Way, way back in the mid-sixties, Napoleon XIV, also known then as Jerry Samuels, gave us a song that defied all the odds by becoming an instant success on both sides of the Atlantic and had us teenagers singing it aloud when we could hardly stand the oddities that were taking place in Maltese society at the time.

In 1966 whole families were still split as a result of the on-going politico-religious dispute, censorship of everything and everyone was still rampant and incredibly stupid, politics still throve mainly on the precious need to have village alleyway lights installed and, well, most working-class people not surprisingly still could hardly make ends meet.

Each and every one of us who has lived through that period must remember the many families with brothers and sisters not talking to brothers and sisters, let alone the in-laws, the cousins, nephews and nieces. In Kalkara at one time we had a family with one brother who was red all over and destined for eternal hell, his brother was blue and carried an invisible halo on his head, while yet another brother quite amusingly opted for Miss Mabel Strickland.

It should be said that the hilarity, as seen today, of that situation was at the time marked by the sheer tension that no doubt enveloped that family and so many others like it all over Malta and Gozo.

As for censorship, it is enough to say that if a man was pictured chopping off a woman’s breast, it only got an “R” rating, but if, God forbid, a man was pictured kissing a woman’s breast it got an “X” rating. Violence was more acceptable than tenderness.

Politics fed ravenously on votes acquired for the benefit of providing lights in the street, filling up income-tax returns and plying one’s trade in everyday professional duties on the part of the village doctor, pharmacist and lawyer who of course had all the open support as well as the subliminal influence of the parish priest.

1971 had not happened yet, so people’s incomes were still limited by an economy that depended on the provision of cheap labour to get-rich-quick new hoteliers and businessmen, the influx of a penny-pinching army of six-penny settlers from the UK and stout government refusal to award a fair and, more important, equal rise to replace the old percentage system then applied to compensate for the ever-soaring cost of living.

Now swish swiftly back to the 21st century and what’s new, pussycat? For a bit of semi-religious fanfare, we now have the divorce issue to alienate the nation. Families as well as political parties are already divided and the feuds are coming out fast into the open over something other Catholic nations never lost a good night’s sleep on.

Censorship? We have made one big move – in full circle. The current debate on the horrendous censorship that has taken place inside the University of Malta, of all places, the secondary school libraries, the theatre, the PBS programme VIPXow and other similarly incredible cases confirm we are, in fact, back to where we started. Today’s perpetrators are the ideological successors of those same people who in the sixties drove us into singing Napoleon XIV’s novelty song.

Today’s politicians in power, on the other hand, may not depend so much on the lights in the street or people’s income-tax returns, but the 2008 general election confirmed once again the enduring power of incumbency as meetings with none other than the Prime Minister himself were held to explicitly cater for voters’ eleventh-hour needs in return for their you know what. The result was more jobs for the boys, millions of euros in taxes due reprieved, more millions in VAT arrears dished out or written off, hundreds of Mepa permits approved overnight and, even worse, the same hapless government an absolute majority had actually voted against.

The cost of living increase is back to being a national joke. Not only is the amount awarded an insult when compared to the irrepressible upward surge of the cost of living, but government-induced price hikes for fuel and energy have seen to the instant vanishing of that same petty increase in people’s incomes.

The hilarity of the situation (repetitive terminology intended) gained momentum with the self-approval of a huge increase in the salaries of the Prime Minister and his ministers, later superficially trimmed as a result of angry public reaction.

Add to this comical scene the botched-up exercise aimed at minimising the negative impact of the scandalous enhancement of ministerial pay – the honoraria to MPs. Introduced by sheer stealth almost three years ago, the fiasco has put parliamentarians of both sides of the House in a predicament. We have a saying in Maltese – “Malta qatt ma rrifjutat qamħ” – which loosely translated says that Malta has never turned down an offer of wheat. But our Representatives have been unfairly put into a proverbial quandary simply for the Prime Minister and his ministers to elbow off some of the public anger being vented at their selfish greed.

The sorry saga went on with a former Prime Minister from the Opposition benches protesting with the Speaker of the House over the issue while he rightly accused the government of being in contempt of the House in the manner it had decided to raise the honoraria of MPs and how the information was disclosed. It turned out the rise in honoraria was withheld even from Mr Speaker and the Clerk of the House! Anomalous indeed, but also reproachable.

If this is no laughing matter, then what is it? Tragic reality? This newspaper and others have been asking some very relevant questions. The problem is no one seems able to understand the answers. The Prime Minister is not expected to come down the Castille steps singing “They’re coming to take me away ha-haaa”, but we all are back to humming the tune.