It’s those damn elves again. You know, the little pointy-eared homunculi ensconced within the bowels of the Labour Party headquarters, who magically produce reams upon reams of letters in the English newspapers whenever their Leader concocts some harebrained scheme as an antidote to Budget Bonanza ’08.

And it seems they’re busier than ever, what with the sheer quantity of mind-boggling proposals to come out of the Glasshouse these days. Just look at all the stuff the poor blighters have to write about. First we had a scheme to subsidise first-time house buyers... you know, just to make sure those property prices keep skyrocketing upwards like there’s no tomorrow. Then there was the proposal to make overtime tax-free: a truly fantastic measure, which would not only remove the last remaining impetus for employers to actually increase their employees’ wages, but also encourage people to work 170 hours a week instead of only 40.
I mean honestly. What the Dickens is it going to be next? The re-introduction of chimney sweeps? Workhouses, so that orphans and abandoned children can be auctioned off to the highest bidder? Oh, I know: little boys with bowls of gruel, saying “can I have some more please?” on every street corner…
Very socialist, I must say. Sarkozy would no doubt approve, if he wasn’t so busy ducking to avoid bullets.

But back to the elves. I’ve been on the lookout for the little pests ever since my attention was drawn to their existence while waiting for the Tooth Fairy the other week. And what do you know? I’ve started seeing them everywhere. Just the other day I counted four in the letters pages of The Times… all howling Blue Murder because a certain Michael Farrugia did the unthinkable, and suggested that Professor Albert the Great, Cardiac Surgeon, might actually be fallible after all.
HANG ON A SECOND: Michael Farrugia is a Labour MP. He’s the “Shadow ‘Elf Minister”, for heaven’s sake. Which means that the letters in question couldn’t possibly have been written by “elves”.
What do you mean, “why not”? Isn’t it obvious? Oh, all right, let me explain.

An “elf”, by definition, is a person who writes letters in praise of Alfred Sant and/or the Malta Labour Party. Because let’s face it: only an imaginary being living in a fantasy world could possibly find anything at all to praise about Labour at the moment.
The gleaming white Nationalists, on the other hand, never do anything wrong. This is why, when the letters are critical of Sant/MLP – or for that matter in praise of Lawrence Gonzi/ the PN – they are always, always, always written by “genuine, concerned, ordinary citizens.”
Like they taught us all in kindergarten in the 1970s: “If it’s Nationalist, it’s normal. If it’s Labour, it’s lunacy.”

Which brings me to the rest of the imaginary creatures which inhabit our increasingly unbelievable political landscape. As Farrugia discovered to his own cost, one of these is the “Sacred Cow” – not to be confused with the Hindu version of the same animal, although the excreta are virtually indistinguishable.
Malta’s sacred cows include professions whose members collectively wield enough power to pre-emptively discourage any form of criticism of their entire modus operandi. In some cases, what keeps the sacred cow protected from all forms of censure is not so much fear of political or professional recrimination; but rather, fear of instant reprisal from the general public at large.
To elaborate further: suppose I were to write a grossly inaccurate article, in which I (hypothetically) suggested that some of Malta’s medical consultants (allegedly) refer their own private patients to the State hospital, thereby undermining the hospital’s efficiency, prolonging its waiting lists, and adding to the general perception that the State hospital is everybody’s private doormat.
And just imagine if I were insane enough to also suggest that these same consultants have dug their heels in this privileged position by simply threatening to up and leave the moment the government tries to bring them all to heel.
(Of course, I would never, ever do this, for two very cogent reasons. One, Maltese doctors, like the Nationalist government, are simply incapable of doing anything wrong; Two, you never know, they might be operating on me the day after tomorrow.)

But regardless: what would happen in the remote eventuality that I did write such a ghastly, heinous untruth? Well, my guess is that a small army of trolls, gnomes, gremlins and hobgoblins would write reams upon reams of letters to the paper, challenging me to prove the above allegations instantaneously, or forever hold my peace.
There would the tear-jerking, tub-thumping “how-dare-you-criticise-the-man-who-saved-my-mother/father/son/daughter/nephew-from-certain-death?” There would be the “I-am-a-scientist-and-I-know-best” medical expert (which to be honest I tend to get from self-styled authorities in bioethics, but hush! No more…)
There would also be the occasional “More-PG-Wodehouse-than-thou” columnist, who would loudly insist on an apology for the grave crime of expressing an unpopular opinion… something they themselves never, ever do.
Oh, and I have no doubt that every politician, muggle and half-blood prince would chime in to accuse me of trying to make political capital of the new hospital and its many shortcomings – like, hey! There’s nothing political about hiring pop stars and dancing girls for the same hospital’s opening ceremony, now is there?
The net result, of course, would be that the paper would be bullied and browbeaten into publishing some kind of retraction, allowing the abovementioned medical consultants to carry on (hypothetically) getting away with what they have (allegedly) been doing for yonks.

But not, I think, for very much longer. In fact, visible chinks have already started to appear in the sacred cows’ hitherto impregnable bastion of untouchability, for reasons which are relatively simple to understand… and yet remarkably difficult to explain, in a country where “failure to fall to one’s knees and praise Budget 2008” is now a criminal offence punishable by 200 lashes. But I’ll try all the same.

It goes like this. Evolution decrees that you cannot have two species occupying the top of the food chain at any one time. Granted, it is not a law written in stone, and there will always be periods of co-existence (for example, when the mammoth mingled with the ancestor of the kangaroo, thus producing the first woolly jumper in world history.)
But by and large, one of the two species concerned will invariably prove better adapted to its environment, while the other will find it consistently harder to compete for food and resources. At this point, one of a number of things might happen: the ailing species might move on to pastures new – literally – in search of a more favourable habitat; it might change its diet, thus carving its own, easier niche in which to survive; or – as has happened millions of times since life began around 4.5 billion years ago – it might become extinct.

Applied to Malta’s menagerie of mythical beasts, this means something very specific. There is admittedly no limit to the amount of elves permissible at any one time (elves occupying the bottom, not the top of the food chain). But you cannot have both White Elephants and Sacred Cows in one and the same sector simultaneously.
This is not because the Sacred Cow will willingly relinquish its privileged position for the sake of the White Elephant: nor because the White Elephant will cease to cost the country more to maintain than it actually provides in real-term value. No: the reason is because the State, with its limited financial means, can only afford to accommodate one of these two beasts at any one time.
Up until last June, it was the Sacred Cow who called all the shots. But now that we have a great big White Elephant in the form of Mater Dei grazing on the same stretch of savannah, my guess is that the cows are going to have to adapt one way or another, or the hospital will no longer be viable in the long term.
In a nutshell: if Mater Dei is run in the same way as proved so ruinously wasteful in the case of St Luke’s – I won’t specify the dodgy practices, simply to avoid an elfin onslaught of the kind described above – then it will very soon be manifestly too expensive to run under the present “free health for all” regime.

At this point, one of a number of things might happen. The government may slowly (or suddenly, if in suicidal mode) introduce changes so that services previously offered to patients for free will now have to be paid for. They might surprise us all by taking the Sacred Cow by the horns, and put an end to all its previous perks and privileges in one fell swoop; Or – infinitely more likely, considering the state of affairs at the ‘Elf Ministry these days – they might come down on like a tonne of bricks on some silly, inconsequential service like “free meals for nurses”, while allowing all the other wasteful practices to carry on paralysing the system until the Sacred Cows come home.
No prizes for guessing the correct answer…