Wasn’t there a crackdown on ill-begotten drivers’ licences back in the early 2000s?

What are we skinning? A distressing yet low-key classic case of low-level corruption, which has seen three Transport Malta officials charged with helping learner drivers cheat on their exam, while also claiming they felt pressured to do so by an unnamed minister.

Why are we skinning it? Honestly? It’s a refreshingly old-school case that’s making me teary for a simpler time.

Come on, you’re just being facetious now. Can you blame me, though? This kind of thing used to be grist for the media and water cooler mill back in the day.

How do you mean? We would be content to pore over small-scale corruption, and it never got boring. Post-Panama (post-Muscat, really), the stakes got so big that nothing phases us anymore.

A bit like how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown too huge for us to be legitimately excited about what comes next? Exactly. Remember the time when we got like one Spider-Man movie every three years and were happy as pie about it?

Still, I’m not sure I entirely agree with your original assessment. Oh?

I wouldn’t say we were intrigued by more localised cases of corruption before. If anything, we just took them for granted and let them slide. So you’re saying our standards and sensitivities have improved?

Well… maybe? You’re more hopeful than I am, and for that I salute you.

Salutations will do us plenty of good, I’m sure. If there’s anything the Maltese are good at, it’s hollow self-congratulation.

Speaking of which, have the ruling party or any of the institutions in question taken this opportunity to engage in some much-needed introspection? Oh, yes. And by introspection, I mean that they’ve looked inside for two-to-four seconds and concluded that ‘nope, all is good here and we are perfect beyond compare’.

Good. I’ll be resuming my noontime nap now. Enjoy. I will either cry myself to sleep, or catch up with the latest instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe now that Disney+ is available to us as well.

With leaders like these, we can afford blissful numbness. It’s how our loyalty to them is rewarded, my friend.

Do say: “Learning that there are unambiguously unqualified drives rampaging through our streets is hardly encouraging in the wake of a record year of road accidents and ensuing fatalities.”

Don’t say: “Wasn’t there a crackdown on ill-begotten drivers’ licences back in the early 2000s? This whole story was a nice jolt of late-summer nostalgia – just what the good doctor ordered.”