TILTING AT WINDMILLS: POLITICALLY GOBSMACKED

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

POLITICALLY GOBSMACKED

There have only been a few occasions in my life when I have been Gobsmacked and I have just experience another rare occurrence.

The Gibraltar Government has just announced that Clive Golt is its new media director replacing the late lamented Francis Cantos.

Certainly Mr Golt, a one-time stalwart of the GBC and more latterly the editor of the GSLP-leaning New People, has all the credentials for the job and more.

He resigned from his GBC post to stand as a GSLP candidate in the 1996 elections. Sadly for him the GSLP lost power, he wasn’t elected to the then House of Assembly, and has spent the years since out in the cold.

Perhaps cold is an understatement as the relationship between Mr Golt and the Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, his new employer, was at best frigid. Numerous rows and unpleasant accusations went to and fro between the two in public. I bite my tongue!

Now Caruana says he has never doubted Golt’s “personal integrity” – whoops there goes another political pig flying overhead.

Still Mr Golt is now a civil servant and should the GSD lose power next year as the opinion polls predict, he will still be in the job serving the new GSLP government.

Which is where he wanted to be in the first place.

A smart move therefore by Mr Golt but Mr Caruana has left me Gobsmacked!

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TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”