The trees growing on your left as you enter onto the roundabout outside the Auberge de Castille are to be removed to make way for a state of Dom Mintoff.

The ugliness of this twisted dwarf, immortalized for posterity, will stand facing the control room from where he wreaked havoc on Malta for 13 years. And to give it a clear view of the windows, every last tree on the roundabout is to be removed as well, leaving Manwel Dimech’s statue unencumbered and staring Mintoff’s down.

The government’s rationale is that, because the reworking of the esplanade involves a roundabout and traffic management, it should be handled by Joe Mizzi’s Transport Ministry. The result is inevitable.

This is all so predictable that you would be forgiven for thinking the government is working to a script written by Dik Il-Blokker – the very same script the switchers pooh-poohed as having been written to order by a mercenary in the Nationalist Party’s pay.

Because, of course, the truth was unpalatable: that somebody who has been observing politicians minutely for 25 years for the purpose of writing about them for the newspapers, and who is not known to be thick or slow, is likely to assess politicians and their intentions far more accurately than those who pick up their nuggets of received wisdom from other people’s Facebook Timelines.

On a more positive note, given that this is the way I habitually enter Valletta and given, too, that I am right-handed, I shall greatly enjoy the Mintoff statue’s ideal positioning for a left-handed reverse salute every time I drive past.