For the past year or so Facebook, like the hills, has been alive with the cries of ‘Can it get more ridiculous/Taliban-like/It would be funny if it were not so tragic’. Whether it’s Tonio Fenech’s shenanigans (ranging from hopping on to a private plane to a football game to the Madonna appearing to him and giving him advice), to the issue of censorship to  the issue of divorce, it seems like there is a group of Maltese who cannot take Malta any more. We find ourselves saying, more and more often, in italics: but it's 2011. Every year we just add a number but the words remain the same.

In purely practical terms if we – I have to admit I am one of those who regularly slaps their forehead and goes ‘Not a-bloody-gain!’ – had to pack up and leave we would, if anything, relieve the island of some of its overpopulation.

Yet it’s not going to happen. Neither will the following:

1. Politicians, yes even those called Tonio Fenech do not and will not resign. The fact that 'everyone' practically thinks it should happen does not change a single thing. In fact, we may be in one of those Family Guy situations where the more we want something (google ‘Tonio Fenech resign’) the more he will not go. It has become a game. What the forehead slappers forget is that when Tonio Fenech says things like ‘the bible is my manual’ for every intelligent person shaking their heads there are another 30 people (who think they are equally intelligent) thinking ‘Kemm hu ragel sew’.
2. The idea that ‘the world is laughing at us’ is ludicrous. The world does not know Malta even exists. I am used to being in Africa and Asia and have the ‘south of Italy, no not Sicily but further down south, in the middle of the Mediterranean’ spiel down to a T but I am still slightly alarmed when Italians ask me to explain where Malta is. Or Germans. Or Brits. Face it: we’re bloody tiny and most people have no idea we exist and would not blink if we disappeared overnight.
3. Hypocrisy will forever reign: priests who have very obviously gay brothers will continue to say being gay is ‘wrong’, priests having affairs - and long standing ones too - will continue to preach against divorce, newspaper editors with second families (yes, pogguti u bit-tfal bghula) will run an obviously anti-divorce editorial stance, MPs with partners with annulled marriages will continue to say they are ‘against divorce’: the list is practically endless.
4. So will mediocrity. I am particularly guilty of freaking out about the level that we sink to. For example, every Sunday evening, when I, by mistake, leave KC running on TVM I admit to slamming my head against the wall at the script, the sleaze, the gay men parading as husbands, the sleaze, the bad jokes which are not funny, the sleaze, the clichés and the sleaze. Then I cannot switch over and I want to slit my wrists at the amount of adverts the producers (aka the main ‘actress’, scriptwriter, salesperson and wardrobe mistress called Eileen Santa Montesin) have managed to sell. I remember that in Malta, mediocrity means money. I despair. I switch over (or simply off) and I can breathe again.
5. A very funny-looking wig-wearing man will always form part of our general landscape. We cannot escape this. It is useless that we continue to scream and go ‘Can he be serious?! How can he expect to be taken seriously?’. The US have Donald Trump, the man with the reality-defying comb-over. And he’s a billionaire.
6. We will be forever corrupt. It is just part of our make-up. The ones who will not collude will be lambasted by the spin-doctors of the ones who are. For some reason it is easier for us Maltese to believe the worst of the best people and make excuses for those who have ‘sinned’. Maybe it’s not just us. Maybe it is everyone.
7. The police will continue to react to reports according to who makes them and they will range from 'superbly important' (if they involve a lawyer politician) to 'important' (politician) to 'jekk trid taghmel rapport ejja l-ghassa hi u toqghodx tahlielna hin!' (you).

If you accept the above you will feel like you want to decapitate yourself less often while living in Malta. If you cannot then maybe you should be contemplating a move abroad.

What about you? What really makes you think 'that's it; I'm leaving'?