So that’s all right then. The Minister for the Economy will have got drunk in his hotel room on his own money.

We are informed this morning that the Minister for the Economy will “refund” the €758 he spent on drinking himself into his usual stupor in his Dubai hotel room.

What are we expected to say – so that’s all right, then? All’s well that ends well? The money is the least of it. It’s an issue, yes, and the way the crook tried to palm the bill off on the public purse is reprehensible and makes you wonder how much more of it he and his sordid chief of staff, Mario Azzopardi, have done.

But the real issue is the drinking. That is not going away no matter how much he refunds, and the problems caused by a heavy-drinking cabinet minister who can’t get to a bar fast enough, sometimes even going there in the afternoon, are a lot more extensive than €758.

But like Keith Schembri’s cancer, we can’t mention Chris Cardona’s heavy drinking and bar-hopping because we live in the backwoods of normality.

If I were the Opposition leader, I would stand up in parliament and say to the Prime Minister: “Your Economy Minister is a drunk who spends most of his time in shady bars, and your chief of staff has gone missing in action, supposedly for treatment for an illness which you refuse to tell us about. What are you planning to do about them? And that’s just for starters, because we’re still waiting for your fictitious audit into your pet minister’s financial affairs in Central America. And we’ve all reached the conclusion that you’re the ultimate beneficial owner of Egrant Inc, and nothing you say to the contrary can possibly convince.”

The reason that the Opposition leader isn’t making any headway with the people he should be making headway with is because he doesn’t speak like that. I’ll admit that Maltese doesn’t lend itself to that kind of talk, because language is a reflection of social culture – but it’s not the real reason it doesn’t happen, is it.

Ibqgħu fejn qegħdin, mela – u erggħu wekkuna b’ħames snin oħra ta’ korruzzjoni, serq, gideb, ħabi, gwaj u gvern immexxi mill-kriminali li diġa farku l-istituzzjonijiet, aħseb u ara x’se jagħmlu matul sitt snin oħra.

Fixating on legalistic points like lawyers in a courtroom is going to get you NOWHERE fast. Without a quick wit, a sharp tongue and healthy contempt for the government which reflects exactly what people are feeling right now, you are f**ked for another five years and the rest of us are f**ked with you, along with the country we live in.

If you don’t learn the art of the political ħasla – with just a few months to go until Doomsday – you’re dead in the water. You’re so bloody frightened of Labour, they so know it, and they so delight in frightening you all and watching you scuttle. Bawl them out for a change, and watch them try to deal with it.