinions are equal. They’re not. The opinions of the hunters and of the environmentalists are not equal at all. He makes another mistake: that democracy somehow enters the equation of bird-shooting. It doesn’t. If 20,000 people want to drive rough-terrain vehicles through our valleys, and 100,000 people don’t want them to, the reason they would be prevented from doing so has nothing to do with majority rule and everything to do with environmental concerns being paramount. It works the other way, too: if 100,000 people want to shoot birds and 20,000 are against it, bird-shooting would still have to be controlled because it causes so much damage. Civilisation means cooperating for the greater good – in this case, making sure that we don’t wipe out so many birds that their numbers can’t be replenished.

Recently, another Labour MP – Joe Sammut – called for separate buses for black people living in Hal Far. He implied that this is what his constituents want. The Labour Party, which tends to be all over the place at the best of times, seems to have decided that its best interests lie in a form of niche marketing. One Joe goes for the anti-black vote; another Joe goes for the men-with-guns vote. How reassuring.

The rhetoric they use hardly helps. Joe Abela said, no doubt hoping that his remarks would give rise to great hilarity (they did, but not for the reason he hoped) that it is almost better to have a field of cannabis than to have a field where you can hunt. He said he thinks it is unacceptable that you can buy cannabis anywhere anytime in this country (and how would you know, eh, Joe?), when the police are deployed in “persecuting hunters”. Apparently, this persecution amounts to stopping them for questioning when they are seen walking with guns in the countryside, and Mr Abela thinks this is a violation of their rights. Well, excuse me, but if a police officer sees a man with a gun at a time of day when bird-shooting is not allowed, he or she is in duty bound to stop him.

What really got me, though, was the way that this MP segued from ranting against the abusive treatment of hunters (msieken) to raging against the judge who is hearing the case of a man accused of shooting a protected bird. From the authority of his parliamentary seat, Joe Abela “requested” Mr Justice Galea Debono to abstain from hearing the case, on the grounds that he is prejudiced against the man in the dock. When I hear things like this, it sets off alarm-bells in my mind. It is the kind of thing that reminds me how little Labour understands the concept of the separation of powers, and how its understanding of being in government has consistently been something akin to absolute monarchy. When in opposition, it “requests” judges to drop cases. When in government… well, I don’t really need to remind those of you who are my age and older of what a “request” from the government meant.

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Two men stole Lm3,000 in cash from a shop that sells detergents. The money is supposed to have been in the till and in the owner’s pockets, and it was only 8.45am. I wonder when I hear stories like this one. How did the thieves know that he had all that cash at the beginning of the day’s business, rather than at the end of the day? And even at the end of the day, how likely is it that a day’s takings in detergent sales reach Lm3,000? If detergents are booming that much, I’ll start selling Vim from my garage.

The reason the victim gave for having all that money on him is that he was going to pay his suppliers. What, in cash? I didn’t know that kind of thing still happened, except in cases where there are big question marks. You pay in cash only when you – or the person you are paying – don’t want the transaction on record, or when there are problems with the bank.

I don’t know what shop this is – it wasn’t named – but I do know that the black market in branded consumables is booming. People drive over to Sicily with vans, load up with detergents, food products and alcohol, and then drive back and sell them shop to shop. The transactions happen below the radar, hence the cash. This is causing huge problems for those suppliers who work within the radar, dealing with bureaucracy and paying tax and excise duty on alcohol. With the customs barrier gone, there are no thorough checks on cowboy-van importers coming back from Sicily, and even when stopped they are passing off packed vans of goods as being for their own personal use: “Yes, officer, all this Campari is for my daughter’s wedding.”

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The GRTU wants the government to intervene and put a ceiling on the cash prize in the Super 5 lottery. Because the prize has reached Lm500,000, it believes that nobody is spending any money in the shops. The GRTU doesn’t seem to understand that people are allowed to make decisions on how they spend their money without government interference, unless there is something criminal or otherwise irregular involved. If they want to go and blow Lm50 on Super 5 tickets instead of spending that money on a new winter jacket, it’s up to them, and it’s not Vince Farrugia’s business to find ways of stopping them.

I find it hard to believe that people aren’t spending money in the shops because they’re spending it all on Super 5 tickets. Yes, I know that lots of people gamble, but there’s a difference between buying a few tickets and buying so many – say, Lm200 worth – that you use up all the cash you’d planned to spend in the festive season. How many people do that? Some do, but they’re not the ones that keep the shops in business.

Every time I try to leave the house after 5pm, it’s a battle going anywhere because the streets are packed with traffic. They’re not people who are rushing out to buy Super 5 tickets, because the lottery booths are closed. They’re going out for drinks and to spend money in the shops, or just to see what they’re going to spend their money on next week, when the deadline draws near for buying presents. I’m sure they’re not just driving around aimlessly for the fun of wasting petrol and diesel.

The GRTU’s memory is short. Every year, the start of the Christmas shopping blitz gets later and later and later. Yet every year, the amount of money spent increases. The money is spent closer to Christmas, that’s all, while the first two or three weeks of December are spent window-shopping to earmark purchases for later.

If you can’t trust the GRTU to know how to monitor consumer patterns, then who can you trust?