The Montekristo Estate somehow wangled its 'Big Fair' permit via the Police Appeals Board on the grounds that it has "cleared the area of all illegal structures at the owner's expense". Now we hear that visitors to its still-illegal zoo are being asked to sign a petition demanding that the authorities give the zoo all the required permits. It sounds insane because it is. The big question is, how was a whole zoo set up, with cages and animals and all, without the planning enforcers rushing in to stop it? Then if somebody sets up a few tables outside a bar, café or restaurant in Valletta, they're down on you like a tonne of bricks, with the help of the police.
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The Opposition leader described his meeting with Special Trade Envoy and Could-Be Consul Sai Mizzi as "bizarre". He chose the right word and it must have been at the forefront of his mind as he toured the city anyway, because that's the feeling you get about Shanghai: bizarre. In the few days I spent there, much of the time I felt I was in some kind of alternative universe, though it goes without saying that I was fascinated. But, yes, of course his meeting with the Health and Energy Minister's wife was bizarre. It's bizarre that she and the children are living there in the first place, while her husband the Cabinet minister carries on with what passes for normal back home in Malta. And it's bizarre that anybody would think that she actually does a job rather than receiving maintenance of sorts from the public purse while carrying on with (so to speak) the housework.
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That photograph of the Opposition leader standing behind Sai Mizzi while she prods at some kind of model of a building is absolutely priceless. Or rather, the expression on his face is. What is she going on about? You can see him thinking 'WTF', except that he's never been the sort of person to use that expression, probably not even in the privacy of his own mind. It doesn't help that the woman can't speak any form of English to save her life (or a Huawei press conference), which sort of makes you wonder what conversations were like round the Mizzi kitchen table. Perhaps the fabulous Konrad speaks Chinese, or maybe they both communicated in their own particular style of 'staccato'.
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How frightening to think that Air Malta's fate is in the hands of a third-rate lawyer, the Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis, who has a permanently dead facial expression which indicates a similar state of affairs in his mind. How even more frightening to think that the only person who can veto anything he decides is a former Labour Party journalist and campaigner who told us to vote against the European Union because membership would be the end of us all. If Air Malta becomes Air Lemon Chicken, we're toast. Hoteliers like to say that Air Malta is crucial in bringing tourism business to the island. The rest of us know that Air Malta is one of our most important means of escape.
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The Prime Minister's head of communications was never the sharpest knife in the drawer but the feeling of power and importance he's had over the last two years seem to have driven him off his rocker. He tweeted a couple of days ago revealing that he knew exactly what Sai Mizzi discussed with the Opposition leader when it was not his place to do so. But worse than that, he called the Opposition leader 'chicken'. That Coconut needs reminding that the Opposition leader's is a constitutional role whereas he is an office minion who works for somebody else who has a constitutional role. In other words, it is totally out of order for the Prime Minister's communications man to call the Opposition leader a "chicken" on Twitter. The Prime Minister can do it - if he wishes to descend to that level - but his minion should most definitely not.
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