Alice? Who the f*** is Alice?

George in particular ought to know better... seeing as he bears a vague resemblance to at least three of that book's most memorable characters. (Hint: two of them are twins, and the other 'sat on a wall'). Meanwhile, translate Fenech's surname into English, give it a waistcoat and pocket stopwatch, and... well, he might suddenly find himself 'late for a very important date'.

But the reason it irked me so such is another: Alice's particular brand of nonsense does not lend itself to the sort of thing Fenech very clearly had in mind (and George evidently thought he understood). Contrariwise: it is infinitely better suited as a tool with which to deconstruct the Nationalist government's own campaign, for reasons I shall come to in a short while.

But first, let us tackle the typical misinterpretation of Alice, who so often finds herself used to exemplify anything so outlandish or absurd that it simply has no place in reality.

Well, this is simply not true of the book at all. If anything it is the other way round: Alice's Wonderland is not 'removed from reality': it IS reality, only seen from a different perspective (hence, 'through the looking-glass').

Fenech would have been on far safer ground had he compared Labour's proposal to something straight out of the absurd: for instance, Kafka or Ionesco or Camus... because it is very clearly the absurd he had in mind, and not Victorian nonsense at all.

OK, I admit it sounds like I'm splitting March Hares here: but the difference is important. Unlike Alice's nonsense, the great examples of absurd literature do not invite the reader to compare and contrast 'real' and 'unreal' alternatives. They simply posit absurd scenarios against absurd backdrops, thus completely removing 'reality' from the picture (in Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, for instance, no one questions 'how' or 'why' Grigori Samsa suddenly transforms into a giant insect. He just does: no explanation necessary).

The Alice books, however, are rooted in a very different concept. Their 'nonsense' does not supplant 'sense' at all (to the point that both novels end with Alice awaking from what was, with hindsight, just a dream). Instead, nonsense undertakes a conscious and deliberate subversion of reality - so much so, that it can only be appreciated as 'nonsense' when viewed in conjunction with the 'sense' that it ultimately distorts.

A good example (popular among marketing consultants, or so I've heard) is the quandary of The Red Queen... who has to keep running and running just to stay in the same place.

In terms of spatial dynamics, this is clearly nonsense. But applied to a business which has to keep growing and growing just to occupy the same position vis-à-vis its competitors, it suddenly makes sense.

And that's not to mention the underlying mathematical concerns (which is where Carroll's real genius resides). When the Mad Hatter argues that "I eat what I see" should be same as "I see what I eat", he may be talking what you or I may call 'nonsense'... but mathematically he's perfectly right: there is, in fact, no difference between 'A=B' and 'B=A'.

Now let's turn to the Alice motif as applied to Labour's energy plans. Yes, I can appreciate what Fenech meant to say; but it's not the same thing as what he actually said at all - and oh look: already we are firmly on Wonderland territory.

His argument is that Labour's proposal is so wacko, so out of the ordinary and so fanciful in its every aspect, that (according to Fenech, anyway) it belongs to the realm of nonsense.

Yet when you actually look at the PL's proposal, the first thing you will notice is that... well, it actually looks quite a lot like the sort of proposals the PN has actively considered (and boasted about) these past few years.

And while several aspects of the plan (namely, the calculations of the price of gas) no doubt do need substantiation, there is nothing it purports to do that in any way defies reality.

That gas is purchased on long-term deals of up to 10 years is a verily easily verifiable fact... and I for one can't understand how Fenech expects to be taken seriously when he says it isn't.

The same is true of the concept of a floating terminal, to which gas is delivered by ship. Not only do such arrangements already exist all over the Mediterranean... but we now know that Gonzi's own government had considered the same possibility (on the advice of the same consultancy firm) itself.

But the real clincher is the revelation - not by Fenech, who is slightly smarter than that... but by George, who argued that that 'there is nothing new' in Labour's proposal.

Hence, I suppose, the Alice connection: for just like the Mad Hatter, George is mathematically correct: all the ideas contained in Labour's had already been explored separately by the PN; and the only reason it appears the PN decided against them, was not because they were 'nonsense' but because the price of gas would be cheaper when delivered by pipeline.

But of course, when the Nationalist government does something it is always the correct thing to do. When Labour proposes doing exactly the same thing... suddenly the proposal becomes the stuff of nonsense, madness, nightmarish fantasy, and so on.

And this brings me to that other character from Alice I mentioned earlier: you know, the one who sat on the wall.

This is one of the 'nonsensical' things he said in that book: 'When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

How different is that from the PN's view of reality... whose meaning changes according to whether the reality involves a Labour or a PN proposal?

But of course there is a difference. When Humpty Dumpty talks nonsense in Alice in Wonderland, we all recognize it for nonsense. When Tonio Fenech or George Pullicino use the exact same illogical thought processes to reach equally illogical conclusions... that's called 'politics', and it makes perfect sense to absolutely everyone.