A radio show of lackeys this morning praised Julia Farrugia Portelli for her BBC interview yesterday. They thought that her invitation to Boris Johnson to go jogging with her amounted to “a mic drop”. Truly a government of the mediocre for the mediocre.
Julia Farrugia Portelli was an embarrassment on TV yesterday. She was there as a government minister treated to questions that are appropriate for her post. The hosts asked her questions on policy: health concerns, procedures in case of detection of the disease, concerns about a second wave of a virus that is still very much around.
She was oblivious of any health concerns. She spoke of thermometers and telephones like they were futuristic scientific discoveries right out of a space odyssey.
The interviewers started out concerned that the Maltese risked their healthy anti-coronavirus record by letting in the considerably more exposed British. When they heard how uninformed the government minister they were interviewing was, they weren’t reassured.
Whatever her qualities may be, Julia Farrugia Portelli cannot have absorbed the health brief given to her by the health department. She was vaguely aware there were ‘protocols’ but couldn’t say what was in them to save her life.
What happens to visitors in a hotel where someone is found to be positive, asked the reporters? You’d think it’s an obvious question with an answer hammered out after weeks of simulation testing and scenario building producing an action protocol structured to the finest detail. Julia Farrugia Portelli said the hotel can phone the health department. Oh thank fuck for that.
When Julia Farrugia Portelli went to welcome tourists flying in for the first time in months, an Italian tourist had already made up his mind when he saw the inane smile on the token woman they sent to greet him.
Watch him say it at 0:17: “You can do better than this!”
Quite.