Once more, under the intoxicating title “Oh golly gumdrops, the oracle has spoken”, Daphne Caruana Galizia gave us yet another dazzling roller coaster, a veritable tour de force, of a review, nay, no less than a courageous, unflinching, searing indictment of the leaders of Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar.

In the main course of this wondrous, deceptively subtle repast of literary excellence, Daphne reaches her true apotheosis with the most astute and nuanced of personal observations. Her beautifully crafted clichés and the consummate heady mix of cut and paste putrid insults, come to the fore with breathtaking brilliance. These are so achingly beautiful and riveting that it almost hurts to read this masterpiece of a column!

Daphne’s prodigious grasp of a wide range of subjects – all the way from esoteric themes as bathroom fittings to the profound scientific principles of rooftop solar water heating panels – render her totally fearless even to the point of tackling such monster subjects as to the merits or otherwise of anybody who dares comment on Renzo Piano’s City Gate design.

As usual, Daphne Caruana Galizia is compellingly off target. If Renzo Piano hath spoken, she says, how dare the committee members of FAA (deftly described by Daphne in her inimitable flamboyant style as “mere urban dwellers who huddle for protection from nature in their concrete flats in a concrete jungle, with their foibles, their shortcomings, their biases and prejudices, their motivation, their superiority complex, their innate belief that they are the ruling class, their risible, ludicrous inability to distinguish between environmental issues and matters of aesthetics, their deep, abiding ignorance of rural matters...”) “cogitate about the City Gate project at their Tower Road flat war-rooms’, or indeed, even “debate the matter at Teeny Beach”, and then have the audacity to publish their vast and sprawling comments on the Master’s Plan ? Whatever next? says our indignant Daphne.

Sheer genius!

G. G. Debono

SLIEMA