I’m not going to volunteer expertise in electricity generation or distribution, in urban planning, in meteorology, in climate science, and in all the trails of expert knowledge that go into understanding why some of us have run out of battery charge on their phone and have lost the ability to read this, never mind the will to live,

The government looks worried that people might blame the power cuts on the power station. Normally governments show little concern for people blaming anything and anyone as long as it’s not them. The power station would make for a convenient alibi. But the last thing Miriam Dalli wants to be debating is how her former boss, Konrad Mizzi, set up a Panama company and then contracted someone who committed to pour money in that company to build a power station that is now short of requirements.

So, make sure you get it. There’s enough generating capacity to keep up with all the people who want to have their A/C running on 17 while the world outside their front door burns to cinders.

It’s the cables carrying the electricity from the power station to your home (or factory, or hotel, or office) that aren’t working. You see, it’s hot and when it’s hot cables aren’t quite as efficient and they can’t keep up with demand. I think that explanation is so plausible that I can’t imagine an alternative to it.

Now here’s the thing. It seems the government has had the foresight to dig a well deep enough so there’s enough water for the population explosion they created. But. It seems the government didn’t plan for enough buckets and cups to get the water out of the well and hand it out to all the waiting people before they die of thirst.

We have a mess on our hands. For all we care, our power station could be generating enough electricity to power New York. If the infrastructure to carry to us the power that we need can’t keep up in an environment that is generously described as “the new normal” there’s not much use for all that unutilised power, is there?

How does one leap on to a criticism of the government over this? They can’t be blamed for the weather, I grant them that. But after all the self-praise of Joseph Muscat and his acolytes about their great vision for the country, about how they would upgrade the infrastructure, about how their solution of doubling the country’s population within less than a generation would make us all live like kings, about how in contrast with the sloppy Nationalists Muscat, Mizzi and Schembri were über-competent, about how their solution would make us the best in Europe, begs all the retorts that sweaty, tired, people who haven’t yet lost their sense of humour are sending the government.

“’L-aqwa fl-Ewropa’ qal,” a deliveryman shouted at the copy shop this morning. The shop attendant had just told him he hadn’t slept for 3 nights. Perhaps there’s no better time than the moment you realise that electricity is no longer guaranteed when it gets hot, to appreciate the gulf between the Labour Party’s campaigns of the last 10 years and the limited abilities of its leaders.

Consider this moment of schizophrenia. This is Alex Cutajar who used to be one of Konrad Mizzi’s many acolytes. He’s asking on Facebook whom he should sue for the loss of income because he had no power. I don’t know, Mr Cutajar, your former boss perhaps?