If it weren’t so tragic for Mr Grech this whole incident over a fake email could be the plot of a Restoration Comedy of Errors.

We have two ambitious political foes out to stab one another in the back or the front or anywhere else as long as the blow is fatal.

We have a sad, lonely and dedicated public servant who could be the main character in an Anita Brookner novel–sickly, socially inept, willing to compromise his ethics for a bit of recognition.

A system of government willing to waste precious time bickering when there should be serious work achieved in running the country.

A parliamentary system that thrives on scandals and futile point-scoring by both sides of the House– a kindergarten of adults who plumb the depths of crassness.

A nepotism in government that favours friends and relatives.

Why am I not surprised by Utegate? (that’s the name given to Prime Minister Rudd’s tendency to favour his friend in the car-dealing rescue package).

And then there’s the email which Godwin Grech revealed to please the Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull.

Turnbull thought all his Christmases had come at once and decided to wave the incriminating email in Rudd’s face.

The triumph was short-lived. The email was a fake. Grech maintains that there was an authentic one but that he can’t find it so he concocted this one.

From whence has this confession come? From a psychiatric ward in which a chronically depressed Grech is being treated.

Alas, poor Grech is a very sick man with mental and physical problems. After all the fuss about the fake email has died down, I know of one person who will never get over it and that’s Grech. He was an extremely intelligent workaholic who tried to please an important politician.

He was wrong to do that, but I believe him when he says that he was directed to favour a friend of the Prime Minister.

One lesson that can be learned from this is that the internet is an unreliable place for document authenticity. As for the jungle that is politics, Grech was used by it and is now discarded.

Public servants should not be subject to this sort of pressure by politicians. They play rough.