Qawra , Malta - August 1999

A single-handed win

Seeing you bowling over the entire political class in one cool strike via your editorial Optical Illusions (TMI 3/8/99) gave me much, much pleasure.

Just before Parliament's summer recess, we had Government and Opposition, abetted by their respective macro-cardinals, squabbling like territorial felines over their interpretation of statistics issued by the Central Office. And, did they both slip so pathetically over this banana!

Coming out single-handedly with the only precise interpretation to these COS statistics, you notched a resounding credit for your newspaper. You had forecasted a surge in vat-related capital investment way back in 1998 and, as sure as hell, it happened under their very noses. In their mad scramble for exposure, not one of them read the situation correctly, not one! How sad!

It further justifies the well-held view that yours is the only independent newspaper on the rock; by far, the most in-tune with the tribulations of our land.

For your delectable but politically disenchanted Mr Average Man, the toiler in the engine room, the dim-witted native to whom the entire political class and their patch-paranoid MCED accomplices on the ship's overcrowded bridge, pay no more than nominal lip service, your editorial was a massive vindication; a sort of Revenge of the Nerds.

Frankly, we should not give two hoots that our political parties and their over-capitalised media machines gloat over respective achievements. But, that they might actually start believing their own propaganda would constitute our worst-case scenario tantamount to a wicked nightmare.

Malcolm Caire