Michael Falzon, the social services minister, is perhaps the only Labour politician Daphne Caruana Galizia was sweet on.

There was a huge difference between them - for starters Falzon loved fireworks, which she hated.

But Daphne remembered him as a small boy doing his homework behind the counter at his mother's grocery shop round the corner where Daphne grew up in Sliema.

They were never pally-pally but somehow the shared Sliema background even in those days of colonial rule must have left their mark.

Then too there were rumours Falzon did not see eye to eye with Alfred Sant who took over as Labour leader after Mintoff and KMB and who Daphne came to dislike.

Then one day on the eve of an election Michael came up with a battle cry - roaring like a lion he claimed that was a victory roar.

This week the old lion roared again. Not a victory roar but rather a warning roar ostensibly addressed to the Nationalist Opposition but carrying a message too for those who wanted to understand, a warning to Robert Abela and his cohorts.

By and large the public knows what the shouting was on about. The flare-up had been coming ever since the discovery of a theft of a considerable amount of drugs being kept for safe-keeping at an army base, when the prime minister had struggled for two sittings to make a simple statement.

The House became a worse version of Xarabank, the popular talk-show, and some of the new faces on the Opposition benches like Karol Aquilina were noted as the hyper ring leaders.

Instead of allowing a proper debate the governing majority came up with a motion of censure of Aquilina.

The Opposition walked out and logically stayed out the next day as the debate continued.

Falzon was among the last speakers in the one-sided debate that ensued, and possibly the best one.

The bulk of the speeches came from a group of fresh-men and -women with a common past at Super One with identical Super One arguments.

Not so Falzon who looked back at his long experience to praise moderation such as when he and his victorious Labour escorted a defeated PN leader to the counting hall.

He also warned PN that the next Labour majority could be even more than the 40,000 it got at the last one.

I also liked the speeches by two other veterans, Edward Zammit Lewis and especially Minister for the Interior Byron Camilleri against who so much vitriol had been spewed over the past days. I have come to rather like Minister Camilleri and his humble demeanor. But he must come to grips with some of the intractable problems he has been saddled with.

Whereas the speeches by the other veterans Michael Farrugia and Owen Bonnici were quite simply a waste of time.

And while all this was going on in the Chamber a different vérsion was playing out outside.

The Nationalist Opposition was listing all the demands for discussion it had brought up over the past months without success.

Not finding a way in Parliament, it tried through the Courts. And then through the streets. And the streets had given it a fillip of optimism. You could feel the weather had changed and it wasn't just the arrival of spring.

The government must learn to give in, to concede when the larger interest of the country demands it.

Is this what people are really interested in? We must all understand that not many people have the time, the experience and the desire to spend hours listening to parliamentary speeches when they have so much to do. (I also think that when things turn out to be too rowdy the Speaker must order the television coverage frozen until calm returns. And certainly the rowdy parts must not keep getting played over and over, as they seem that to have done last week. That was incendiary.)

People love to see a fight, but at the same time they are more interested to see whether they will have peace in our time, bread on our table and a job to go to.

And whether the Opposition likes it or not many feel they are not doing bad at all. Of course things can get better and must get better. And of course there are glaring examples of favouritism and corruption anywhere you care to look.

But ask for example the foreigners among us, not the refugees, the boat people, but those who can go back to their countries but choose not to. And who tell you they would not change Malta for anywhere else.

It takes more than a symbolic protest to unseat a government, though if that government is pig-headed it could inflame matters.  See Turkey and Serbia and learn.

People must come to fear their living standard is under threat to start looking elsewhere.

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