Whenever Vlad the dormant blogger surfaces to impale some Times columnist on his hilarious stake, he tends to leave a small comment on Lanzarote. "I'm back" the comment says. Highly active JRZ's J'accuse (possibly Malta's most clicked-on blog) has also been used as advertising space by beginner bloggers. "We exist too" their comments shout, "come and see what we've got to say".

Fool's Cap and J'accuse, besides being our favourite blogs (in that order), have one thing in common. They're Malta's modern answer to the pillory, that quintessential medieval contraption that one can observe in several English towns and villages. Their victims? Past, present and future "pillars of Maltese society" who've been called to share their wisdom and vision with the nation through the pages of The Times de Malte.

J'accuse appears to have kicked off a small cult following by honing in on would-be Labour onorevoli and literary troubadour 'Dame' Lorna Vassallo and has launched the occassional rotten cabbage in the direction of estate agent/street philosopher Frank Salt. Travel agent-cum-chat-show-host-cum-MLP golden oldie Norman Hamilton is next in line for la methode j'accuse.

While J'accuse's use of the pillory is a bit of a side-line to his more 'constructive' approach, Vlad's at it hammer and tongs. He has cast his net further afield and in perhaps less obvious directions. A choice set of victims? Cardinal Roamer of The Sunday Times, lawyer and blue-eyed boy Austin Sammut, Member of the European Parliament David Casa, 'militant' trade-unionist Salv Sammut, professor of psycholinguistics Anthony Licari, young whippersnapping MZPN president Mathieu Cilia and MLP apparatchik Desmond Zammit (Sea of) Marmara'. After sharing their dreary opinions with the nation, these columnists have all been escorted towards Vlad's wooden device for some chucking fun. Irrespective of political affiliation, background or education.

The question is, of course, do they deserve it? Is the punishment meted out by our two masters of ridicule proportionate to their victim's crime? Lanzarote's verdict has got to be an emphatic 'Aye' for there's a subtle whiff of healthy revolutionary spirit in our two bailiffs' chosen method. Behind the ridicule lies hidden a desire for a change in mentality that rivals Alternattiva's plan to redisign the political landscape.

Let's call it an attack on the claustrophobic pomposity that sits above Malta like a thick blanket of fog. For it's a sorry state of affairs indeed when the most widely-read and respected newspaper in a country that spawned NET and SuperOne, is used as a campaign billboard for politicians and their hangers-on. You want to blow your trumpet to the middle-class while getting kudos from your political masters in the process? No problem, says The Times, just scribble away something remotely comprehensible in our pages. Remember, it says, you'll look much more credible if you do it here.

Now just imagine for a minute, if you'll bear with me, Le Monde and La Repubblica carrying opinion columns by Segolene Royal or Piero Fassino (and their merry band of supporters) week after ruddy dull week. The mere thought of it is enough to make you strangle yourself in boredom. Of course these papers have got their political slants. Nothing wrong with that. But they've got journalists and more or less impartial columnists doing the job. It's the bare-faced self-promotion and cheek a la maltaise that I can't stand. Here I am, these scribblers are saying, I want to have cake at my master's table, I want to eat it and while I'm at it, I'd really love to shove my cake recipes down your gullible little throats. In short, Malta's media has given new meaning to the term 'political journalism'.

It's bad enough that politicians and their yes-men are literally everywhere. (The last time I looked, Evarist Bartolo had a regular column in Kulhadd, The Sunday Times and MaltaToday. And is that Francis Zammit Dimech using his Sunday Times column to urge you to attend Notte Magica? Oh, it's him again! This time he's informing us that it was a cracking success! My oh my!)

So when the political elite uses the 22cents Times of Malta to scribble their mind-numbing inanities, it's time to boycot the whole sad charade or to wheel out the medieval machinery and reach for the veg.