“Actually I feel trapped. Thank you.”

This comment was posted below The Malta Independent’s report of the Nationalist Party’s Sunday morning meeting in Sliema today.

I might be completely wrong, but nine years of moderating comments have given me a fairly good instinct for picking out the fakes. And I don’t think this one is fake.

That’s why I think it needs more attention than it would get on a comments board. It is pregnant with information. The writer treats it as entirely normal, expecting us to do likewise, that the Labour Party should have people whose full-time job it is to “do some of the social media and comments” and “cover sites like Malta Today” besides Twitter and Facebook.

“It is like my job for now, my family has arranged it for me.”

“Many of us inside Labour will secretly vote PN. I am not so stupid as they think. Actually I feel trapped. Thank you.”

So do we all. The general feeling is of being trapped and unable to breathe as normality recedes further away and the government becomes more corrupt, oppressive, vindictive and scary. People simply can’t wait for the chance to vote them out. Let’s just hope there are enough of us to do it, so that we can breathe again and stop feeling trapped.