I think we’re going to have another spot of bother on our hands, chaps

Evarist Bartolo – God knows why the Education Minister should be talking about the Press Act – said yesterday evening that the government is planning a consultation document “about responsible journalism”.

When it comes to attempting to shut me down, nobody can accuse them of failing to cover all bases and try anything they can. Unfortunately for them, they’re the government of a European Union member state, so while the potential for harassment and abuse of government power is great, in terms of the law there isn’t much they can do to stop people expressing themselves or reporting that cabinet ministers were discovered in a brothel, or even that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff has a debilitating illness.

There are actually rulings of the European Court of Human Rights on that last matter, and none of them say that reporting on the serious illness of politicians is “poison” or “hate”. On the contrary, the European Court of Human Rights say that it is a legitimate matter of public interest.

“We don’t want freedom of speech to end up in the publishing of poison and hatred,” the nastiest and most underhand member of Joseph Muscat’s cabinet said yesterday. “While giving more rights to journalists, we need to open a discussion on the role of the journalist. That is why we need to revise the Code of Ethics for those practising this profession. We also need to distinguish between citizen journalists, bloggers and journalists.”

And how does Muscat’s government plan to do that, exactly? By giving us a trade licence like they do to shops? “Licensed as a blogger” or “Licensed to practise as a journalist” or “Not licensed at all, therefore citizen journalist”.

These people are nuts. Thirty years have gone past since the fouls 1980s, and they still have really very serious problems with the idea of free speech, free reporting and free media. Back in 1979, the Times of Malta published only foreign news on its front page, reported no scandals or corruption at all (but the grapevine told us all we needed to know), and had no newspaper columnists except the very cautious Roamer. And they still burnt it down.

So you can understand the difficulties they have with, say, this website.

The sooner we get rid of them and get back to normal, sane life, the better. #bringbacktheguillotine

Maria l-Maws and Janice’s drone want to be able to control and classify journalists and bloggers. With luck, not before we guillotine them both at the polls next year.