Greek comedy, more like it...

Ah, well. Poor deluded fools, is all I can say. They clearly do not know what they're missing. And perhaps it's just as well. After all, if everyone started listening in on parliamentary debates, it would no longer remain the exclusive, territorial preserve of literally a handful of political nerds... who by the same token would be automatically robbed of an opportunity to feel 'unique', and therefore 'special' (in a nerdy sort of way). And besides: if members of parliament could rest in the knowledge that large numbers of people were listening to them in real time as they debated endlessly in the House... who knows? They might actually start thinking a little before talking... which in turn means that they would no longer regularly spout the sort of spectacularly absurd nonsense that could easily earn them an instant slot on prime time Comedy Channel (Ah, I can see the programme already: Two and a half MPs...)

And before you know it... bang! All that makes parliamentary radio worth listening to in the first place would simply vanish without a trace, taking with it a sizeable source of instant local comedy, in a country where (let's face it) this sort of entertainment does not exactly grow on trees.

Take this week's parliamentary radio highlights as an example. On Tuesday I listened - not without some bewilderment - to what purported to be debate about Malta's contribution to the Greek bailout. You know, that small matter of how a country that can't seem to afford a €55 million subsidy on energy costs (with the result that energy prices went up by 190% overnight) and that has no qualms whatsoever when to comes to cutting back on all sorts of social, education and health services, can suddenly find €80 million to contribute to the EU's first €130 billion bailout package for Greece...  while also putting up guarantees (amounts undisclosed) for the second.

Call me deluded if you like, but I tuned in to that debate sort of expecting the occasional economic argument to be thrown into the mix here and there. (Yes, I know it's terribly unrealistic of me, but what can you do? I was brought up on fantasy novels, you know) In particular, I was curious to know how our 'oh-so-ethical' MPs would justify the general principle of the matter... not just in political-economic terms (i.e., rewarding a government for having cooked its books, while lying to the Commission and - more pertinently - its own people), but also the basic ethical issues involved in lending large amounts of money to a country which plainly will never be able to pay it all back... not, at least, without sacrificing its national sovereignty in the process, and be reduced to the private property of its creditors.

In fact I was looking forward to hearing a local government spokesman explaining the precise difference between 'bailout package' in the Greek context... and plain old-fashioned 'usury', which is how the same action would, no doubt, be defined if dealing with individual people as opposed to individual governments.

On a separate note, I was rather curious to know why eurozone governments are suddenly so very keen to step in and "do something" about an EU member state whose national debt had spiralled out of control... when the same eurozone governments have for decades consistently rejected calls to similarly "do something" about the collective debts of other, non-EU countries - for instance, that vast swathe of developing nations in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, collectively known as 'The Third World', which (surprise, surprise) have never benefitted from any bailout packages at all, and whose repeated pleas for debt cancellation have always been laughed to scorn by same governments who now feel a profound moral obligation to bail out Greece.

And of course, I wasn't disappointed. The highlight of the debate? Undeniably, when Carm Mifsud Bonnici (justice minister, by the way, and also leader of the House) answered all these questions, and more beside, by pointing towards the large of number of saints our two countries have in common.

Yes, you heard right. Saints. As in, "people who have been officially recognized, especially by canonization, as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on earth".  Alternatively, people who have simply died and gone to Heaven. And to conclude the list of official dictionary definitions, people who were not people at all, but simply embodiments of particular virtues... like Santa Sofia, for instance: one of the Greek saints specifically mentioned by Mifsud Bonnici in defence of the bailout; and who turns out not to have been Greek at all, but Roman; and who (or so I've been told) never really existed anyway, other than as a purely allegorical manifestation of Wisdom.

How very apt, I must say. For let's face it: if you're going to pump the small sum of €130 billion into an economy, despite knowing full well that it will never be able to repay the debt - and even then, not out of any altruistic motivations, but simply to stop a purely political initiative called the "euro" from foundering - well, what more convincing argument than to appeal to a shadowy, primordial goddess of Wisdom... simply because her updated Catholic counterpart happens to be venerated in Greece as she is in Malta? (Oh, and a host of other counties too, by the way... in fact, Santa Sofia is venerated throughout the entire combined Catholic and Orthodox worlds, and can therefore presumably be cited to justify lending disproportionate sums of money to a significant percentage of the global population.)

And more to the point: what better way to emphasise the point that you have no real arguments to justify the bailout at all, than to drag in the supernatural as a tried-and-tested position of last resort?

So like I said, parliamentary radio does have its rewarding moments. It occasionally reminds you that, just when you think your House of Representatives is in danger of developing into some kind of serious platform for informed and researched debate.... well, nothing could be further from the truth. Thankfully, it remains the whimsical, comical and vaguely surreal experience we have all been brought up to love and respect. And just as well, too.

Now, imagine for a moment the same Carm Mifsud Bonnici had been aware (when uttering the above, extraordinary remark) that all the country's ears were glued to parliamentary radio, hanging onto his every word. Would he have said something as patently ridiculous as that? Would he have invoked such an unlikely and so easily exploded argument, to justify such a patently unjustifiable concept?

I doubt it. The great likelihood is that, rather than entertain his audience with such a rare example of surreal humour... he would have done what so many other European parliaments have done before him... and actually debated the Greek bail-out package.

Honestly: where on earth would the fun be in that?