I am greatly amused by Husin Tapa's rant at AirAsia while blithely ignoring the contradictions and mis-perceptions he labours under. I confess I am amazed. Are there still simple souls who yearn for mere symbols of national pride that usually represent financial black holes, yawning chasms down which taxpayers' money is shovelled down by armies of overweight 'Ahli Parlimen' approving expenditures in our Dewan of Disgrace?

Don't you get it? Tony Fernandez is not cozily using the rakyat's taxes to do his mighty deeds. He doesn't use our tax funds. You can buy or sell his shares at Bursa Malaysia. He lives on his wits. MAS is, on the other hand, still mightily under the government's thumb. When they show red figures, you and I end up having to foot the bill, together with their shareholders, because of that 'national airline' tag.

I am sick and tired of 'national' thingys which shamelessly keep begging the government for more cash. If they won't fall on their swords like honourable men do, let their CEOs fight fair like everyone else or just slink away. Just go, if you can't cut it.

Millions of Malaysians have to pay higher prices for petrol and cooking gas, have paid billions for the world's highest car import duties so that Proton could survive (they wanted 20 years more, remember?), billions to buy the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur from Selangor in 1981 'as KL is the administrative centre of the nation, you know' said Dr Mahathir Mohamad wagging an admonishing finger at us.

And then we forked out RM65 billion more to build a new administrative centre at Putrajaya so that people now have the luxury of travelling 50 miles to get official things done! I empathise with my fellow Malaysians with their patient and long-suffering nature. Good on you, mates!

However, I do not gloat to see successful entrepreneur Fernandez being given unfair competition from a MAS banking heavily on Malaysian taxpayers monies. We should question why the Finance Ministry changed its stance. Was it due to representations from MAS, and if so, why are they valid now when they weren't before? What has changed?

One can imagine that in the corridors of power in Malaysia, without an unshackled press baying noisily at their heels, the purveyors of privileges and benefits slither silently from room to room, exchanging favours with one another. Then they scuttle back, across the vast highways, to their chateaus and villas with fanciful names in gated communities.

Perhaps they may flit back leisurely in a helicopter, one purchased with millions of filthy lucre amassed from peddling APs, a brilliant invention by the MOF to create money without doing any work, soon to bite the dust due to the relentless advances of the WTO. The wheels of progress grind very slowly but they grind very small.