Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi has been thinking really hard. He has pledged to match his readable propaganda material with tree saplings for the benefit of the environment.
Pledging to do something “concrete for the environment” (sounds like a catchy business motto – ‘Another project entrusted to Polidano Bros: Doing something concrete for the environment’), he said he will be calculating the amount of paper he’ll be using for his electoral campaign, through the help of government-appointed auditors, and then calculate how many trees were used to provide the pulp for his mail-shot pillaging of the households in the fourth district. Then he’ll do the Tree4U routine and match trees felled for his electioneering with new saplings.
“Jalla kulhadd isir iktar konxju ta’ l-obbligi taghna lkoll lejn in-natura” (Let’s hope we’re all the more conscientious of our obligations towards nature), ran his sincere imploration in his press statement. How true: would there be a hundred saplings planted for all the carbon dioxide emitted from MPs during parliament’s winding-down nonsense.
But it’s actually quite a complex affair calculating how much paper is produced from a tree. Azzopardi will have to find out what his paper’s raw material, probably wood fibre, actually came from: perhaps a whole tree, or wood chips from a saw mill, or old copy paper, even a combination of the three, and how old and big was the tree? Anyway, by now you have probably realised I’m getting this from the internet, so the best source I found – Washington DC’s American Forest and Paper Association – assumes that one cord of oak hardwood (128 cubic feet in volume, 2-ton heavy) will yield 1,200 copies of National Geographic.
That sounds like a lot of colourful reading material on Nationalist wildlife and the tales of Jason Azzopardi’s exploits in the political jungle, hunting down primitive forms of voters and stone-age lobbies. So, I guess we might never know how much his government-adoring propaganda was responsible for the useless felling of precious rainforest. But he has pledged to do it anyway after the electoral campaign.
Then again, since he is intent on restoring nature’s bounty, how about getting the entire parliament microphones directly hitched up to the electronic bathroom hand-dryers? It will be like drying your hands while listening to Labour MP Joseph Abela delivering his winding-down speech straight from the ventilator.

Talk about stone-age lobbies and hot air, that brings me to this week’s political aphorism. Joseph Abela, a politician known for his progressive views on asylum rights and voluntary work in this area, has taken up the mantle of the hunters’ lobby, underlining his support for ‘persecuted hunters’ with the following statement – “it is almost better today to have a field of cannabis than to have a field where one could go hunting”.
It’s not just an aphorism. It’s a truism. Have you ever tried lifting a gun while high on grass? You couldn’t lift the remote control to change channel if you’re stoned. It’s just impossible. George Pullicino and Ornis committee, take note.
Now I don’t know if Abela has been getting good grass himself lately, but whatever it is I want it. According to him, it’s becoming easier to acquire cannabis all over Malta while hunters can’t find a field of grass to do a honest day’s shooting – a sort of ornithologist’s Amsterdam fantasy.
What’s sure is that for a long time now, Labour has been drifting towards the hunters’ lobby. While categorically stating that the party will be abiding by the Birds Directive, Labour deputy leader Michael Falzon has met hunters several times this year, pledging that a Labour government will fight legal proceedings from Brussels against Malta over any infringements, most probably over Spring hunting. For the record, he also stated that Labour would abide by the decision of the European Court of Justice, whatever that may be.
Michael Falzon has also promised that ‘bona fide hunters’ will not be “persecuted like criminals” under a Labour administration; “any sense of ‘vindictiveness’ currently felt by hunters is not to remain”; and that “legal restrictions which go beyond our legal obligations as a member of the European Union, we (Labour) are disposed to revisit some, also in the light of our geographic realities.”
Labour can pander to the hunters’ lobby as much as they like because they can. It’s open season as far as votes are concerned. They are seeking re-election and unlike the government (which kept Spring hunting open despite the clear illegality), they are not directly responsible to the EU over legal obligations which, in the case of the Birds Directive, have the scientific rationale of allowing a sustainable hunting season that does not decimate bird populations during their mating season in spring. They can’t make promises they can’t keep, of course. But they can talk – they can talk as much as they like and keep hunters interested and hopeful with their chummy pandering and interventions by converted MPs like Joseph Abela.

As I write, I am watching two-dozen Labour MPs on One TV’s special Christmas fund-raiser for the party. It’s like ‘I’m a Labour MP, get me out of here’ – with the Labour backbench and aspiring ministers stuck in a TV studio doing mindless Christmassy chores and games in a bid to cajole viewers into parting with their hard-earned cash. A right sack of laughs ho-ho-ho – so many laughs being generated that their entire carbon footprint threatens to wipe out Madagascar. There’s Karl Chircop, Anglu Farrugia and Silvio Parnis dressed in their casuals and winter sweaters singing to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Forget the grass. I want opium. Injected right into my nervous system if that is even possible.