This week's notebook
Joseph Muscat thinks that it is a step in the direction of modernity when he orders the Labour Party’s Vigilance and Discipline Board to rehabilitate those who were cast out into the wilderness, there to become non-persons. He fails to realise, possibly because he has no sense of history or of irony, that in doing this he is conforming to the Soviet thinking that lies behind the very existence of that board. Disciplining party members, making them non-persons and then rehabilitating them as and when it suits the party is something straight out of the Soviet Union. The Vigilance and Discipline Board was set up by Alfred Sant in the early 1990s. It can just as easily be disbanded by his successor.
The government has finally published its white paper on rent reform. A white paper is not a fait accompli, but a document that is up for discussion before the eventual bill goes through parliament – when and if it goes through parliament, that is. White papers are published precisely so that electors may give their views and suggestions, which are considered, or should be. But white papers don’t usually get much response from the public. The white paper on freedom of information, which should lead finally to the Freedom of Information Act, was published last year but fell into a public-opinion vacuum. This is despite the fact that there are occasional challenges to the government, in the newspapers, about the failure to legislate on this matter. This is supposed to be a participatory democracy, so go ahead and participate. Download the white paper from www.rentreform.gov.mt and send in your comments.
From a cursory reading of an on-line report in another newspaper, this is what struck me most, apart from the reporter’s repeated reference to ‘inheriting a rent’ rather than ‘inheriting the title to a lease’: social clubs, including political party clubs, will be exempt from the provisions of any law eventually enacted on the basis of this white paper.
I can guess that the greatest number of comments the government is going to receive in reaction to the white paper is going to be about this clause. I imagine that the exclusion of social clubs in general was done because the stark exclusion of only political party clubs would have been too obvious. Yet this clause lets down the entire white paper, which at first glance seems fairly acceptable. No social club needs protection, and a political party club needs it even less.
It is outrageous that the very political parties that pay lip-service to respecting rights should now collude to protect their right to take a permanent free ride on the backs of property-owners, depriving them of what is theirs.
If Joseph Muscat wishes to score brownie-points with the sceptics, and lend some credibility to what have been little more than fine words so far, then he should demand to have the Labour Party written out of this clause. That won’t go down well with his people, and it won’t go down well with the Nationalist Party, which will then be put in an even worse light. But it will go down very well with the rest of us, whether we own property that has been effectively seized by the political parties or not.
The insufferable Frans Sammut, author of turgid novels in the mother tongue and sometime adviser to Prime Minister Sant, is another of those who have swallowed the love-drug. He has posted a comment beneath an on-line story about Paul Borg Olivier’s election to the post of Nationalist Party secretary-general, congratulating him and then going on to say: “One looks forward to seeing more civilised relations between the two major parties.” What, no Arnold Cassola? “One feels confident we will henceforth witness less wild and uncontrolled cross-party attacks that have characterised the past years particularly due to some so-called journalists (or, to be blund, a she-opinion-maker posing as a journalist) beholden by the PN.”
Sigh. Aside from having to point out to Sammut that it’s ‘beholden to’ and not ‘beholden by’, and ‘blunt’ not ‘blund’ (thank God for him his novels are in Maltese), I really have to wonder out loud who the she-opinion-maker posing as a journalist is. Oh yes, I’ve got it. It’s me. She-wolf, she-devil, she-opinion-maker: it’s interesting to see that I’m the true test of whether their love mantra is real or just so much codswallop. Because I’m immune to their ridiculous horsesh*t, the love parade ends where I begin.
The Labour elves are out in force, dumping on the Nationalist Party’s method of electing its secretary-general. These elves are singing from the same hymn-sheet as usual, and the current hymn is this: the Labour Party is more democratic because its secretary-general is elected by a constituency of 900 delegates, unlike the Nationalist Party.
The hole in this argument, of course, is that Labour’s 900 delegates elected Jason Micallef (to say nothing of Anglu Farrugia, Toni Abela and Joseph Muscat) while the Nationalist Party’s supposedly undemocratic system elected Joe Saliba. It has also elected Paul Borg Olivier, about whom I can say nothing because I have no experience of his working methods, though I do know that he is a decent man.
Finally, the man who haunted the election campaign trail like Banquo’s ghost with his unkempt long grey hair has been charged with trying to blackmail a politician. Jo Said, the self-appointed arbiter of who was corrupt and who was not, who flirted madly with Alfred Sant before throwing himself into the arms of Harry Vassallo, now has to answer in court to the accusation that he tried to coerce Nationalist MP David Agius into crossing to the Opposition benches by threatening to tell the newspapers that he cheated during an economics examination while at university. As the recipient of several phone-pest calls and text messages from this man, I can only hope that he gets what I think he deserves.
There was a lot of fuss and bother when two men wrote to the newspapers to publicise the fact that their mother had broken her wrist, was taken to the accident and emergency department at the state hospital where she had to wait for some hours, then put in a half-cast, sent home and asked to return the next day for an operation. The operation was then postponed because resources had to be directed to cases more urgent than a broken wrist, which could wait. The men decided that their mother shouldn’t have to wait, and when they left the state hospital, they drove her straight to a private hospital, where she was operated on immediately. They then blamed the government, and not their own decision, for the fact that they had to pay almost €4,000 for the private operation.
I got very cross when I read about this: not at the state health service, but at the people who present themselves at the state hospital with precisely the same expectations that they would have of a private hospital – in which patients are few and far between, there is no accident and emergency department, and you are presented with no bill for €4,000 at the end of the efficient service they have expected, demanded and received. They are people who want to have their cake and eat it. They can’t digest the fact that private hospitals exist because state hospitals can never be like private hospitals, for the simple reason that the pressures and demands on the latter are far too great. Conversely, private hospitals can never be like the state hospital. They can never be as safe, or call upon as many skills at the press of a button.
I am a great fan of the state hospital and a particular fan of the accident and emergency department, which has served me and my sons very well over the long years of split and broken body-parts, concussion, anaphylactic shock, foreign bodies jammed into eyeballs, partially severed digits and heaven knows what else. I cannot bear to see people whining in the waiting-room especially when I know that what drives them to whine is not pain but boredom. They stare into space, huff and puff, try to make conversation, get bored, and then go off to challenge the receptionist or the triage nurse.
I am especially unsympathetic to the broken wrist story because I had the same experience last year, but chose to handle it differently. I too broke my wrist so badly that I needed to be operated on (our mastiff mowed me down and then trampled on me in his haste to get at what he suspected was a hunter on the other side of the wall). I sat for hours in the accident and emergency waiting-room, but because I had experienced several times the goings-on on the other side of the door, I didn’t complain. I had a pretty good idea of the pressures in there. And I didn’t get bored because I had had the foresight to take a book and some magazines.
Once the initial pain of a broken wrist wears off, it’s just a dull ache, not the pain referred to in the much-publicised letter. I too was put in a half-cast and told to return within a couple of days for an operation, but I was going away the next day and didn’t want to cancel the trip, and in any case, I didn’t want an operation because I had had some trouble with general anaesthetic. So they said look, keep the cast on for two weeks and we’ll see whether it heals properly like that, but we doubt it, and in any case, we think you’re mad to take a flight while wearing a half-cast, because your arm will swell up and dislodge the bone even further. But I did go away. I also carried on doing exactly what I had done before, and the bone was dislodged and I had to have that operation. I had to wait some days for a slot, but so what? What are a few days in an entire lifespan, and when you are in a cast already in any case? I didn’t see the point of busting a gut getting annoyed and worked up. I had the commonsense to see that I couldn’t possibly expect the same prompt service from a state hospital dealing with thousands of people that I could get by paying €4,000 to a private hospital serving just a few patients every day. And I had more reason to be annoyed than most, given that it was my right wrist and I had to produce, in the time that my hand and arm were in plaster, two entire magazines. I just mastered the art of using a keyboard with an incapacitated right hand, and got on with it. Worse things have happened to people. Why make a drama out of it?
The problem with the state hospital is not one of service, but of expectations. People expect of the state hospital something that it cannot possibly deliver. They expect it to function with the same lack of delays as a private hospital with just 20 in-patients, even though it is a general hospital that serves the entire country. They don’t understand how an accident and emergency department functions. And they don’t understand the myriad unbelievable pressures that a private hospital just doesn’t have. Yet despite all the inconvenience of waiting and being shunted around – two annoyances that are easily dealt with by the simple expedient of reading an amusing book – the fact remains that the state hospital is still the best place to get your medical treatment. Everything is right there on tap should it become necessary.
Yes, I agree that, in the famous words of the British king who abdicated to marry Mrs Simpson, ‘something must be done’ about hospital waiting-lists for serious medical conditions. But where non-serious conditions like broken wrists are concerned, we would do better to get our priorities right and put a proper perspective on things. Nobody ever died of a broken wrist, or of spending a few days longer in a plaster-cast than strictly necessary. And quite frankly, given the choice between spending €4,000 on an immediate operation, or having the same operation a few days later without the €4,000 bill, I would go for the latter. And I did.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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DCG, just to second your point about the NHS. When you need things done urgently, they are done urgently – when you can wait, you’ll have to, so other people with more urgent needs than yours get taken care of. Self-centred egotism (is that repetitive?) is one of the less attractive traits in humanity, and when agenda-driven commentators in (generally) the Sunday papers fuel the fire, it becomes even less attractive, for all that it makes for a good “let’s bash the Government” story.
The NHS isn’t perfect, by a long shot, but it’s not as bad as some people who can’t take being left in a queue make it out to be.
The Board of Vigilance served to clean Labour from corrupt and violent elemets. What’s wrong in that?
[Moderator – No, the Board of Vigilance served to expel members of the party who wanted to clean it up, like Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff.]
I think your article this week had two basic faux pas:
1. I don’t agree with you about the way you write with regard to the broken wrist issue – Mater Dei Hospital was built out of the taxes that you and I pay! Mater Dei keeps open because the government, some years ago, decided to raise VAT by some 3% in order to maintain the hospital. So, yes, indeed, we DO expect Mater Dei to treat us, its clients and owners, as if it were a private hospital.
2. Jo Said deserves what he will deserve – it is true! However, doesn’t it strike you that an MP for whom it comes out that he had cheated at University, should resign?
Regards.
It seems that the ‘I want it all I want it now virus’ is infecting the not so young people. Some people do not understand the triage system .
Lately we needed to call at the Emergency department , a friend of mine recommended the Floriana Health Centre , no triage , just a five minute wait , and while the doctor and his colleagues were taking care of two other people with breathing problems , they also managed to medicate our patient’s deep cut which needed sixteen sutures .
Patients should be more cooperative with hospital staff.
Mr/Ms Moderator, if the PN had the guts to set up its own disciplinary board, what would it do about JPO?
And unless I am very much mistaken, the Vigilance Board was set up years after Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff had left.
Allow me to clarify some points you raised in your weekly article published in today’s The Malta Independent where you mentioned the case concerning my mother at Mater Dei.
First off I have nothing against you personally and you are fully entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. In fact I very often find myself agreeing with you fully on many issues you comment about.
If you would care to read my letter published in The Sunday Times today as well as the full page article in today’s Malta Today (adapted from my original letter submitted to the paper) I have responded to all the allegations contained in the ministerial enquiry also published this week and set out the facts of the case clearly.
First of all we never presented ourselves at the state hospital expecting 5 star treatment. We waited 4 hours on the first day and 9 hour on the second day fully aware that if more serious cases came in they would have to be dealt with first. However we were informed that we would have to keep returning and waiting until a free slot was available and were specifically told by the doctors on duty that we may have to wait several days and keep coming to the hospital to wait. I agree with you that the facilities at Mater Dei are the best in the country but the service certainly is not, no matter what goes on behind the scenes and what the staff have to go through – I am not disputing the fact that they are dedicated but stating that they are inefficient. You failed to mention that the blood samples were lost TWICE and a blood sample had to be taken three times.
Our decision to go private was based on comments made by the staff on duty that we may have to wait 4 or 5 days for the operation to be performed. What I do expect from the state hospital is better organisation and service which is totally lacking. I do expect to wait but not indefinitely as we were asked to do.
Unlike you, I am not a fan of the state hospital and on another occasion I was also made to wait a whole day to have my bruised back seen to after I fell down and I can assure you the pain was not a dull ache but agony. Furthermore, I am an avid reader and when one is in such pain, no amount of reading in the emergency room is going to take your mind off the pain and discomfort.
Let me assure you that my expectations of the state hospital are not astronomical but reasonable – just to be treated with a little respect and not just like a number or worse still like an animal.
My perspective on the hospital is that the state social system including medical treatment is there to serve the population offering a reasonable service and health care – something which is clearly lacking, whether it is customer care, insufficient staff levels or anything else it is the duty of the Government to provide free health care within a reasonable time frame to everyone – especially if they have paid their social security contributions all their lives as my parents have done.
Maybe you also disagree with Dr.Frank Portelli CEO of St.Philip’s hospital who also opines that we waited too long in his comments published in today’s Malta Today on page 6?
Believe me if I was given any indication that my mother would be seen to the following day I would have to be crazy to pay 4000 euros privately for what is essentially a minor operation. But seeing my mother in such discomfort was heartbreaking and I just wanted her to be seen to as quickly as possible. I am not complaining about the money spent or trying to reclaim it but the fact that the hospital failed in its duty towards its citizens.
The reason I went public with this story is because I honestly hope that others do not have to go through this ordeal. I also sent a letter to the Minister before going public but received no response. Many people have had similar experiences as ours and complain and get angry but fail to do anything about it.
At least I had the guts to speak out about inefficiencies in the health system with my personal experience instead of just complaining and doing nothing. Are you going to condemn me for this? Isn’t this something you yourself do week in, week out in your columns – something I admire you for?
Please don’t judge me without having recourse to all the facts of the case. I am not just blowing hot air.
The health officials, and hospital administration are trying to obfuscate the truth and cover up their inefficiencies. Wouldn’t it be great if they learn something from this episode and improve things for future patients?
Mr.Borg Cardona, lets hope you never have to be ‘left in the queue’ at Mater Dei in the future. The point of my letter wasn’t to ‘bash the Government’ as you so eloquently put it but to try and improve the less than perfect (your words) NHS. Before the election I blitzed the media in defence of the Government (and against AN). But let the truth be known or the heavens will fall – when the Government need to be criticized I am not going to be double faced and remain silent just because I voted for them as most people in this country tend to do. If the newspapers sensationalize a story of human interest, that is not my problem and their choice. None of this would have happened if the hospital had acted correctly. Did you conveniently forget that the blood samples were lost twice? Or that we were given NO indication when the operation was to be performed? Would you have ‘waited in the queue’ for 5 days running from 8am till 7pm? What about all the clients of your legal profession? Would you ask them to also wait for a week for legal advice?
The NHS does have its good points but service and organisation are certainly not two of them.
Franco, I’m afraid the faux pas is yours. A state hospital can never be run like a private hospital, for the simple reason that the exigencies, demands and responsibilities are completely different. At the most basic level, no private hospital has an Accident and Emergency Department. At the next most basic level, no private hospital is obliged to accept for treatment any one of 400,000 people (plus sundry visitors) who may turn up that day. Private hospitals treat you only if you are prepared to pay extraordinarly large sums of money. They are efficient because they have so very few patients, and because they are not drained by a vast A & E department.
You argue about taxes. That is disingenuous. Some of the people I have seen making the most incredible fuss in the state hospital’s waiting-rooms are those who pay no tax at all, or very, very little, because they are clearly beneath the threshold or earn a low income. Conversely, the people who pay the most tax, and who really fund the state hospital, are the ones most likely not to be using its services, either because they also have private medical insurance, or because they don’t mind paying the large bills at the private hospital.
Let’s take a simple example: our men complained because they paid EUR4,000 for their mother’s operation. If you were paying EUR334 a month in tax and NI, a year’s worth of tax and NI would just about pay for that single operation. But the people who pay that much and more every month are in the minority, not the majority, and their tax and NI also has to pay for myriad other things, not just a wrist operation at Mater Dei.
The bottom line is that where the majority of people are concerned, their tax and NI contributions do NOT pay for the service they get at Mater Dei. In effect, they are getting an excellent service for next to nothing – and in the case of those who don’t pay tax, really for nothing. Those who want the standards of a private hospital service can very well pay for it. The rest should learn not to push their luck. And it all depends on what you mean by service. When I think of hospital service, I think in terms of medical treatment, not how long I have to wait for it or how charming the receptionist is.
Where in the world can you walk off the street and into the state hospital on a Sunday night, and merely by showing your ID card, be directed to an excellent ophthalmologist who will remove the cactus thorn from your eye, clean you up, and send you home? If you walk into a private hospital on a Sunday night, you will find no specialists of any kind on duty, just a nurse or two. They will send you home to spend the night awake, asking you to return in the morning, and then present you with a giant bill for a little bit of tweezer action.
If the state hospital were to put some gaming-machines in its waiting-rooms, you can rest assured there wouldn’t be half as many complaints about waiting-time as there are now. In all the long hours I have spent there, I have NEVER seen a single other person besides myself reading anything at all. Please explain to me how it is possible for a grown man or woman to stare into space for four solid hours. It isn’t, and that’s why they become frantic and anxious. But the problem lies with them, for being unable or unwilling to read or keep calm by amusing themselves with a crossword puzzle and perhaps a set of headphones.
Ganni Borg: Are you seriously calling for a second Soviet-style party administration? Why does the first one have to exist at all?
Dear Philip,
I appreciate your writing in but you have missed the essential point of my piece: that I went through the exact same experience as your mother, but chose to handle it differently. Yes, I am three decades younger, and probably far less prone to panic, but really you would have done better to calm her down and reassure her rather than adding to the panic by making a fuss.
In other words, I am speaking from direct (exact same) experience, and not merely volunteering an opinion. There is a basic flaw in your argument, which is that you chose to have the operation done privately immediately rather than see your mother in “so much discomfort” for a few more days. Well, as I know through experience, the operation on a broken wrist does nothing at all to relieve the discomfort. Whether you are in a half-cast waiting for the operation, or in full plaster after the operation, it is just as annoying (painful isn’t the right word, because it really isn’t). Indeed, I would say that the half-cast is far more comfortable than the dead weight of full plaster which you are obliged to wear after the operation, and the presence of a metal pin through your wrist increases the ache factor rather than decreases it. So your mother might as well have waited. She was certainly (and this I know through experience) more comfortable in the half-cast before the operation, than she was with a pin through her wrist and very heavy full plaster after the operation. The wait really would have made no difference at all, except to your bank account.
People with broken wrists are not left to wait indefinitely or even capriciously. They are left to wait for a few days because the number of operating-theatres and surgeons is finite. In my case, the only available slot was on Good Friday – a slow day, apparently. I was very grateful that they made space for me instead of taking a holiday, and even accomodated my fear of general anaesthetic by being extra-patient.
Yes, the hospital was wrong to lose the blood samples, but big deal, these things happen. My operation had to be postponed at least once because my blood pressure had escalated abnormally (I was worrying about how I was going to produce two magazines with my right arm in plaster). Nobody huffed and puffed at me because I should have kept my blood pressure low to avoid upsetting their surgery schedule. Somebody else was slotted in instead of me.
Sometimes, we have to take things in our stride. It would have helped if you had spoken to somebody more senior instead of just going on the word of a nurse (not a good idea).
Of course you were left to wait with back pain; back pain is not life-threatening. You see, this is the basic misunderstanding among people in general: that you go to the top of the list depending on how much pain you are in. No, you go to the top of the list depending on how much danger you are in. If you’re not in danger, you make way for the others, even if you are in agony. When I turned up at A & E with a concussed four-year-old, we were rushed in immediately. When I turned up with a 16-year-old who had gone into anaphylactic shock, there was a team of specialists around him at once, including a surgeon ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy should it become necessary. On the other hand, when I turned up with my own broken wrist, they told me to wait and I did, for hours.
The Vigilance and Discipline Board will soon be disbanded and replaced by a Bord ta’ L-Etika u Imgieba Korretta. Or something like that. Sexier name, same purpose.
my name is Leonard but my son calls me Joey: This is thrilling news. It’s brightened up a working Sunday.
Dear Daphne,
I appreciate the unconfrontational tone of your response, and I see your point about handling the situation differently. But to clarify the case further, it was not a nurse who told us we would need to come back for several days but a doctor.
Furthermore, a pin was not inserted into my mother’s arm but an external one applied. Regarding the amount of pain my mother was in with the cast or with the external pin is difficuilt for me to quantify as I was not the one in pain, she was.
It is difficult to deal with human problems in such a logical manner as you are suggesting even though you may be right in saying that the problem will be solved quicker.
I have very little medical knowledge and just wanted to see the arm operated on so that my mother could go home and recuperate in the comfort of her own surroundings rather than waiting endlessly at the hospital further adding to her negative experience.
I should also point out that my mother is under strict medical orders not to get agitated as this will lead to an increase in her blood pressure which in her case may also lead to a stroke. It is my duty to defend and protect my family and in this case my mother and to take any nessesary course of action so as not to get her agitated. Believe me, if I were to do what you are suggesting and just wait patiently day after day for the operation to be performed I honestly don’t think she would have been calm and this could have lead to much more serious medical consequences. Who would have been held responsible if this had lead to a stroke or even worse? It is not such a straightforward case as it seems prima facie. I have not passed on these facts to anyone as yet, but am disclosing them to you because I respect you, and your opinion.
I see you dodged my question about JPO, Corinne. Figures.
Philip Micallef – your personal case, justified or not (I’m quite prepared to accept that it is, as I said the NHS isn’t perfect) does not change the essential argument: there are people who think that they must come first always and without exception and hang what the experts think.
While on the subject of experts, Dr Frank Portelli’s opinion about how a hospital should be run is – how shall I put this? – not exactly unbiased, now, is it?
Mr Micallef I sympathise with you and your mother. Howeever, I don’t thnk you are very wise to try and argue your case here. You will not get a fair hearing unless you are ready to maintain that all is perfect in Lilliput.
I just noticed that my question was directed at the so-called moderator, not at Corinne (unless they are one and the same).
[Moderator – Forgive me for being too bored by your questions to answer them.]
@ Daphne , perhaps we should put a clear picture on the “contributions” to the exchequer by the public and “visitors” to run Mater Dei .
Ni contributions : One tenth of the salary from the wage packet and the same amount is paid by the employer in the employee’s name. That is quite a big chunk!
Income tax : Mostly paid by the middle class , the rest , self employed and businesses try to dodge it. ( I can’t blame them)
18 % Vat : you seem to have forgotten that one.
Excise & duty tax from imports outside the EU , like fuel and cereals.
Company tax : 35%
15% tax on interest from bank accounts.
You have to nearly double the €334 “in tax & NI” to be credible.Make it €550.
Losing the blood samples is unacceptable , it could have been the last straw for Phillip Micallef. Mater Dei needs a real shake up in its organisation.
We expect that the management adjusts to the people’s needs .Less security guards , more organised nursing staff.
@Philip
well done for raising this issue,
as an ex-Casualty doctor I have seen such bad service day in and day out at St Luke’s Emergecy Dept, the triage is just a convenient delaying tactic aimed at keeping the pressure off the Casualty department. Such bad management of patients is the result of lack of space, lack of facilities , and lack of proper renumeration of staff. There are several experienced nurses, doctors and paramedical staff who would elish the chance of earning some extra money dealing with the “low triage” patients in their off-hours, instead of waiting at tables or attending private clinics in their off-duty hours.
@Daphne : imagine McDonalds treated their customers this way, instead of serving customers who just ask for an ice-cream or a coffee, they “triage” customers and serve only those customers with large orders, leaving other clients waiting for hours for their coffee. What would happen? Clients would get angry and start insulting the staff. Staff would get demoralised and leave the company. Experienced staff would leave for better job opportunities, leaving McDonalds staffed with inexperienced , overworked and demoralised staff. McDonalds would get a bad reputation and would soon go out of business. This is what is happening at Mater Dei, may experienced Casualty doctors are leaving, demoralised by the bad customer experience. And this is out one and only Casualty Department, and not a burger outlet!
McDonalds should run our Casualty Department!
[Moderator – That is the worst comparison I’ve ever heard. I have a better idea – let’s get Toni Abela to run the hospital like a Labour supermarket. The trolleys are already there, and Anglu Farrugia can invite the Labour drug addicts who sold their votes to do their shopping at the pharmacy.]
@ moderator. ironically enough, discussions about the setting-up of the Bord tal-Vigilanza were held at Toni Abela’s home….the Bord expelled also the likes of Lorry Sant….all this talk about Soviet-style leadership….well ask Josie Muscat about how internaly tollerant the PN is. At least in Labour things are done openly.
[Moderator – Elf: tolerant is spelt with one l.]
I have had the same exact broken wrist experience some two weeks ago. I was rushed through emergency (and there was a full waiting room) and had all procedures done in just two hours. I was then given a bed and informed that I would have been operated the day after. I fasted for 14 hours but then was told that my operation had to be rescheduled for the following day, however this could also be rescheduled if there were more urgent requirements. I understood this but, for various personal circumstances, could not stay stranded at Mater Dei ad infinitum and therefore went to Capua where I was operated the following day. In my case I also offered to go home and come back for the operation but was told by staff that this was not advisable as i would ‘lose my turn’.
I have nothing but praise for all Mater Dei staff who were extremely gentle and helpful. Sometimes I think that it is also the attitude of the patient that makes a difference.
I am now still in the half cast stage and hoping to heal asap but I was never really and truly in pain besided the time from when I got hurt to when my fracture got stabilised, however the situation is highly uncomfortable and frustrating.
Old people with broken bones are known to be more prone to serious complications then younger and healthier people with the same problems. Old bones are more fragile and heal slower, and the circulation of their hands ( and feet ) is usally dicey as well. Anyone looking after old relatives or old people knows this.
If the goverment does not want tax payers to look at Mater Dei as an nhs type of private hospital, it should never have encouraged such high expectations from people in the first place.
@ Chris Borg. Where, when, and how, did the Bord ta d’Dixiplina w Vigilanza ever “clean Labour from corrupt and violent elements” (so there WERE some such elements, after all?)? and, if the Bord had done so, why was it such a priority on the part of JM to order the B.D.V. to grant a ‘General Amnesty? is the MLP THAT keen to welcome the corrupt and violent elements back into its fold? and, if so, why??
Allow me to venture my own hospital experience.
About a year ago I started feeling a dull ache in my shoulder going down my left arm. My heart was also beating rather fast. This can be the symptom of a heart attack but being only 32 at the time I was sure it was nothing more then stress being that I was in fact going through a rather stressful period. However, my wife was extremely worried as I unwisely told her and insisted we go to hospital (St Luke’s at the time) and check it out and after a lot of arguing had her way.
On arriving we found the waiting room packed and I was all for leaving however finally agreed to wait for a maximum of a couple of hours to placate my wife.
Two hours? Forget it, as soon as I explained my symptoms I was thrown inside onto a couch and was IMMEDIATELY attended to by a doctor and a couple of nurses who hooked me up to all manner of gadgets and kept me there under observation, taking blood samples and whatnot.
After a few hours of observation I was proved correct in that it was merely a stress attack, however they did not want to take any chances. (After all I’m certainly no doctor)
The point is that any serious cases ARE taken care of immediately. I was quite impressed. As Daphne said it is NOT a private hospital and I don’t see why my taxes should pay for ANYBODIES private hospital dear Mr Franco Farrugia
i cannot but sympathise with the people of the ‘broken wrist’ story. i had a similar experience with a relative who was far older and the fall more serious. we were at the emergency department for a whole six hours. the patient was in pain and i had to ask for some aspirin and ice while waiting in the corridor. surely such simple measures can be seen to without delay so that at least the patient does not suffer unnecessarily while waiting there was no way we could afford to go to a private hospital for treatment and so some of us have to make do with NHS. In our case, it was us and not the patient who panicked. Especially when the patient(who lived alone} was discharged and we were left at a loss what to do next. I sincerely hope that others will not pass through the same ordeal but if it happens, there should be systems in operation which can cater for such individuals and similar emergencies. It was certainly a tough experience and at such times reading books and who pays what amount of taxes are the least things that come to mind.
Mr Philip Micallef – What do you expect from Dr Frank Portelli – his interest is in putting the State Hospital in a bad light so that his private hospital would flourish!
@Franco Farrugia
It has already been shown that the mp in question only cheated in Jo Said’s fertile imagination.
Try to keep up!
I have an idea that can make the waiting rooms at mater dei more bearable infact even a bit fun (entrepreneurship ofcourse, because the government won’t do it or will take like 30 years to do it).
Can somebody fill me on whats illegal in public spaces such as hospitals? like can you offer a service in a public place.
do you need a permit or something?
Ganni Borg: I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I am not the moderator of this site. The fact that I answered a question addressed to Mr/Mrs Moderator does not mean that I am the moderator myself. This may be difficult to understand for someone who favours Soviet style truth control.
No, I did not dodge your question about Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. It cannot be answered because it is tautological (look it up). This too may be difficult to understand for someone who favours Soviet style truth control.
I’m not mentioning names here and I’m not saying that it’s impossible. I’m just saying that it’s difficult.
@Graham Crocker
Maybe we can install an internet kiosk so patients and relatives can comment on Daphne’s blog…in fact it would qualify as a community service hehe
“imagine McDonalds treated their customers this way, instead of serving customers who just ask for an ice-cream or a coffee, they “triage” customers and serve only those customers with large orders, leaving other clients waiting for hours for their coffee.”
Ha ha!! I’ve never heard of anyone dying of BigMac deprivation!!
Ganni Borg – You said “You will not get a fair hearing unless you are ready to maintain that all is perfect in Lilliput.”
Adopting Kevin Ellul Bonici’s lingo now, are we? Or are you simply Europarl sans-superhero attire?
It`s a pity that the polyclinics aren`t made more use of.
I was there once waiting for a prescription to be signed and a man came in with his arm badly cut.
The wound was seen to, stitches put in and he was out in all of 15 min.
By the way, I was waiting for a prescription for a cholesterol drug that costs some lm20 monthly. A woman turned on me and told me that I should be ashamed of myself as it was people like me (who could afford to go private) who were causing long queues in polyclinics and hospitals.
She said she had never worked so she had every right for free treetment.
I was stunned but told her that if my husband and I hadn`t paid so much Income Tax through out our working lives she definately wouldn`t have been able to come along for her free medicine.
@Graham Crocker – anything you do at Mater Dei will have to be subject to a tender open to all.
One way of easing some of the pressure on the A&E department is if people first called their GP or called at their polyclinic in cases of minor injury.
Philip Micallef – you have my full sympathy.
This is a case where DCG is defending the indefensible.
I agree that NHS promptness of service can never match that of private hospital, at least not on the present systems or configuration.
But courtesy and provison of timely information does not cost money. it is simply a culture which is missing in the NHS and it seems that the new ambience at Mater Dei is not really helping. If anything it is widening the gap between the level of service and patients’ expectations.
Corinne Vella: I should point out that ‘minor injury’ excludes suspected fractures.
This forum must taker tha all-time first prize for having the most partisan so-called moderator on the net.
And you were not bored by my quesdtion – just too chicken to answer it.
[Moderator – People cease to call each other chickens beyond the age of 10.]
David Buttigieg, the proceedings of the court have shown that the MP in question DID cheat – at least twice.
http://www.l-orizzont.com/news.asp?newsitemid=45334
In economically affluent, so-called developed countries, away from Malta, one pays essentially more for one’s medical insurance, much more than the all inclusive NI contributions prevailing in Malta.
In the countries to which I refer, for example in Germany, private patients also have preferential treatment at a price (2.3x the normal rates for a specific condition).
Patients, who can only boast of the compulsory medical insurance, and who are not suffering from a life-threathening condition, may experience hours of waiting, be it in a hospital emergency ward, be it in a general practioner’s clinic.
I am now a retired medic, who only possesses a compulsory medical insurance. As a rule, I do not even receive preferential treatment on a colleagial basis, the exception being when I visit doctors, who know me, or who worked with me.
Minister Dalli and his parliamentary colleague Dr.Cassar might some day wish to transfer Mater Dei to a joint venture co-administration through St.Philip’s and St.James’, a scenario, which could possibly minimise the number of egocentric complaints, which appear with a notorious regularity in Maltese media.
As an answer to Mr.Micallef’s last letter in the STOM, I have already remarked in the STOM that Ms.Caruana Galizia’s comments may be regarded as licit and appropriate.
Herewith, I do not however suggest in any way that the administration at Mater Dei is faultless. Nor are so called medical “gate keeper” services in Malta to be considered as modern and efficient.
The electorate has been unfortunately misled by all political parties with regard to (free) hospital and health services. Excellence has a price.
Moderator: Not if they’re called “Ganni Borg”.
@Ganni Borg
My goodness, what an informed source – l-orizzont. Now there’s a credible newspaper!
David, it was quoting almost verbatim from the court proceedings. Learn to distinguish the messenger from the message. Not easy to do on this forum I admit.
The moderator said “People cease to call each other chickens beyond the age of 10.”
Was that a jibe at the owner of this very blog?
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/?p=337
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080629/local/policemen-assaulted-spat-at-in-night-of-incidents
See the bigotry in the comments of this article – Makes you proud to be Maltese!!
@Ganni Borg
I stand by what I said – what an informed source!! NOT!!!!
Anyone reading the latest topic? SURCHARGE! going up to dony know how much – well that will keep all the little elves happy to talk about for the next week or so – I get really upset when I remember that people who do not declare all the income including small time business get away with murder – then apply the increas on us middle class customers
@ moderator. Witch: thanks for the lessons in English.
@ Kieli. Every organisation is prone to be infiltrated by corrupt elements…just look at PN….oh or are you still in denial? Lorry Sant is dead now, so giving him a pardon would be more of a symbolic thing. And anyway this would be the same like the legal system works, people normally are not sent to prison for life but for a period of time after which they are rehabilitated.
I think Chris Borg needs to learn some good manners.
Dear Daphne…
The ‘love parade’ period seems to be dissolving altogether!
In yesterday’s ‘It-Torca’, the newspaper which boasts to be ‘independent’ (indpendent my foot) included an article by the (in)famous Lino cassar , (yes the one who won the ma nafx xiex in journalism t’ghajni), and made a stupid attack on your son, calling him names and “it-tifel tas-sahhara”.
is this part of the “hobbu l’xulxin” teachings?
Looks like more as ‘hobbu l’xulxin” as long as they toe our party line! Those who don’t attack them personally! And not only personally , but even insulting their children, and family too! And instigate other people to insult them….
Daqstant ghall-imhabba tant mistqarra mill-mexxej suprem Dottor Joseph!
Isthu jekk tafu!!!!! Imbghad imsieken tghidx kemm jaghjtu ‘foul’ u jxerrdu dmugh tal-kukkudrilli meta tmissilhom xi haga!
Some interesting comments criticizing the government white paper on rent reform. Like a flashback to when Daphne actually used to be a real journalist unlike the PN government propagandist she has become.
@Lino Cert.
Nice one. Let’s indeed get Macdonalds to run the hospoital. that way everyone will get a choice of plaster, plastercast or half cast, with or without a dressing and a side order of stitches. however if you want a more elaborate a la carte menu like, i don’t know, and aperitif of appendicitis, or maybe a hearty bowl of heart attack, they perhaps yous hould trythe restaurant next door.
What are you on Lino? And can i have some please? lol
@ Pawlu
U zgur Pawlu Pawl… ghax biex tkun serju f’dan il-pajjiz trid bilfors tghid kontra l-PN…. inkella mintiex gurnalist serju!
Isa Daphne, iftah ghajnejk u kkonverti bhalma ghamilt jien fi triqti ghal Tarsu! Ara d-dawl fil-kbir mexxej karizamtiku, l-alla l-gdid Dottor Joseph Muscat. Ibda ghid kontra l-PN u tara kif l-attakki personali kontrik u kontra ibnek jieqfu immedjatament! Ikun miraklu iehor ta’ joseph, apparti l-koncepiment immakulat….
Talk is cheap. I wonder how you would have acted if it had been your mother who was asked to ‘wait in queue’ for 4 or 5 days as mine was. Also keeping in mind that she suffers from high blood pressure which could lead to a fatal stroke. I did everything in my power including forking out €4000 + to have her seen to as quickly as possible – an amount of money I consider a drop in the ocean compared with my mother’s health and life. And believe me I would do it again – in an instant. The whole point of my letters in the press wasn’t to get a refund from the Government but to raise awareness of what is happening in our health system. I reiterate once again; I hope none of you have to go through what my mother went through and you can only fully understand if it happens to you or someone close to you. It isn’t as simple as ‘waiting in line’ as Dr. Borg Cardona is suggesting. Waiting in line could possibly have cost my mother agitation and aggravation – something which I tried to avoid at all costs even at the expense I had to fork out and the negative publicity in the press against me. To be frank I don’t give a FxxK about the bad publicity as long as my mother is well. And another thing, I am no mummy’s boy, I just love and respect my mother as any son/daughter should, and I’ll do anything to prolong her life as much as possible.
@chris,
I assure you the McDonalds model works, so don’t knock it.
After I left the St Luke’s Casualty I was put in charge of a big Casualty Department in a UK hospital and I used this model, I invested in a front-desk just like McDonalds, supported by a team of clerks and nurses that immediately triaged the patients, urgent cases went to the left, where they were immediately dealt with by a crack team of Casualty registars, minor cases where sent to the right where there were a team of semi-retired nurses supported by off-duty doctors where they were treated for minor injuries or complaints,
the results were phenomenal and undisputed,
the waiting time of 8 hours was cut to one hour for every case, however minimal or severe, commplaints became almost non-existent, not one single staff left the service and most junior doctors had so much job satisfaction they wouldnt even leave the service even when their siz months were up.
The hospital saved three million euros in costs over one year, and passed back the money to the casualty department so that we were able to use the money to support the department with 24 hour imaging and blood testing, and we were even able to open up access to GPs for 24 hours.
Ridicule the McDonalds model as much as you like, it works, and have proved it, I have now been given the go-ahead to expand this model to a group of five UK hospital Casualty departments, I am looking forward to this challenge and am confident it would succeed, if it works for millions of McDonald customers worldwide it should surely work for hospitals.
@ Corinne Vella. Woooow. Sure calling people elves is so polite. WooooooW. I was thinking of taking the moderator of this blog as my role-model and learn some manners from her. What do you think of that Corinne? Or should I call you elf? Or maybe troll? Nah, gnome sounds nicer. By the way, don’t you ever mention Labour!!! It’s like mentioning genital warts!
@Alexander the not so great
In this blog, the new MLP leader has been called things like that he looks like a “squat frog”, Labour supports are all “fools”, their ideas are “rubbish”, MLP deputy leaders have been mocked and insulted because of facial hair. You know, one should be careful when to initiate a war of insults, as they will come hurtling back to you, one way or another.
Re: the great Mater Dei debate.
I agree that (unfortunately) certain minor operations have to be postponed (sometimes more than once) due to other more urgent operations. But as I think Alfred Mifsud said, courtesy and good manners (from both patients and hospital staff) does not cost time and money.
In an area like the Emergency department, difficult situations in times of worry for the patients could be alleviated if staff were a bit more communicative with those waiting. I know that E&A staff (like most of the other hospital staff) are overworked, but courtesy and ‘being nice’ does not cost much time.
On the other hand, we the patients have to be more educated.
There is no need to bring your whole extended family with you if you scratched your knee.
The A&E is not a picnic area.
There is no need to bug the staff every 5 minutes.
Shouting and swearing will not get you anywhere.
I find the incident where blood samples were lost a bit more serious. I work in an environment where we work under a lot of pressure and mistakes can have an impact on the services we offer. We are trained and expected to be precise in our work. Now my work does not involve life-or-death situations; how much more must hospital staff avoid silly mistakes like this?
Last November, my wife was referred to hospital where she was advised that she needed to effect an endoscopy, and that she will receive an appointment by post soon after. In March (i.e. 5 months after) she received a note asking her to attend OutPatients. She went, thinking that it was her endoscopy appointment, and she was told yet again that she needed an Endoscopy and that she will receive an appointment by post!
Protesting proved futile, so she patiently waited for an appointment by post. At the beginning of June (i.e. 3 months after her 2nd visit, and 7 months after her 1st) she made a private appointment with the professor who was supposed to be taking care of her at Mater Dei, advised him of the situation, and he promptly arranged for her to have an appointment for an Endoscopy 2 weeks after. To be fair on this professor, he refused to take any money for the private appointment my wife made.
Ahn’ahna jew m’ahniex?
Hehe.
Mater Dei…What you want is what you get!
I’m lovin it!
Lorry Sant was suspended. And the suspension was lifted when it became known he was terminally ill. So any references to him now in the context of thre amnesty are totally irrelevent.
@Chris Borg: the moderator is a man. Witches are women. Go back to school.
@Corinne: I think Chris Borg needs to learn that it is far better to keep your mouth shut and be thought stupid than to open it and prove it. Honestly, equating the Soviet-style banishment and rehabilitation of party persons with serving a prison sentence and then being let out of jail. Amazing: he doesn’t even understand the less-than-subtle difference in meaning between rehabilitation of party members in the Soviet sense and the social rehabilitation of ex-convicts.
@Alexander the not so great: Lino Cassar has always been an incredibly cheap, crass and vulgar man, writing for the cheap, crass and vulgar readers of L-orizzont. So what’s new?
As for the relentless insults directed at my youngest son, what can I say except that it’s a particularly fetid mixture of class hatred and envy? He’s clever, good-looking, and as if that’s not enough, he’s also from a privileged background – how unfair is that? There should be a law against it. Ninety years ago, these people would have been ransacking the houses of il-puliti in Valletta, using the excuse of a rise in the price of bread.
@Pawlu – you’re obviously unclear in your mind as to what a ‘real journalist’ is. Do you know that every single member of Super One’s newsroom belongs to the Journalists’ Committee and/or to the Institute of Journalists? A real journalist is anyone who works in journalism: somebody who writes for newspapers or journals (hence the name) or who reports for television or radio. I love the way I am constantly preached to about ‘real journalism’ by people who have never worked for a newspaper in their lives.
Now enough time has passed by to start making deductions about the new season heralded by Joseph Muscat to his socialist followers. He started his long-play by preaching love (eros, agape or what?), which reminded me of Jesus’ words to the hopeful Jewish crowds who waited anxiously to get rid of the Roman rulers in ancient Palestine. One discordant note struck my ears: his party had to be the party of the labourites and all Maltese and Gozitans. By which assumption has he built such silly conclusion? Who tells Joseph Muscat that all Maltese and Gozitans would like to follow him and/or his party? It smells equally the same like te seventies MLP when we repeatedly heard that they (the agressors) wanted to produce a socialist generation.
Joseph has used a lot of buzz words which, unfortunately, are void of ‘practical’ substance. His true sense of leadership still needs to be put to test. Manoeuvering people and exploiting their candid feelings when spurned by a glittering vocabulary in the midst of an irrational crowd often indicates one’s inability to lead in the true meanng of the word leadership.
Smiles count very little in politics, except when your face is shown in newspapers’ pctures or on the media. You have to be careful when you smile. Untimely smiles – and Joseph seems to be all the time smiling – may well be used to harbour the great hurdles: the congregation of the saints, sinners and lost sheep flocking to the Hamrun ‘sancta sanctorum’ means that Joseph has not yet solved the riddles encircling the undescipherable figure of the MLP present general secretary (Jason Muscat), much less changed the mind of those labour MPs, ex MPs and ex MLP ministers who still publicly confess and promulgate their anti-EU feelings. Kisses, hugs, emotional addresses, red flowers and festive moods are just like the flowers we respectfully place on the grave of our beloved ones: the external surroundings of a grave are surely more attractive than the sight one has to face when the grave is opened! Joseph still needs to identify MLP’s graves and to come to terms with their hidden remnants.
As a politician, it is pretty obvious that Joseph is very much at the start of his learning curve. It’s one thing listening to mature politicians in Brussels, and it’s something completely different leading a party whose disasterous long recent past offers more than one simple challenge. Unfortunately Joseph owes a lot to those who helped him to achieve success in the last general election, but those people may well be his political downfall.
The cosmetic touches which Joseph has managed to make so far are so irrelevant to his true mission as leader of a political party and the doctoring which he has to affect, including inevitable amputations of vicious habits among MLP stakeholders that we are still waiting to do (not say) something that really earns him some worthy respect from those whose intelligence is not easly captured by smiles and sentimental prose.
Chris Borg, the correct terminology for the members of this blog is “groupies”. If you want to be more analytical, you could say they are “groupies under the spell of groupthink”.
Philip, please – I don’t know what on earth your mother told you or led you to believe, but if all she had was a fractured wrist, she really was making an over-the-top fuss. Broken wrists don’t even hurt; they ache. You never had one; I did. Elderly mothers are not unknown to be prone to a little attention-seeking behaviour, especially when they have doting sons who fuss around them. When I broke my wrist, I asked my son to drive me to the A & E department, then I told him to leave immediately and go back to doing whatever he had to do at university. I didn’t insist on having someone sit around and fuss over me. I am quite sure I will be exactly the same at 75. I’m not the kind of person who likes seeing my sons in a flap over me and my ‘pain’.
Your mother did not wait in a queue for five days. She was sent home after treatment, wearing a half-cast, and asked to wait until an operating-theatre and a surgeon could be released from more pressing matters.
Nobody ever died of a broken wrist. It is not even painful. And quite frankly, if you considered a broken wrist and being asked to wait for an operation enough of a stressful situation to kill your mother with a stroke, then she must really have led a sheltered and problem-free life. Most people, women in particular, have been through far, far worse by the age of 75 and stand to go through a lot more the longer they live. Some even have to contend with the death and suffering of their children, and even of their grandchildren.
I can’t imagine my own mother making such a God almighty fuss, and she too suffers from hypertension.
Alfred, I am not defending the indefensible, but those who should be defended against the outrageous accusations of people who should know better. The vast majority of people working at the state hospital are not specialists pulling in fabulous sums through their private clinics, but ordinary medics and nurses working in highly stressful conditions for very long hours and relatively little pay. They do a wonderful job, and though it would be nice if they smiled more often, spoke politely and communicated well, it is their medical skills that really count and not their manners. Besides, as a regular user of the state hospital services, it is my experience that if you smile at people and speak to them in a friendly way, they usually accord you the same respect. It’s always a bad idea, and inconsiderate, to speak in a hostile and challenging tone to people operating under great strain.
As an economist, you should know that like must be compared with like. The business model, if you wish to put it that way, for a state hospital is not the same as the business model for a private hospital. The two are completely different animals, despite the presence of the word ‘hospital’ in both names. A private hospital is not a hospital at all, but a very large clinic. The state hospital, on the other hand, is a general hospital in the true meaning of the word, and with a very large and busy A & E department to complicate matters. The A & E department, besides mopping up considerable human and financial resources, also continues to ‘feed’ the general hospital’s case-load on a daily basis with those patients who are not discharged.
As an economist, too, you should no that there is no ‘match’ between the national insurance people pay and the service they get at the hospital. Leaving aside the fact that NI contributions are supposed also to pay for our pensions, let’s think of them for a moment purely in terms of medical insurance. The average household has just one NI contributor, usually the ‘man of the house’ given that most women do not work after the age of 28. A household with two adults and three children will therefore have just one NI contributor. Even if he is paying NI in the sum of EUR47 a week (Lm20), as a self-employed person, that’s still just EUR2444 (Lm1040) a year. Yet off this relatively low sum, we are demanding complete medical treatment, including whatever surgery may crop up, for five persons, and a married person’s pension at the end of it all, followed by a widow’s pension should be pop off before his wife, as usually happens.
You wrote an absolutely excellent piece about the shipyards and the way that millions have been sucked up over the years trying to ‘save’ them. Your skills would be put to good use trying to get people to understand the correlation between what they pay and what they get: they get far, far more at the state hospital than what they pay for.
@Chris Borg: Corinne, a troll and a gnome? That’s a laugh. She’s known for her beauty.
El Karkariz is a master of the pompous, but uliimately meaningless phrase.
What, for God’s sake, are we to understand by gems like “spurned by a glittering vocabulary “, “may well be used to harbour the great hurdles”, ” earns him some worthy respect ” and, the jewel in the crown: “the riddles encircling the undescipherable figure of the MLP present general secretary “.
El Karkariz, try to give more importance to the actual meaning of what you write, rather than what it sounds and looks like. You never know, you might manage to write something that makes sense.
Ms DCG, you have the dubious honour of having been the one who introduced your particuar method of no-holds-barred, hit-‘ em-where-it-hurts most, the-personal-is-the-political kind of writing.
You spare neither physical defects, children, spouses nor parents. Not even dead parents in some cases.
Yet when someone even hints at doing the same to you it suddenly becomes “crass and vulgar” and “a particularly fetid mixture of class hatred and envy”
@ Ganni Borg
Wow.. Prosit Ganni. You impressed me with your comments! Istra, are you one of those few fortunate who attended Univeristy during the Socialist era? Maybe you were one who had a ‘parrinu’ to pay for your term at Uni? Maybe you’re one of the elite who had the chance to attend a junior lyceum during the 80’s?
Lucky you. We were not so fortunate, since we came from a worker’s family! Maybe you were one of the few elite.
And btw, are you now condoning the personal attacks yourself? And even worse by justifying insults against family members? And suggesting instigation against anyone who goes against the Supreme being! ie Dottor Joseph Muscat? Mela daqshekk ‘hobbu l’xulxin’? Jew din tghodd ghal min hu mal-partit biss?
U zgur ux… ahna tas-sekonda klassi… mhux dejjem hekk konna! Intom biss tal-klassi gholja!
Daphne,
I second your opinion about Corinne’s beauty, having met her ‘in the flesh’ so to speak. (Don’t get the wrong idea anyone).
I think Chris Borg needs a thesaurus and a dictionary.
@lino cert
Full marks that man for initiative. I stand up and applaud. but i think you do yourself a disservice by calling it the MacDonalds approach. MacDonalds are efficient because they offer one item and one item only (they disguiise it by tweaking it here and there by adding or removing items)
You were running the equivalent of a coffee shop downstairs and a full blown restaurant upstairs.
And you used your managerial skills to get clients to move to the right service. I think your ace in the sleeve was bringing in the part-timers for the less erious stuff (just liek Macdonalds doesn’t hire a Cordon Bleue to burn, er cook its burgers)
So full marks and all of that for initiave, and maybe the Mater dei people can take a look at your suggetion. But don’t sell yourself short – your ideas are not modelled on MacDonalds, more like a five star cruise liner
@ DCG. I was under the impression that you were the moderator….
Philip, now I’ve worked out who you are. I thought the name rang a bell.
Alexander, your post is as full of unwarranted (and mostly wrong) assumptions as a dog is full of fleas.
It also gives indications of a latent persecution complex – get help.
And to answer you only relevant point, I am totally against family members being dragged into political debate.
But I am even more against double standards, where one person makes a profession out of attacking every aspect of her opponents’ life and then cries foul whenever she is on the receiving end.
If that bothers you – tough!
Daphne,
I doubt if your son would just ‘drop you’ at Mater Dei if you were 75 or 80 years old and leave you there for days. It’s easy to be strong and brave when in your early/mid forties but a totally different kettle of fish when you are elderly and much more prone to panic attacks.
Its true that she didn’t wait in queue for 5 days but she was led to believe that by the medics present. Plus my mother has two sons and only one of them was present there with her.
Regarding the pain and suffering my mother went through – you are 100% right – during the war she had bronchitis and was given up for dead by the doctors of the time. The point is – why does she have to go through more stress than her fair share? What does it cost the staff at Mater Dei to be polite and offer good customer service. If it works in McDonalds – which is probably one of the most depressing jobs around, why can’t it work in other situations too?
However, despite all that has been said and done, I still bare you no grudge.
@Alexander the not so great
Just for amusement I am collecting the insulting phrases being directed against everyone even remotley connected with the MLP by the originator of this blog. We are all “fools”, says she, led by a “poodle”, and so on and so forth. So, yes, I would not blame anyone who retaliates in kind. And please dont whine about not being able to go to Junior Lyceum in the 80s. Or rather, DON`T LIE. If your academic background was not of an adequate level, don´t blame it on the system.
To all posters and readers of this blog: When one reads Mrs. Caruana Galizia word here or in print, one needs to understand her background, her experiences and the therapeutic necessities all these have had on her escalating levels of vitriol.
Once you dig into her past and determine the incidents which have shaped her mindset, one can also determine an understanding of why her two sisters and assorted other acquaintances have to constantly buffer her and support the various arguments the lady raises in her posts.
Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates this and takes her articles at face value and replies back – be it in agreement or otherwise – thus allowing her to feed more on the attention which she craves for.
Help the lady out: Ignore her!
Chris Borg: “people normally are not sent to prison for life but for a period of time after which they are rehabilitated”
That’s not the finest of models for the manner in which a poitical party should conduct its affairs, much less for the way in which a country should be run. As far as I can see, people have been ‘banished’ from the MLP for the sole reason of being a challenge to their former leader. That they are offered an amnesty by the current leader is neither here nor there. That decision still operates on the same principle: obey, or else…
There you are, you see? I mentioned the MLP.
@ Daphne…..Corinne is no troll. She is the prettiest of the lot actually. Sorry Daph, you lose out here!
Religio et Patria—–u are a truly pathetic individual.
Chris Borg, if I were the moderator, I wouldn’t call myself ‘moderator’. I would call myself Daphne. Try using your brain a little.
Albert Farrugia: my academic qualifications (14 O levels on a single certificate, and most of them As and Bs) got me into St Aloysius College. I could give a reverse salute to the Junior Lyceum, that dumping ground for people with six O-levels and others desperate for their 20 points.
Religio et Patria: I love the way you enter my own personal blog and post comments telling people to ignore me. Are you for real? My sisters don’t ‘buffer’ me. We have similar characters because we were brought up the same way: not to give the time of day to people who call themselves Religio et Patria, who don’t have the guts to use their real name, and who cower behind their far-right sentiments (religio et patria indeed) because they have been brainwashed from birth and are unable to form a credible opinion of their own. Instead of dropping in here giving dark hints about things you may know about me – what’s to know? – go and get yourself a sex life. You really sound like you need one. I’m tempted to add: if you can find anyone willing to shag somebody who calls him/herself ‘religio et patria’.
Oh, and Religio et Patria, if you are who I think you are (I won’t spell it out to spare you embarrassment), I would suggest that the best guarantee a 45-year-old man has of losing his virginity is to pay for the service round the corner from A1 Bar in Gzira. Unless you’re saving yourself for the afterlife, that is…what a jerk, really (or maybe that should be a jerk-*** – a little touch of Lino Cassar, there).
Hi Daphne,
So you’ve worked out who I am eh! Malta’s so small that no one’s life is private. I wrote 4 letters in the press prior to the elections criticising AN and their anti-immigration policies and defending the Government. It seems as though their (AN’s) racist attitude is prevalent in the police force as well,going by reports in the press recently. I’m not surprised as I witnessed similar incidents myself when I used to frequent Paceville some years ago and the situation hasn’t improved but deteriorated. Several Black/African friends of mine weren’t even let into certain clubs or bars in Paceville simply because of the colour of their skin or because the bouncers didn’t like the look of them. How’s that for the most Catholic country in the world!
Religio et Patria, why involve Daphne’s sisters.They have a mind and an opinion of their own and every right to express themselves as you and I have. Besides, I think Daphne’s the last person in the world who needs defending. If you don’t like what she writes about then don’t read her articles. Its as simple as that.
Yes, I disagreed with Daphne for writing in the press about my mother’s situation at the hospital but that doesn’t mean I disagree with her about everything else. In fact I agree with (almost) everything she writes about. I’m not going to let my personal feelings cloud my judgement.
The problem with (most) of the press in Malta is that no one has the guts to say what they really feel for fear of political repercusions or just a plain lack of balls. Everyone is busy praising either (a) The Government or (b) The MLP or (c) The Church. The truth becomes obscured and unclear. There are a few journalists here I admire but to far and few between.
@Daphne
“I could give a reverse salute to the Junior Lyceum, that dumping ground for people with six O-levels and others desperate for their 20 points.”
point of order, many of us HAD to go to the New Lyceum, even those like me with good o levels, myself I also got 14 O levels in the same year as yourself, and 8 of them were As., but without the 20 points I still would have had no chance of getting into medicine , my best friend got 3 A levels, all A grade and didnt even get into engineering because he hadnt the 20 points, it was out of necessity that we went to the New Lyceum, and to be fair, it was a first rate college with dedicated teachers, and a really good atmosphere in those days, however I agree that the 20 points systemt was very discriminatory, though not unlike the current Matsec system where exams are grossly unfair, and results erratic, unlike the Oxford exams we used to do which were very fair.
dear Corinne, do you really believe that Pawlu Miscat was a challenge to Alfred Sant?
dear Daphne, it’s junior college not lyceum ;)
Religio et Patria: Thank you for addressing your comment to me, though you chose to speak of me in the third person. Here’s my reply to you:
Help yourself out: get a life! And don’t presume to know things that you do not.
Oh, and Religio et Patria, perhaps you should live up to your name and refrain from passing judgement on others lest you be judged yourself. But you know that already, don’t you? Isn’t that why you chose to hide behind an embarassing name?
@Religio etc
much as I dislike and disagree with most of what Daphne WRITES I can’t see any justification in your base (very base) and personal attack on her.
That she hasn’t named and shamed you is a feather in her cap (now that was hard to admit)
And Religio et Patria: you really should let everyone know who you are. It isn’t fair that many people think you are Phillip Beattie.
Ganni Borg needs to understand that arguments are valid or otherwise due to their correctness, validity and relevance to life. Maybe he is one of those who honestly believes that Joseph Muscat will change local politics. Time will tell. Menawhile, I have a right to express my thoughts in my own way as much as the same right belongs to him. I look forward to hearing him come out with some sensible interpretation of the first few days of the Malta Labour Party under Joseph Muscat. U jekk iridni naqleb ghall-Malti…naf ukoll! Ara ma jahsibx li xi hadd li jikteb bl-Ingliz mhux kapaci jikteb u jithaddet bl-istess Ingliz u/jew b’Malti l-aktar semplici u car. How should one judge your style, such as ‘latent persecution complex’? Are you referring to the Malta Labour Party’s U-TURNS on EU, VAT, Mater Dei, Drydocks, liberalisation of media, etc? Ara dan Ganni jaf jikteb…dak li Virgilju jsejjah ‘lacrimae rerum.’
Chris Borg: What are you on about?
@ Albert Farrugia and Ganni Borg
Yeah guys or women disguised as males! I’m so envious of you two who were so ‘fortunate’ of being of a red colour background! I’m so jealous of you who had a red carpet put in front of you.
I know what the education system provided for us during the so called ‘socialist era! Our government secondary schools were dismantled so that the ‘elite’ students could have modern facilities. Our so called teachers were composed of parents who came in to teach during the teacher’s strike! And how intelligent they were! Reading us Esope fables and teaching us, 13 and 14 year old teens, the 4 and 5 tables. The 6 onwards tables were not for us, the workers artistocracy. We were more suited for Trade schools! The accademical stuff was for the ‘elite, Mr Albert Farrugia and Dr Ganni Borg!
I happened to be from the South and coming from a worker’s neutral family. Yeah, that’s right… I was only raised in a two roomed house with limited basic facilities… I might be a failure in accademics, though I’m proud that what I obtained in life, I managed to obtain through my own efforts. Ha tifhem ir-ruh!!! ;)
Go have a life!
Lino Cert, your facts are wrong there. Several people who were with me at St Aloysius College sixth form went to university, and even to medical school. They got their 20 points in other ways, even though it was a struggle. Going to New Lyceum, or whatever it was called, made it easier to get the 20 points, but it wasn’t the only way to get them.
Chris Borg, it was a lyceum in the 1980s. I know you only have short-term memory, but still….
Corinne Vella Tuesday, 1 July 2138hrs
“Oh, and Religio et Patria, perhaps you should live up to your name and refrain from passing judgement on others lest you be judged yourself. But you know that already, don’t you? Isn’t that why you chose to hide behind an embarassing name?”
Pardon me for asking , but since when is the PN motto of “Religio Et Patria” an EMBARASSING name, always assuming that this motto is STILL valid for today’s PN and its distinguished adherents ?
Sybil: You are pardoned for asking. I agree. “Religio et Patria” is EMBARASSING (as opposed to merely embarassing) when used to simultaneoulsy display one’s values and mask one’s identity. Why not simplify matters and use one’s real name? Then everyone can draw their own conclusions about what one really stands for and what one really knows.
@ El Karkariz…what about PN’s u-turns on hedging of oil prices, social services, neutrality, female suffrage, the validity of fascism and so on?
@ Corinne Vella…I asked if you think that Pawlu Muscat was a challenge for Alfred Sant since you said that the Bord tal-Vigilanza is a tool in the hands of the leader to silence does who seem to be a challenge….
Chris Borg: There’s your answer then. I said it’s a tool. The use of one’s tools is, of course, at one’s own discretion.
I really wish that people who post here would have the balls to do so under their own name. Shame that there are so few in ths country who have no fear or shame to be proud of their name. In the old days they would call them “yellow”. In the 50’s they would simply be called cowards. Now in the new Millenium we just call them usernames or nicks….Times have changed, but the facts remain the same. Lets just call them emasculated posters shall we? Talk about calling a spade an earth-moving hand powered instrument……
“Lino Cert, your facts are wrong there. Going to New Lyceum, or whatever it was called, made it easier to get the 20 points, but it wasn’t the only way to get them”
I am sure you are wrong here, there was no way you could get into medical course without the EXTRA 20 points, even if your O levels and A levels were all As, there were some other ways of getting the 20 points in earlier years, for example if you got a private sponsor, but this was not allowed for entry into Medicine , certainly not in my year anyway
Moderator:
Laughable. Simply laughable. Mrs Caruana Galizia (June 29) wants to teach me English! I wonder what I will hear from her next. Referring to a comment I made in a Times blog, she spotted two typing errors: “blund” instead of “blunt” (which any primary school kid would detect with equal alacrity) and “by” standing instead of “to” as the right preposition following the verb “to behold” in the sense of “being under obligation “ another typing error that can be spotted by any student sitting for the Matsec, the equivalent of which I had successfully sat for years before Mrs Caruana Galilzia was born into this world for our sins (needless to say, by way of punishing, not redeeming, us thereof). If Mrs Caruana Galizia is so finicky about knowing how those typing errors came about in the blog she refers to, the truth of the matter is that after including other phrases which I eventually omitted for brevity’s sake, I failed to realize that “by” came to stand instead of the correct “to”. For Mrs Caruana Galizia to go to town on such obvious “typing” errors in a blog (not in an article, let alone a book or other forms of writing where one is more careful to omit typing errors) rather than on the message in my comment simply goes to show the intellectual insufficiency of this presumptuous commentator on life in Malta.
But of course, the typing errors did not really provoke the wrath of this Columnist, beholden to the grouping who pushed the candidate who did not make it to the PN General Secretary’s post. The obvious reason behind her uncontrollable frustration was that I dared congratulate the successful candidate. You see, this self-appointed inspector of newspaper articles, blogs, anything that appears in print on this Island, will not tolerate any opinions that differ from her own or from those of the grouping to which she is beholden.
I would not have bothered your readers with the opinion I expressed in the said blog but now that your correspondent brought it up, albeit obliquely, also in this paper, I have no qualms to repeat it here too. I confirm that I congratulated Dr Paul Borg Olivier on his election to the post of PN General Secretary because, endowed as he is with gentlemanly conduct and probity, I believe he can usher in a more civilized way of doing politics which discards the savage treatment meted out to political opponents as amply demonstrated in the columns of your correspondent and other writings inspired by the grouping to which Mrs Caruana Galizia is beholden.
I would have stopped there, had your correspondent not elected to bring in my novel-writing as well. This would-be literary critic, in her usual flippant manner, chose to call my novels “turgid”. Apart from the fact that thousands of readers obviously do not share her opinion, (otherwise why would my novels run into third and fourth editions over successive decades?) how would she know whether they are “turgid” (for which, read “difficult to understand”) or not, when she cannot even understand everyday Maltese, let alone the literary kind? Does she infer that I should write in the sloppy neither-here-nor-there pidgin Maltese she has been exposed to during her linguistically defective upbringing? Given the silly attitude she regularly assumes that makes her denigrate any thing she cannot comprehend, I would only suggest she first learn Maltese before presuming to comment on its literary manifestations, and leave the matter at that. Why should I waste my time, or your readers’, trying to explain the intricacies of the Maltese literary jargon simply to avoid having a blockhead persistently air ridiculous opinions on national literature?
On the other hand your readers’ curiosity may have been piqued by your correspondent’s remark that I was an advisor to Dr Alfred Sant. I must put their mind at rest that, having practically no knowledge of economics or business administration, I never presumed to give any advice in those areas commonly associated with the term “advisor”. I only proffered suggestions and recommendations where the national language and related promotional activities were concerned. Only recently Dr Sant, like the gentleman he is, stated in It-Torċa he found out that I was right in recommending that Professor Alexander Borg be invited to organize an important unit at the University, relinquishing his commitments with the University of Jerusalem and other important posts with prestigious universities of the Middle East. Unfortunately Dr Sant did not have the time needed to consider my recommendation which, I insist, would have been highly beneficial to the welfare of the national language. Fortunately there were other recommendations Dr Sant had the time to consider and to implement. For that I am quite grateful. Such satisfying instances outweigh the nuisance and darned nonsense occasionally coming my way from semi-illiterates like Mrs Caruana Galizia.
If on the other hand your correspondent meant to infer that I sought to advise the Prime Minister in fields where I have not a clue, the joke is on her. If, trying to mislead people may be considered as a joke … as, in, say, the case when someone presents oneself as “bilingual” although one actually is not, knowing enough of one of the implied languages only to get along at the supermarket where three quarters of the vocabulary one uses are made up of foreign words anyway!
I am not using the impersonal pronoun “one” simply to emulate the ironic sense of humour skilfully employed by my favourite author Jane Austen. Mrs Caruana Galizia knows pretty well to whom “one” refers. Should she wish to learn more, I will oblige and inform her also of the seriousness of such allegations even when “one”, in one’s typical presumptuousness, may not be fully aware of the legal implications one involves oneself in precisely in an EU connection. If she still cannot take in what I mean she may ask the boss of the grouping to which she is beholden to elucidate. Al buon intenditor …
I see, you do not have the guts to carry the reply I posted you. What was it “Religio et Patria” said about Mrs Caruana Galizia’s therapeutic necessities?
[Moderator – Your comment is now published. There might sometimes be a delay because I am not an insomniac.]
@Frans Sammut,
Your ignorance of economics was amply proved by your trying to keep Malta out of Europe.
Let me guess, you think the partnership nonsense won the referendum right?
@ Lino Cert:
“I am sure you are wrong here, there was no way you could get into medical course without the EXTRA 20 points, even if your O levels and A levels were all As, there were some other ways of getting the 20 points in earlier years, for example if you got a private sponsor, but this was not allowed for entry into Medicine , certainly not in my year anyway”
Here goes: No, it was not impossible to enter University without the twenty points if you got good enough results – even in the MD course. I myself attended the New Lyceum and got those twenty points, but when the points added up, I would have gotten in even without them (hence without a sponsor).
The way people who had attended private sixth forms went about it was this. They got employed by someone after their stint at sixth form: some got employed with the army, and others got a place as student nurses or student lab technicians etc., etc., They then got into the chosen course using the extra points one got given for being a WORKER/ STUDENT WORKER, and for already having a sponsor. In the process they usually got in a year late, but they got in. Why? Because they got the same twenty points New Lyceum students got for being student-workers in the end.
This was allowed for entry into Medicine, and certainly allowed in Daphne’s year, the two years prior to that year, and the year after that.
It is now up to you to calculate where you fit in.
There were also some exceptionally good students from private schools who got into Medicine on the weight of their results alone, and not needing a sponsor.
What I do not agree with is Daphne’s obvious prejudice against the New Lyceum. It was a very good school. The teachers were mostly great, and the students all came from private (at that time Church) schools, bar a few. Most of us opted for the more direct way, rather than the second way round the system, as private sixth form students did, and many of us got in with super grades.
Certainly, there is no reason to look down one’s nose upon ex-New Lyceum students.
In the end, everyone was desperate for those twenty points. Some got them one way, whilst others got them some way else. That’s all.
@daphne, @lino cert
I seem to remember that the 20 points system was announced in the summer of 1982, when I entered St. Aloysius college sixth form, and were set to start functioning in the summer of 1984, when my year would enter university. So those who FINISHED sixth form in 1982 would only have fallen foul of the points if they took an extra couple of years to get their A-levels.
Now I could be wrong, but because it was the first year, I remember a mass exodus was feared in 1982 and we all wondered whether friends who had been accepted at college would turn up on the first day of sixth form. Some did and subsequently vanished, having moved to the New Lyceum, whose scholastic year started a few days later. It was actually a bumper year in terms of intake at St. Aloysius, in part as a reaction on a point of principle to another shot fired against independent education in the MLP’s ongoing crusade against democracy.
There was another small exodus between first and second year, mainly of people who weren’t convinced they had a fighting chance of getting good enough grades to best the 20 points
But many people with excellent grsdes never made it to university. It wasn’t just the points which were a handicap to those attending private schools, it was the infamous interviews!!!! I know of one girl in my year who still didn’t get in with 7 A-levels & Matrics, all A’s and 1’s. And we’re not talking home economics & crochet here, but Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Pure Maths, Applied Maths, Religon and Philosophy. What can I say?
@chris borg
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Since the MLP is the only Maltese party to actually put fascism into practice, I suggest you avoid that one….
You are such a boring man, Frans. It’s unbelievable. And you should have had more sense than to write in and prove my point that you’re a rotten writer. Get over yourself.
Frans Sammut: “Your correspondent” is the person you criticise. What is your therapeutic necessity in this particular case?
And you’re not better than the corner gossip compulsively pestering passers-by with her nonsensical comments. You simply write in English. That does not make you the “professional journalist” you make yourself out to be. Nor does it make you “bilingual” as you would have us believe. Incidentally you chose not to reply to this remark. I wonder why. And by the way, why does your sister feel the need to intrude whenever somebody responds to your (mostly inane)comments? Is this further proof of the therapeutic necessity brought up by another blogger?
@Ms Corinne Vella
Didn’t you realize that what I posted was a copy of a letter sent in to the Malta Independent on Sunday editor. What your sister reproduced in this blog first appeared in the columns of that paper. I simply repeated your sister’s action. She seems she cannot have enough of verbal duels. I simply sought to accommodate her. Maybe that is part of HER therapeutic necessities too. You should be grateful for my acquiescence in your sister’s vitriolic sprees. By the way, I would like to inform you that during the electoral campaign culminating in the general elections I felt no need to have policemen patrolling my residence.
@Frans Sammut
If you want to have a battle of wits then you have to be armed!
By the way, I have never communicated with such a fanatical labourite before so I repeat my previous question – who won the referendum? I have yet to met a labourite with the balls to answer it!
@ Frans Sammut
“You simply write in English That does not make you the professional journalist you make yourself out to be.”
Daphne does not just write “in English”, she writes in
impeccable English. Her articles are a joy to read in
a country where, very sadly, standards of English are
slipping.
And no, before you ask (or call me a groupie), I am
not her sister, cousin or any relative; nor am I one of her
best friends, I’m years older than her. In fact, believe it
or not, there are occasions when I don’t agree with her.
However, even if I never agreed with her and thought her a witch or corner gossip, I would still have to admit that she writes in excellent English.
Oh, move on, fellow! And mind your language, there are ladies around, if you consider the Vella sisters as ladies, of course.
@ Mike C. So what about the President (guess who guess who) who goes to university to tell students that people are becoming evil because they read Rousseau? (it would be great if people really read Rousseau, but but…) And what about the government who wanted to ban the right to strike (back in the ’60s)? And what about the government who in the early ’90s gave the Church’s court (whatever the official name is) superior status over the Civil courts in matters of marriage? And what about the political Party which, during the drafting process of the Constitution of Malta, wanted to put in a clause which said that human rights were not applicable in matters concerning the protection of the Roman Catholic Church? I guess Nats have forgotten articles such as the “Dhalna Madrid” one and the other one claiming that fascism was the basis on which PN was built. Well, it’s a good signs that PN has dumped this kind of rhetoric.
@ Frans Sammut. Prosit tal-hasla li tajt lis-sinjura ;)
@ Cikki. Yes that is why in one of her comments here she wrote “its” when she was supposed to write “it’s”. Maybe Daphne needs to use the dictionary she threw at my head :) (by the way, Daphne, why didn’t you publish that comment?)
Is Corinne Vella the same person who sat next to Daphne when the latter’s son gave us a show on camera?
@ Chris Borg
Writing impeccable English and the odd error in punctuation
have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
@ Cikki. First I would like to assure you I wasn’t addressing you when I said “move on, fellow”. My remark was directed at that juvenile blogger whose mother apparently never told him not to speak unless he is spoken to. Now, to come to your comment. I am not interested in the level of English Mrs Caruana Galizia writes. What I referred to was the fact that she parades herself as a “professional journalist” without bothering to show us her credentials. If I may borrow one of your finer phrases, this is a country, where very sadly professional qualifications are slipping. She may be a regular correspondent to a newspaper writing good English (everybody is supposed to write good English in an English language paper)and, apart from the reputation she has acquired as a pain in people’s backs, her good English does not automatically qualify her as a “professional English”, her input simply qualifies her as a “professional pain in the back”. Besides, I was also referring to her advertised claim to be bilingual, which she is definitely not. Thanks to her lap dogs who butt in when she is cornered she has managed to appear to have given me the slip. But, by golly, she has not. Any time she decides to turn on me I will ask her the question again until she is forced to tell us on what grounds she thought she could hoodwink the reading public, not just local, but foreign to boot, that she is bilingual. When she does find the guts to reply on this point, I will tell you why I brought up the point. Believe you me, it is not just a whimsical comment …
@ MikeC:
You are wrong. The twenty point system was already in place in 1981, when my spouse got into University.
@Frans Sammut
Run, run little man :)
Have you completely lost your marbles, Mister?
@Frans Sammut,
Not at all little man :) Have you?
Come off it. You’re not impressing me. You’re not the pitbull you want us to think you are. You’re just one of the lap dogs of the Axis of Drivel, namely the Vella Sisters who manage and manipulate at will. Tell me, does the elder one keep you in that small kennel next to the three dogs she keeps in her “fair-sized garden in adverse hot-weather conditions” inside her stockade, aka the Caruana Galizia Fortress patrolled by policemen lest someone retaliates when she willfully takes potshots at passers-by?
@Frans Sammut
It’s a simple question I asked you, have you got the courage to answer it?
Tell, me Baron (or is it Marquis?)Buttigieg D’Epiro, do your fellow noblemen know you’re just a lap dog of the Axis of Drivel?
Pray tell me, Your Highness, why is it your comments appear immediately on the blog of the Axis of Drivel whereas mine take ages? Is it perhaps because your manageress/manageresses must go through them (i.e. my comments) lest they somehow dent your illustrious escutcheon! In that case, Your Highness, I crave your forgiveness. A thousand pardons, My Lord, etc, etc.
[Moderator – What are you on about?]
@ Moderator
Now, m’am, pray be patient and let Milord answer. Must you manipulate absolutely all the comments made?
[Moderator – I am not a woman.]
@Frans Sammut
???
Can you answer the question little man? Is it that hard:)
@Frans Sammut
Are you drunk by any chance?
@Frans Sammut
As to your earlier post little man, I was never very fond of pitbull terriers so would not try to pass off as one dear chap, would you?
As to not impressing you, alas, I will have to find another reason for living, *sigh*.
Answer the question!
@ Frans Sammut
Tidher li m’ghadikx ambaxxatur ta! Ghax donnok m’ghandikx x’taghmel!
Irrakuntalna ftit fuq l-avventuri tieghek t’ambaxxatur please.
@Frans Sammut
Ah I see Mr ‘I-will-protect-all-faithful-from-the-horrors-of-the-Da-Vinci-Code ‘ has joined the club.
Welcome sir. I’m another lapdog I’m afraid. Still I’m sure I’ll enjoy baiting an old bear from the horrid Socialist past (even though i know that it was the dogs and not the bears that usually bore the brunt of that horrid sport – i’ll take the risk).
I understand you have got a bit hot under the collar about Ms. Cruella Daphne calling your novels turgid.
Fair point, old man. So can you please explain why you wrote the following:
“Pray tell me, Your Highness, why is it your comments appear immediately on the blog of the Axis of Drivel whereas mine take ages? Is it perhaps because your manageress/manageresses must go through them (i.e. my comments) lest they somehow dent your illustrious escutcheon! In that case, Your Highness, I crave your forgiveness. A thousand pardons, My Lord, etc, etc.”
Is it not a case of being hoist by one’s own petard?
Case rests M’lord.
@Nenu
You’ve no idea what a divertissement this all is on a hot July day!
@ David Buttigieg
There are many reasons to live, chum, but beware the Axis of Drivel, they will give you reasons not to want to live, if you’re not careful! Is that Okay? I just wanted to know whether you were a Buttigieg D’Epiro, that’s all. Now, move on, fellow.
@ Moderator
Sorry, I assumed you would be a woman, knowing that Mrs Caruana Galizia is such a man-hater for reasons best known to her and to some of her intimate friends.
@David Buttigieg – what an insolent pain in the arse you are. You’re not even funny, so stop trying to amuse.
@Daphne, you reply to the most trivial of arguments on this blog when you choose to, yet you haven’t got the gall to answer Frans Sammut’s point: that you are NOT bilingual. In fact, your spoken English cannot be catagorised as perfect English (the lilt gives you away), while your spoken Maltese… well, it’s not really it, is it? So not only are you not bilingual, you are at best semi-lingual.
@Frans – you were quite crytpic at the end of your first comment… what with “Mrs Caruana Galizia knows pretty well to whom “one” refers” and “If she still cannot take in what I mean she may ask the boss of the grouping to which she is beholden to elucidate.” Is this as juicy as it sounds or are you just teasing her with sweet nothings?
While at it, Frans, do tell the insolent brick who you think won the referendum. You can also explain why you have become so EU-friendly. Do you absolutely love the ‘future of Europe’ as framed in the EU Constitution, now called the Lisbon Treaty? Or do you consider that criticising it would not benefit you at all?
@Corinne – nobody likes a smart ass. Perhaps that’s why everyone loves you.
@ Frans Sammut
I was going to reply to you this morning but ran out of time.
I’ve just read your last entries and have decided not to
bother.
Now those are what I call drivel!! And you use the word
to describe “the Vella sisters”!!
Some entries on this website leave me speechless and
yours are definitely among them.
@ everyone else who doesn’t write drivel, Kenneth
Zammit Tabona’s article in the Times today is
excellent (and also in impeccable English).
Is the moderator being manipulated too? Why do certain comments take so much longer to appear on the screen? Is this Mrs Caruana Galizia’s idea of running a Commentary? What is she afraid of? Is she, at her age, still such a spoilt child as to accept only favourable comments, casting aside any adverse opinion? Is she afraid of having to explain how she got it into her mind to pose as a “professional journalist” when she is just a regular correspondent? Is she too rankled over comments regarding the guarded stockade behind the walls of which she is currently residing? Is she too embarrassed to admit that she brought this situation on herself through her mindless attacks on so many Maltese citizens starting from H.G. the Archbishop and encompassing a wide range of people from all walks of life? Shame on the Axis of Drivel!
[Moderator – Frans, I’ve got a life beyond my job, so I’m not here all the time. Instead of hanging around waiting for me, why don’t you take your wife out to eat?]
Five hours later and no still no sign of my replies to the other bloggers. Let this be an eye-opener to innocent bystanders. All the purportedly liberal claims lodged by Mrs Caruana Galizia are all fake. The woman needs to dominate and cannot take any nay-saying. All her supposedly modern (or post-modern) attitudes are just that … hogwash.
[Moderator – Frans, relax. I just decided to stay out a little bit longer, that’s all.]
@ Frans Sammut. Ejja rrispondieh lil David Sur Frans ! Mela Minghajrhom Jew?
How come it takes you ages to reproduce my post? Does it take you so long to consult on what strategy to adopt? Well, today, I won’t be home. But tomorrow Sunday I will be able to answer whatever you might use as what you think is the adequate ammo. I can promise you and your readers this: I haven’t even started, man.
[Moderator – Yes, Frans, your posts are so earth-shattering that they threaten to shift the paradigm of life as we know it. The two-person cabal of Running Commentary have bought a baize-covered desk that we can sit around to do our plotting and scheming (biex inkunu bhal tal-films). We pull strings and hire guns to assassinate officials who don’t cooperate, all so that the posts of Frans Sammut will be kept hidden from the world. The Umbrella Murder? That was me. I was left with no choice after Georgi Markov threatened to take the entire catalogue of Sensiela Kotba Socjalisti to the office of the British prime minister. If I hadn’t done what I did, the world would not be the place that it is today.]
@chris borg
If we’re going to start quoting we can remember statements such as “I don’t give a damn about the constitution”, “we will use national broadcasting to bring about a socialist generation” and “democracy can be suspended in an economic crisis” and we won’t have to go back seventy or eighty years and quote out of context, with hindsight, and in a different political reality.
On the other hand, actions speak louder than words, and I note that, principally because the evidence is against you, you cannot challenge the statement the the only Maltese party to actually put fascism into practice was the MLP.
@Moggy
I’m not convinced. Whether or not to go to the Junior Lyceum or continue at St. Aloysius was the mega dilemma of the summer of 82……. Boq! ma’ nafx….
Anyone got firm date?
@Frans Sammut,
I assure you that I am not David Buttigieg D’Epiro, not that it matters who you think I am but for the record I am not.
I am who I say I am and quite proud of it.
I repeat the question I have been asking you that it seems you are too much of a coward to answer, hence little man, “WHO DO YOU SAY WON THE REFERENDUM”
P.S. My replies take equally long to appear, depending on what time I write them, give the moderator a break!
@Kev,
I’m a brick? Why thank you so much:) But why the complement?
As to pains in your rear end, perhaps you left something in there – don’t blame me, wouldn’t touch it with a shovel!
@ Moderator
I suppose you’ll be overjoyed to know I’m back again. I’m refreshed and prepared to reply to your questions, whatever they may be, hoping that will keep some of your chums happy for the weekend. So, here goes … I am ready to answer any query forwarded by your correspondents … on condition they answer this one question: do they know how much it costs the taxpayer to keep police patrols guarding the Caruana Galizia residence at Bidnija? I’m all ears.
[Moderator – Not much, because the police were only there while a bomb threat was investigated.]
@ Moderator
Oh, and another thing before you come back to life … Don’t you think you should control your bloggers and the language they use? In civilized countries they advise people that what they are about to watch carries explicit sexual material. Such warnings are addressed to minors of course, but are you certain no minors read these comments? I seriously warn you that if I learn of any case of minors reading pornographic messages in these blogs as the one directed at your correspondent Kev, I will report your so-called Commentary to the police, those who are not guarding the Caruana Galizia residence, that is.
@ Frans Sammut: “…By the way, I would like to inform you that during the electoral campaign culminating in the general elections I felt no need to have policemen patrolling my residence.” That is quite obviously because no one really gives a shit about what you say or do.
Just look at your ongoing persistent comments on this blog; going in all directions, clutching onto even the tiniest of straws as an excuse to shove in a few extra words on a site where there is a good chance that they should be read…unlike the many thousands that make up your unreadable books.
Your very evident purpose to all this is to bask – even if albeit for a little while- in the bright,shining, light of the undeniably high intelligence of “the Vella Sisters”.
Oh dear Frans you’ve just joined this bunch of groupies and you’re already getting paranoid.
You didn’t seem to get too paranoid in the good ol’ days when it was a nation that was gagged. When newspaper buildings were burnt down and comedians were ‘asked’ to put on free shows at the drydocks because they dared to pass funny comments about good ol’ Dom. Or ice cream kiosks had their licence removed for daring to show an ‘illegal’ TV station (ice cream kiosks – a threat to the nation?!) Or even when, certain foreign newspapers such as The London Sunday Times were denied entry because they had a colonialist attitude and our PM wanted to show the Brits what he was made of. Foreigners out was the cry then. (Shades of Zimbnabwe, anyone?)
All I can say to Frans, in the words of Michael Winner, is: take it easy Frans, its only a blog, read by a few groupies, whose mind you won’t change anyway. Let them play while you advise the new boy in town about Malta’s new cultural revolution. :)
@Frans Sammut
how could you question Daphne’s journalistic abilities?
she is without doubt Malta’s foremost journalist,
in fact i would consider Dapne the ONLY maltese journalist who dares tackle topics that most of our so-called professional journalists fear,
such as police brutality, hunting, doctor’s overcharging, maltreatment of illegal immigrants etc .
I am certain that history will judge Dapne as Malta’s foremost journalist, her choice of the english language (which is my opinion excellant) is irrelevant, in my opinion what marks her top of the game is her courage, her integrity and the depth of her research into the topics she writes about.
Daphne is Malta’s Veronica Guerin, and I hope the police is providing her the protection she deserves, in the meantime the rest of us cowards hide under the cover of anonymous posts.
@Frans Sammut
Are you so scared of the question?
@David Buttigieg (never D’Epiro) – ‘brick’ replaces the variant with a ‘p’, given that, as Frans pointed out, there are ladies in the house. Besides, I now see that the police might be called in any time, so we might as well watch our language.
@ the whole tribe:
Pity the Lady of the House has gone AWOL again :), leaving her son (?) the moderator in charge, who in turn prefers the free summer life to that of a slave. I was looking forward to a shoot-out between Cruella Guerin and her nemisis Turgidio Garcia Lorca. Cruella, having fired the first shots unprovoked, has so far made a vain attempt at ditching the recoil. Turgidio stands victorious.
[Moderator – I am not Daphne’s son. This isn’t the 18th century so you don’t need to worry about offending the ladies.]
@ Frans Sammut :”do they know how much it costs the taxpayer to keep police patrols guarding the Caruana Galizia residence at Bidnija ?”
What price are we ready to pay for freedom of expression? If you were threatened would you ask the police commissioner not to send you any more patrols because they cost a lot ?
Christian Democrats value such things while Socialists work out the costs! Some people never change.
L-ghodwa t-tajba.
@ Moderator
Since you did not answer my query, I have some others: why do most your “groupies” hide behind a pseudonym? What are they afraid of? And another: why do you elude my question about the crass language perilously verging on the pornographic characterizing your blog? Did you check on my advice regarding possible police action in this regard? When you answer MY question in a civilized manner, I will answer yours. And, by the way, why is Mrs Caruana Galizia so scared that she has to apply (and get) police protection turning her residence into a stockade reminescent of the Wild West frontier? There you are, the ball is in your court. Serve!
[Moderator – Frans, you’re turning into Mary Whitehouse. I try my best to weed out crass language. If you see any, please be specific and point it out.
The police protected the house because it was their duty, not because anyone applied for protection. They couldn’t let it be firebombed for a third time, but your attitude is making me think that you’d have preferred it if they did.]
The ball is still in your court, mates. You must decide to answer before it’s time for you to take part in next Saturday’s parade in Paceville.
@Republic man (some pseudonym!)
Mrs Caruana Galizia’s integrity! Are you kidding me? Where did she exhibit this characteristic, when she went to town on Dr Sant’s unfortunate illness? When she turned on his daughter like a veritable she-wolf? Or when she declared she would like to slap the new MLP leader in the face, a phrase she could only reproduced in this blog since the exasperated editor of the paper where she regularly spews her venom thought it wiser to excise such a crass, and barbaric (I once dubbed her “Daphen the barbarian” in the same paper, when you were still a kid) fashion? Integrity? Oh, my gold!
[Moderator – Frans, you’re hysterical. Maybe you should take another two day break.]
@Kev
Well, for your information ‘brick’ is actually a compliment :) I personally have no hesitation in calling you a PRICK, I trust the Ladies will get over their scandalous reaction.
@Frans Sammut
You are such a coward!
Frans….int veru bniedem miskin. Imma la trid iktar . Isma, qas hadd ma jaqra il-kotba superintelletwali tieghek. Imnebbhin kemm huma imnebbhin min hafna idejat strambi psewdo – socjalisti li ghandek, nassigurak li mintix ir-risposta maltija ghal John Grisham jew Shakespeare. Ghalhekk tantx tiftahar bl-intelletwalita tieghek. Mintix. U qed turi hawn kemm mintix ghax qeghdin jitnejjku bik kollha. Imma ibqa ikted hawn ta’ …….ha nidhku!
@ Kev
Control your emotions. These lapdogs have been well trained by the Lady of the Bidnija Fortress to butt in to shield her from your shafts. Let them wallow in their crassness and utter ineptitude. They are a bunch of frustrated, hysterical … lapdogs so well looked after by frustrated housewives.
@ Moderator
Learn one thing, buster. There is a world of difference between freedom of expression and attacking anybody who comes your way or even try to avoid you. If you asked me, I would tell you I disagree with bomb threats and arson on principle. But that wouldn’t justify Mrs Caruana Galizia’s wild attacks on anyone who wouldn’t agree with her on so many subjects under the sun. Besides, she ought to know better than encourage a bunch of spoilt brats to go out and utter obscene language in public.
[Moderator – It would have to be a Labour supporter to say ‘I disagree with bomb threats and arson on principle’, because for everyone else it’s a given. Anyway, what are you trying to say – that you disagree with bomb threats except when the victim ‘deserves it’? Who are the spoilt brats?]
@Moderator
I asked you a question in your other blog. I will repeat it here where you seem to have gathered your groupies: “You’re still avoiding the question, boy. I will spell it out again, maybe it will get through: Are you calling me a “Labour thug” who would bomb or set fire to Mrs Caruana Galizia’s residence? Answer if you’re half the man you think you are.” Go on, boy, out with it.
[Moderator – I haven’t got any groupies because this isn’t the sixties and I’m not in a band. It’s you who is giving the impression that you’re a Labour thug, not me.]
@Frans Sammut
I think you are confusing me with the moderator, I AM the one asking you a question that you have been running from with your tail well and truly between your legs, but I ask yet again in the hopes that the yellow stripe down your back fades enough for you to answer
“WHO DO YOU SAY WON THE REFERENDUM?”
@ Moderator
Could you kindly pass on what Professor Serracino Inglott wrote on the EU in today’s Sunday Times to your lapdog. It will save me the need to explain such a complex subject to him:
“I could not agree more with Roderick Pace (The Sunday Times, June 29) about the desirability of the European Union playing a stronger role in world affairs, and that is surely hardly surprising since I am the co-founder of the institution where Prof. Pace teaches. But I am not convinced at all that the Lisbon Treaty (any more than the Constitution in the drafting of which I participated) provides the needed remedy for the EU’s weakness.
The convention was called not to draft a Constitution, which we were bulldozed into doing by the Presidium, but in part to propose some institutional adjustments to cater for enlargement, and mainly to address the problem that is, in fact, the real cause of weakness of the EU – the yawning gap between the peoples of Europe and its institutional leaders, most especially the European Parliament.
This problem will be very greatly aggravated if the leaders of the European institutions repeat with regard to the Irish popular vote the same mistake that was committed with regard to the negative French and Dutch popular votes. The institutional leaders tried to foist on the peoples of Europe the same legal content that had been rejected in referendums.
Hardly anything could worsen the weakness of the European Union in world affairs, i.e. the gap between the people and their representatives, more than disguising the real significance of the Irish Vote by some similar merely cosmetic device as calling substantially the same document a treaty instead of a constitution.
I was relieved, however, to note that Prof. Pace did not commit the gross error of other Maltese who argued that because of the smallness of the Irish population in relation to the magnitude of the union’s population, the Irish negative vote should not be allowed to block the will of the majority.
This argument amounts to a flat denial of the principle of the equality of member states within the union, at least in some respects, such as Constitutional matters.
This principle constitutes a hallmark of the Union. If it were to be disregarded I, for one, and I believe most of the citizens of the small states of Europe too, would not wish to belong to the EU.
‘Network Europe’ is, I believe, the surest means by which the European peoples and institutions can be brought together at all levels. If that belief is just ‘wishful thinking’, then I feel that the future is, alas, on the side of the Eurosceptics.”
Now can we come back on the subject, you, Moderator, are evading: have you gathered enough courage to answer me on the question I having been asking you and you have been avoiding?
[Moderator – Frans, you’re boring me. Please move along.]
@ Moderator, sarcasm is sooooo lost on you. But I get the feeling you are not the same mod – hell knows.
@ David Butt’gg (never D’Epiro) – ‘brick’ suits you better, and if you think it’s a compliment, that’ll be fine.
@ Frans – strange how the Lady of the House is avoiding a showdown. But I get the pattern. She usually goes after the easy ones, then plays ‘not there’ with people like you.
@Frans Sammut. “Control your emotions.” So FS said to Kev. Well, seems like old FS’s true emotions are starting to show through –
“You must decide to answer before it’s time for you to take part in next Saturday’s parade in Paceville.” Or, as expressed in the vernacular “Irrsipondu qabel nhar is-Sibt, ja qabda pufta.’ Or maybe I got it wrong, and when all is said and done FS probably has nothing against Gays and Lesbians “in principle”.
“They are a bunch of frustrated, hysterical … lapdogs so well looked after by frustrated housewives.” Now, would that be another reference to the ‘qabda pufta’ putting posts on this blog? or perhaps a Freudan slip betraying a concealed desire on the part of FS to be well looked after by a ‘frustrated housewife?
@Frans Sammut
you just don’t get it do you, it is Daphne’s RIGHT to express her opinion, however much people like yourself try to intimidate journalists like her, such journalists are unfortunately very thin on the ground in Malta, we should treasure them and protect them because our survival as a democracy depends on such journalists.
Having integrity does not mean she should avoid topics that are controversial, it just means she sticks to her guns, despite possible intimidation, bribery or appeals from people who stand to lose out from her articles.
@Frans Sammut,
You have gall besides cowardice. You accuse the moderator of evading a question of yours YET you have been avoiding mine running and hiding like the coward you are proving to be so admirably. I will ask you yet again little man, little little man :- “WHO DO YOU SAY WON THE REFERENDUM – MEMBERSHIP OR PARTNERSHIP”?
Grow a pair and answer!
@Kev,
If you are ignorant that’s your problem but the expression “You’re a brick” is a compliment in the English language! However I’m not surprisd you are too much of a twit to know that!
@ David Buttigieg … I never knew that you are a linguistic expert!Do you have to resort to such crude compliments to prove a point? remember that people living in glasshouse shouldn’r run around naked.
BUTTIGIEG reinds me of a great Gozitan Politician, who served his country at all levels. Certainly you have relations in Gozo. All who carries that family name have their roots in this wonderful place called GOZO. this should make you always very proud, mate.
@Peter Muscat,
“I never knew that you are a linguistic expert!”
My dear fellow, you don’t know anything about me at all!!
@Petr Muscat & Kev
“brick of a man — A good, solid, substantial person that you can rely upon. The expression is said to have originated with King Lycurgus of Sparta, who was questioned about the absence of defensive walls around his city. ‘There are Sparta’s walls,’ he replied, pointing at his soldiers, ‘and every man is a brick.'” From the “Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins” by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).
@Peter Muscat & Kev
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brick Point 4
@Frans Sammut – thanks for posting the letter from Fr Serracino Inglott. It’s good that he sees the light, although I would have appreciated his efforts more had he not hoodwinked us at the time he was a delegate at the Convention.
Since then, Gonzi ratified the EU Constitution after it was rejected by the French and the Dutch (we ratified a dead constitution), then he went on to ratify the Lisbon treaty just one month after it was signed in Lisbon and three months before it was written in a consolidated format.
Meanwhile Malta’s Polly-Annas lament the loss of a sixth seat (when in fact it will not be so), not realizing that the Lisbon treaty establishes a new EU that is able to consolidate into a totalitarian supranational state without the people’s consent. And the idiots also state that it is not fair that Ireland halts EU ‘progress’, not realising that ignoring the principle of unanimity would translate into the biggest totalitarian takeover in Europe’s history.
To add to the above, I had stopped reading the Times sister papers ages ago, but I think it’s time to move on and rehabiliate them.
@Frans Sammut
Still waiting little man, still waiting!
I don’t want to intrude into any dispute between Mr Buttigieg and Mr Sammut, but the question of “who won the referendum” is an interesting one, and not at all clear. Maybe I can illustrate with an analogy.
Let us suppose that Mr X owns his own house and is living quietly there, minding his own business. One fine day Mr Y, his next-door neighbour, writes to him and proposes that, as from the following month, they should make their houses common property, knock down the dividing walls and all live together in the new single unit.
Now suppose that Mr X decides to ignore the letter, or forgets to answer, or gives an unclear answer or even dies before the end of the month – does that give Mr Y any right to go on with his plans?
Obviously not – only a clear, express and unequivocal YES from Mr X would do that.
The referendum result has to be looked at in the same way. The changes it was proposing were so far-reaching, fundamental and irreversible that a simple majority of valid votes was not even close to being sufficient. At THE VERY LEAST it required a majority of those entitled to vote.
Thus, all votes which were not a clear YES (abstentions, invalid ballots, spoilt ballots and – yes- even the much maligned “dead”) HAD to be counted as a NO.
@David Buttigieg …. I just pity you. Maybe if I know you personally I’ll understand better your pitful and disgraceful behaviour.
Maybe you are a good actor but certainly playing ” I know better” is very puerile.Try to adjust yourself and fit yourself at the right prospectives. It might help your poor ego.
Ganni Borg is right in defining a referendum.
May I add that who ever ‘creates the wording of any referndum’ does it in a way to maniplute a response he/she looks for.
@ David Buttigieg .. Is the above too difficult for you to digest or understand?
@Ganni Borg.
You got it all wrong. The flaw in your argument is that in your example, the houses are individually owned, whereas Malta is co-owned by its citizens and is governed by the principles of democracy where decisions are taken on the basis of majority.
The vast majority of persons eligible to vote actively participated in the referendum, so confirming the legitimacy and validity of the poll.
The majority of the people who voted clearly opted in favour of Malta’s accession to the EU. So, YES, it was the YES vote that won. Absentions indicate indifference, and abstainers are simply stating that they are ready to accept whatever outcome results. Invalid and spoilt ballot papers ditto.
By failing to cast his vote in a referendum that was approved and validated by a clear majority of the electorate, Alfred Sant put himself firmly in the non-commital group and so was never in a position to speak o.b.o. the NO sector.
Had AS voted NO his position would have been different as being part of the NO group and he would have had a moral base to speak o.b.o.the NO sector – that is, as Ganni Borg and Frans Sammut well know – but do not publicly admit – the group that LOST the referendum.
@ Moderator
I gave you enough opportunities to pull your act together. I’ll see you in court since that is what you seem to want.
@ Moderator
I would like to thank both Ganni Borg and Peter Muscat for getting that blogger off my back. I usually try to avoid such agents provocateurs particularly in cases like the current one where I am about to sue you, Moderator, for slander. Got the message now or is it still too complex to understand?
[Moderator – Don’t be ridiculous.]
@ Moderator
Why did you not reproduce this mail on this thread too for the information of all other bloggers? It has no bearing on my decision about which I have formally informed you but it can help the other bloggers to realize what they are getting involved in. Local legal people call it an “avviso ai naviganti”. Where the other bloggers are concerned of course. In your case you can “navigate” in any which way you like. I have nothing further to add. I’ll see you in court.
Re: your limp excuse that I gave you the impression you arbitrarily want to detect in my legitimate response to the endless abusive language coming from Mrs Caruana Galizia, I am still waiting for an answer to my original question.
To recap: Mrs Caruana Galizia has been for donkey’s years attacking a vast assortment of people, some being public figures in which case she easily invokes the usual “fair comment” pretext, others ordinary people who cannot even answer for themselves. Just a few examples to refresh your memory:
She called Dr Mifsud Bonnici and Dr Sant “sociopaths”,
She expressed the wish (in this blog, not in the newspaper where she regularly writes because the editor wisely excised (his words) the abusive wording) “to slap the new MLP leader’s face”! (incredible but true),
Dr Paul Lia “sour faced” – as if looks had anything to do with legal proficiency,
Minister Tonio Borg, all sorts of names conjured up through innuendo and other forms of derision,
Mr Richard Matrenza, “a piece of work” (sic),
the more diligent among her former St Dorothy classmates all kinds of vituperative epithets,
The list goes on and on. Then, out of the blue she viciously turned on the entire readership of the daily newspaper l-orizzont, calling them “ cheap, crass and vulgar”.
Would anyone be surprised if she received the threats she allegedly received? That is what I implied. Now I ask you, how could that be construed as an endorsement on my part of any imaginable kind of the “bomb threats” she allegedly received? But that is not my crucial question, which I will, once again and for the umpteenth time, spell out for you in the most comprehensible fashion:
Are you calling me a “Labour thug” who would bomb or set fire to Mrs Caruana Galizia’s residence?
I am waiting for an answer and warn you not to quibble or waste my time any further. If you choose to equivocate I will drag you before a court of law for slander and you will face the consequences of your uncalled for and malicious behaviour.
I’m waiting.
Oh Dear Poor Peter and Ganni are doing there damnest to square a circle.
In reply to Ganni’s analogy, the answer is simply, if Mr Y is so uninterested that he cannot be bothered to stake a claim to the contrary, then the law is unequivocal: No answer is a ‘yes.’ Let me give you another analogy to illustrate this point. Person x is about to stab person y. Person Z is an onlooker and does nothing to stop the event happening. Is it unreasonable therefore to assume that Z approved of the action, as he made no attempt to either stop it or alert someone in authority to stop it.
So it is not also reasonable that if you refuse to answer a question than you agree with the result of that question.
Back to the drawing board chaps.
PS Peter didn’t you say you were retiring from this blog? Its only been a couple of days and your innuendo-heavy contributions with their ‘oh I’m so wise’ overtones are already irksome. i had got so used to you not being here. More’s the pity :)
@Ganni Borg,
Your analogy is incorrect to put it mildly.
But let’s take your two houses again. If Mr X owns his house nothing could make him join his neighbour’s house against his will but the electorate is not made of 2 people but of hundreds of thousands. So if 250000 people owned Mr X’s house and the majority agreed to joining Mr Y’s house then the house would be joined no matter what. If dear Mr X spoiled his vote purposely then tough for him, he gave up his say to the majority. If he forgot then it’s the same thing. If he is dead he definitely doesn’t have a say.
THAT is the way one looks at a referendum dear Ganni, in other words democratically!
@Peter Muscat,
Your opinion of me doesn’t concern me at all simple as you are.
I would certainly enjoy continuing this ‘battle of wits’ with you but I can see you’re unarmed :)
@Frans Sammut,
I take it you ran away crying! Little man indeed! It was such a nasty question wasn’t it Fransy wansy Boo hoo hoo!!!
Dear Frans Sammut: you can also add a comment from this thread – the one where she refers to the Junior Lyceum as “that dumping ground for people with six O-levels and others desperate for their 20 points.” At least they didn’t come over in rickety boats and had a very dark skin. But that would have been racism. And once this guy came running up to me, addressed me as “Dott” and very excitedly started blurting out something when he suddenly stopped and apologized – he had mistaken me for Dr. Paul Lia. So I suppose that qualifies me as being “sour faced.” Not to worry; I’ve been mistaken for Salman Rushdie a couple of times and survived. But let’s not get carried away. This is a political (in the widest sense of the word) blog where one is free to give as good as one gets or else one can simply ignore things and enjoy life. And the stuff isn’t exactly the sort that will attract the attentions of a 7-year old trawling the internet. So for Heaven’s sake, stop this “I’ll see you in court” nonsense. Leave that one for the teatrin.
Mr Buttigieg et al, principles do not change with numbers – one or 250,000, it’s all the same.
At the risk of repeating myself, when the changes proposed were so far-reaching, fundamental and irreversable, a simple small majority of valid votes was not even nearly enough.
And be carfeul how you answer – cos these are the very same argumements used by the PN in other circumstances when it suited them.
@ Moderator
I am taking you to court for many reasons, mainly, however, becuase that is a serious place where people have to, indeed are made to, stick to the subject, and overcome the temptation to allow idiotic attempts at derailing an assembly, real or virtual, from the subject at hand. By way of a post scriptum, I will remind anyone who happens to br browsing here that the subject I touched – and the reason why I entered what is now appearing to be a virtual loony bin where words and statements are misinterpreted at will if not according to a hidden agenda – was that Mrs Caruana Galizia mentioned me in the media without giving me the full opportunity to reply also in this blog where she chose to reproduce her diatribe. Thanks to the erratic ways adopted by the Moderator, the “discussion” turned into a “mad” debate. Some examples: one blogger wanted to ask me about the referendum, a subject that was completely outside the scope of my input, another arbitrarily misinterpreted my words when I was referring to Dr Andrew Borg Cardona’s reminder of an outdoor activity to be held in Paceville by way of drawing the Moderator’s attention to answer me before time comes for his group or whatever it is to heed Dr Borg Cardona’s advice, in the same way that we say “I hope we finish this business before Christmas”. You, Moderator, and some of your bloggers were putting words in my mouth which I am not in the habit of using, and intentions in my mind which I never nourish. To sum up, I will see you in court because you need to be reined in and leave people in peace. Did you understand me, now? If you still haven’t, I hope you will understand at the law courts. I’m getting a good lawyer to plead my case and may the best man (or woman) win.
[Moderator – Frans, your lawyer will probably tell you that debate is not a crime.]
@Frans Sammut,
Oh, still here? You have an easy way of getting me off your back dear little man, just answer a simple question, with a simple answer, here it is YET AGAIN,
“WHO DO YOU SAY WON THE REFERENDUM? MEMBERSHIP OR PARTNERSHIP?”
You had plenty of time to check with your lord and master as to what opinion you should have:) Why are you so scared to answer it? Well, I do know why of course:)
Come on man, grow a spine and form your own opinion!
@Ganni Borg,
In that case (1 person) and using your analogy Mr X said Yes!
@ Moderator
Let the court decide that.
[Moderator – Frans, don’t be ridiculous. Debate is not a crime.]
@ Moderator
I see. This is typical of Mrs Caruana Galizia’s attitude towards the law courts. We’ll see, we’ll see.
[Moderator – Frans, if you need a court to tell you that debate is not a crime, then you make me wonder what you’ve got in between your ears. Honestly, you’re Jason Micallef with a publishing deal.]
No, Mr Buttigieg, of the component parts of Mr X, some said no, and some declined to answer (as is their right). Less than half said yes.
And PLEASE don’t make the mistake of comparing a referendum with an election.
@Ganni Borg
By absaining they voted in fvour of the majority, whatever that majority is, in this case YES:) By abstaining you allow others to take the decision for you and yes, that IS your right!
@ Moderator
The law courts will tell us what you have between yours.
[Moderator – That’s easy: chips and wires. I’m actually a machine, an experiment in artificial intelligence. Beep beep.]
@ Moderator
No problem there. I have no quarrel with machines. I want to drag Mrs Caruana Galizia before a court of law. We’ll see how she answers on your behalf.
[Moderator – On what charge, exactly?]
@Frans Sammut,
Any chance at all you are going to answer? Haven’t you run long enough?
@Moderator
Probably having a brain and an opinion:)
@ Moderator
Go back a few comments and you’ll see the charge. I spelt it to you several times. I don’t want to bore your readers. And I’m thinking of leaving this blog since I’ll be seeing you at court.
[Moderator – Baby, please don’t go!]
@ Moderator
So now you’re crooning too, dolly? It’s too late feigning madness. I’ll see Mrs Caruana Galizia in court and you can play the fool in your playpen to your heart’s content.
[Moderator – That’s right, I’m going to plead insanity.]
I always said that giving names and hurling abusive compliments in a forum should never be accepted.
@ David Buttigieg .. I totally agree with you that there can never be a ‘battle of wits between us’ since I will surely be accused of psycholgical murder before we even start.
It is evident that your trip to Jordan didn’t help you in any way or manner.Hope you do understand!
@FRANS ‘little man’ SAMMUT
Why are you so scared of having your own opinion, to scared to answer a simple question? At least answer that!
@ Frans Sammut .. This forum I once called a ‘lion’s pit’.
Freedom of expression here applies ONLY to the ‘chosen few’.
To make matters worse these ‘chosen few’ wrongly believe that it is within their right to call others names and twist facts and events.
These chosen few not only will never accept a different opinion from theirs but furthermore twist all to deliver loads of misinformation.Their negative mission is a mirror of their poor environement and very wicked intentions.
@Peter Muscat
Don’t worry :) You would be exonarated due to mental incapacitation!
Actually my trip to Jordan prved to be a valuable source of revenue thank you very much!
Please gentlemen behave yourselves and do not take eachother too seriously.
@ Peter Muscat
You’re very right my friend. I noticed this “tal-pepe`” attitude over 50 years ago. When I attended St Aloysius College I observed the type rather closely. First they tried to be smart then when someone got sick of them and gave them a broken nose they would run to Fr Camilleri (Austin Gatt’s uncle, bless his soul) and ssk for protection. Same thing here. First they assume they can call people names, say whatever comes to their little minds, then, if people ignore them they boo them, but if people turn on them and kick them in the teeth, they cry out,”Mummy, how vulgar they are, these thugs, but.” Same old story. Fifty years ago and today, not an iota of progress. Then they were just twits, today they are intellectual midgets. Isn’t that so, mummy?
@ Moderator
What you plead is YOUR business. What Mrs Caruana Galizia pleads is what I am interested in.
[Moderator – To what charge, anyway?]
@Frans ‘Little man’ Sammut,
You are scared to have your own opinion and you think you will grow a spine soon enough to face DCG?
@Frans Sammut,
Look who’s talking, you have been running from me non-stop. How do you manage with that enormous chip on your shoulder?
@ Moderator
Do you understand English, or don’t you?
[Moderator – I prefer binary.]
@ Moderator
And tell that obsessed blogger to get out of the way. Can’t he see Mrs Caruana Galizia is hiding behind him? Well, n second thoughts, you may not bother to make him budge. I’ll be oseeing her, and possibly you, if she finally reveals your identity (is it Batman or the Joker?) in court. Cheers for now, mates, and … Mr Schembri, don’t let this worry you too much. If we can take this summer’s heat, we can take the barbaric invasion as well.
[Moderator – What barbaric invasion?]
@Frans – If you ask me, you’re over-reacting. Going to court just because the Lady of the House chose to ignore you doesn’t show much of a spine. Besides, you were not libeled in any way even though you tried to provoke the moderator into doing so. As I see it, you had a go at her and received little response apart from the moderator’s comments, which are superfluous in any case.
People who threaten with calling the police and who go to court over trivial words don’t get my respect. These are words, no more. Daphne likes thrashing people that way -it’s her style and she gets much of it back in return.
@ Mike C…ahhhh, so putting a red X behind the names of labourites on unemployment registers and than sending them to Australia on ships which were supposed to be scraped is not fascism in disguise? And what about allowing an integralist bishop bury your rivals in the mizbla…in a state-owned graveyard? And what about giving superiority to the Church’s Court over the Civil Courts (1990s to date)? And what about having police beating the leader of the opposition and his followers on independence day 1964? and what about sending SAG to beat up and gas labourites who were celebrating freedom day in 1989 when there was NO need to intervene as there was no fighting or trouble or whatever?
@ David Buttigieg … Your behave like a perfect jerk. I seriously hope’ for your poor sake, that we will not clash over any source of revenue anywhere.One good advice, beware of Jordanian scams and never buy ‘any fish in the water there’.
I won’t fall for your puerile provocations and ‘compliment you’ on your personal attributes of shame and physical failures.Your behaviour reflects your difficult upbringing, and the wicked violence inside you.
@ Moderator
I see you are intent on allowing your groupies to mob anyone who does not toe your line. OK. I’ll give you some more before I let you enjoy my absence. Their behaviour really reminds me of those spoilt brats (tal-pepe`) with whom I attended the Jesuit’s college. I would also salute Fr Edwin Camilleri (Austin Gatt’s uncle) who devoted his time to caring for these kids whose fathers were often away from the Island for long periods (some of them ostensibly to watch Etna, but also looking after their siblings in the Provincia di Enna surroundings). Unfortunately, from deprived twits they developed into depraved members of the club currently engaged in verbally molesting people while seeking police protection like the cowards they are. Good luck to them and to theirs.
[Moderator – Oh, so that’s where you picked up the chip on your shoulder. What is this ‘watching Etna’ thing, anyway – some kind of a code to identify fellow Labourites?]
@ Frans Sammut
1. Fr Camilleri is NOT Minister Austin Gatt’s uncle. I should know, because I am a relative of Fr Camilleri.
2. Mr Sammut will be pleased to hear that Fr Camilleri’s soul does not need blessing for the time being because Fr Camilleri is most certainly not dead. Retired perhaps, but not dead.
3. I have no doubt that Mr Sammut is a gentleman, and that he will agree that it would be fairer to leave unrelated people firmly out of unrelated discussions.
@Frans
Oh dear,oh dear, those chips on your shoulder have grown quite large in the last 50 years, what with talk of ‘tal-pepe’ and being the odd one out, but I’m not sure who is running to Fr Camilleri now. Am I the only one to notice the analogy with you threatening to go to the courts and those incidents of Frans Sammut’s School Days gone by?
As for the answer to your question: ‘why would my novels run into third and fourth editions over successive decades?’, the answer quite simply is : because your book somehow managed to get on to the MATSEC curriculum.
This is not to say/imply/suggest that your novel is no good, or that heaven forfend you have friends in the Maltese literary scene. God Forbid, anyone would think such a thing. In any case i wouldn’t comment as haven’t read it yet (but I’ve added it to my list of summer books (so this blog has served one purpose at least :)), but judging by the tone of your missives, I’m not sure I’m going to like it as i doubt i will find much humour in them, and to be frank, that is the litmus test of a good author in my books (pardon the convoluted metaphor turned into a pun!)
Now please, Frankie stop licking your imaginary wounds and get on with enjoying your summer. There are a lot worse things then being mauled on a personal blog by a non-journalist,non-literary critic, non-bilingual blogger called Daphne…or is there?
@ Daphne Caruana Galizia
I hope Mr Frans Sammut keeps his word and drags to court. You have been insulting our best contemporary novelist far too long. I hope he knocks you for six. You think you can attack anybody at will, but when Mr Vella tried a joke on you, you instantly ran to the police. Are you sick or what?
I am not some kind of referee or moderator [now I wouldn’t hijack our own moderator in this blog, would I – although I suspect s/he is getting quite bored hearing the same arguments and silly name-calling and would jump at the opportunity to be hijacked so s/he may go out more and enjoy the sweet summer breeze by the sea]. Of course, if Daphne pays him/her well, maybe it’s worth it.
Anyways, I wish to suggest something that would cut out once and for all the eternal Frans Sammut vs David Buttigieg argument so we can pass on to something different for Christ’s sakes!
I suggest that Frans Sammut and David Buttigieg could try and meet so that they could discuss their matter on their own for as long as they like and allow the rest of us to discuss the present and the future [occasionally as influenced by the past].
I believe that Frans Sammut is not a blog-name but his real name. I’m not so sure about David Butigieg, however, who challenges left, right and centre without telling Frans Sammut his real name. So pleeeze, Mr Buttigieg find Mr Sammut’s telephone no. in the directory, phone him and friggin meet him [I don’t suppose he eats people] so that you could arrive at some kind of compromise.
When you finally agree, come back to this blog and announce the agreement. We’ll give you a standing ovation – if you provide some champagne [ real – not copied :) Sorry I couldn’t resist saying that!
@ Ganni Borg
Of course less than half said yes especially when you come to the following conclusion:
Thus, all votes which were not a clear YES (abstentions, invalid ballots, spoilt ballots and – yes- even the much maligned “dead”) HAD to be counted as a NO.
Have you friggin’ lost your marbles????
And since when is Mr X a man of many parts:
“No, Mr Buttigieg, of the component parts of Mr X, some said no, and some declined to answer (as is their right). Less than half said yes”
components of Mr X. ???????????!!!!!! Did he have a stroke? was he paralysed from the brain down? Are you????!!!!!
As i explained before the law has always been clear about this, abstention is assumed to be a yes. Vide my example above.
I really don’t care what the Nationalist Party argued under different circumstances. I was/am against the interdett, i am no fan of the PN’s environment policy, nor am i a fan of some of its ministers, I don’t tow any party’s line, but neither am I willing to change rules which are accepted all around the world. So get real and come up with some interesting arguments or schtum!
@Frans
“see you are intent on allowing your groupies to mob anyone who does not toe your line.”
Hard as it may be for an old Socialist lackey to imagine otherwise, we don’t tow anybody’s line, least of all Daphne’s or the moderator’s”
Any mobbing on my part is purely my own personal initiative.
I like to make you feel welcome :)
@Peter Muscat,
I seem to have hit a nerve, if you can’t take the heat then get out of the kitchen!
@Frans Sammut,
“Unfortunately, from deprived twits they developed into depraved members of the club currently engaged in verbally molesting people while seeking police protection like the cowards they are”
An extreme case of the pot calling the kettle black!!
You are a spineless coward who won’t answer a simple question. A one word answer would suffice. I do understand your dilemma ofcourse, labourites are not allowed their own opinion! Can’t you clear it with your lord & master?
@Peter Muscat,
“So pleeeze, Mr Buttigieg find Mr Sammut’s telephone no. in the directory, phone him and friggin meet him [I don’t suppose he eats people] so that you could arrive at some kind of compromise”
I have no argument with him, I just would like him to answer a simple question :) Here it is YET AGAIN
@FRANS SAMMUT, WHO WOULD YOU SAY WON THE REFERENDUM, MEMBERSHIP OR PARTNERSHIP?
Oh, and DCG hiding behind me? That’s a laugh!
Frans Sammut – You said “To sum up … you need to be reined in and leave people in peace.” Try applying the same reasoning to your numerous non-sensical comments, including those directed at myself and my sisters (of whom there are more than two) without provocation.
Oh, and you also said “I noticed this “tal-pepe`” attitude over 50 years ago. When I attended St Aloysius College I observed the type rather closely. … Same old story. Fifty years ago and today, not an iota of progress.”
Your choice of terminology only goes to show the deep-rooted hatred you have got towards certain people. It is that inborn class hatred (which, in your case, must have been brewing for a good 65+ years now) that seems to spur people like you on. So no, it is no surprise that (to more-or-less quote you) “fifty years on, and not an iota of progress.” Some things never change, do they?
@Amanda,
“It is that inborn class hatred (which, in your case, must have been brewing for a good 65+ years now) ”
That class hatred is the cause of that huge chip on his shoulder.
By the way, how many sisters are you?
@ david Buttigieg: “So if 250000 people owned Mr X’s house and the majority agreed to joining Mr Y’s house then the house would be joined no matter what” – No, David, Numbers have nothing to do with the flawed analogy mooted by Ganni Borg. There are what are known as Human Rights, one of which is the right to own and to enjoy one’s property. It was one of the rights that Maltese citizens were denied under 16 years of Labour rule. It is also one of the rights that Maltese citizens are now assured of as an integral part of the EU.
@Frans Sammut – You ask: “why do most of your “groupies” hide behind a pseudonym? What are they afraid of?”
Some, like me (although outside the “groupies”), would prefer not being caught firing pot-shots at Cruella Guerin and her entourage every time their name is google-searched. It’s like hiding traces of vice. I mean, let’s face it, doing a Daphne on Daphne’s blog isn’t exactly the high point of one’s life.
But here, Dear Frans, we fight sometimes with arrows, at times we fight with stones, and on other occasions we throw crap at one another – and like a mud fight it’s got its therapeutic values, unless the criminal justice system is roped in by some Turgidio Beria. That’s when it gets kafkesque.
David Buttigieg – “if you can’t take the heat then get out of the kitchen!” … And run to the Crosscraft one? :)
@ Ganni Borg. “At the risk of repeating myself, when the changes proposed were so far-reaching, fundamental and irreversable, a simple small majority of valid votes was not even nearly enough. ” So now the Lisbon Treaty can proceed and be adopted by the EU – given the paltry turn-out in the Irish referendum and the small majority of NO votes among those who participated? Hallina Gan. Aqbad id f’id ma Cikku Sammut – aktar ma tiktbu intom it-tnejn aktar johrog nejk.
@Moderator
Re Frans Sammut : “Would anyone be surprised if Daphne received the threats she allegedly received? That is what I implied. Now I ask you, how could that be construed as an endorsement on my part of any imaginable kind of the “bomb threats” she allegedly received?”
Frans Sammut is inciting violence here and I really think. for what it’s worth, that you should not take chances and pass on Frans Sammut’s IP address , as well as his posts , to the police for investigation. Dont underestimate his threats, he is inciting violence.
Joseph Zammit – “You have been insulting our best contemporary novelist far too long.” Best contemporary novelist? As compared to whom? Alfred Sant?
Don’t forget, Mr Zammit, that beauty (in this case your hero Frans Sammut’s “novels”) is in the eye of the beholder. You have got to understand that not everybody appreciates the written word in Maltese, which in itself, tends to be tedious. When written by people with a certain mentality, it becomes even more so.
Even my children have come to that conclusion, and they are still in primary school. Even they can see the difference between the books they read at home for leisure, and the Maltese books they are made to read at school. No amount of lovely pictures and colourful pages will make up for the fact that the content of such books is generally poor, and usually caters for the typical Maltese mentality, to which not everybody subscribes. The fact that such books also usually contain mis-spelt English words with bad pronuncation (blEkbord, flEtT, kuxin, hiter …) only makes matters worse.
So, Mr Sammut and Mr Zammit, try to accept the fact that not everybody is the same … and good thing, too!
@ganni Borg: “And PLEASE don’t make the mistake of comparing a referendum with an election.”
Of course not. While in an election one is voting on an entire raft of issues, including some upon which one may harbour reservations, a referendum is the referral of a single issue directly to the electorate. Those who agree vote YES, those who do not agree vote NO. Those who choose NOT to vote will have put themselves out of the equation – which is why the result of the recent Irish referendum is valid and is acknowledged as such by the governments of all EU countries.
David Buttigieg – I’ll leave you guessing.
Republic Man – Well said.
Frans Sammut – “Hiding”, are we now? Behind “Joseph Zammit”, possibly?
Oh, and Joseph Zammit – Sick are the people who make bomb threats. Even more sick are the ones who refer to such threats as “alleged”, even when the threats were not even made directly to my sister herself, despite being aimed at herself and her family.
Please refrain from trivialising such matters, and from trying to make jokes out of them. No matter what you think of a person, it certainly doesn’t justify such a (violent)reaction.
@Klieli
@ david Buttigieg: “So if 250000 people owned Mr X’s house and the majority agreed to joining Mr Y’s house then the house would be joined no matter what” – No, David, Numbers have nothing to do with the flawed analogy mooted by Ganni Borg.
Agreed, bad example on my part too!
@ Dave Buttigieg … Looking at a picture from different angles one could have different results.
Same with any Referendum. Depends how one looks at it!
Re EU REFERENDUM :::
If one takes in consideration that the PN never got the 50% plus one vote of “those entitled to vote” then one can have a negative result for the PN.
On the other hand if one takes in consideration only “those
who practiced their right to vote” then the PN had the 50% plus one vote.
Mr. D. Buttigieg please try to understand that there thousands of MLP supporters who voted YES as there certainly were PN supporters who voted NO in Referendum in question.
@Dave Buttigieg … Are you still guessing about Mandy’s number of sisters? LOL.
This proves that we Gozitans are much more informed then you can ever imagine.I’ll help you with your enigma! If you make a bit of simple reasearch about double barrelled family names you’ll solve not only that enigma but you will find my real life GOZITAN identity.
Got it mate?
@ Moderator
I had already decided to leave your cesspit, but I wouldn’t be a gentleman (pace Mr Peter Camilleri) if I didn’t respond to the saner blogger appearing herein. So, pray bear with me while I bid farewell to the few sane bloggers I encountered in my short stay.
@Kev
I am not in the habit of writing to gain people’s respect. I mean those people for whom I have no respect myself. I will take Mrs Caruana Galizia to court over her vicious and malicious treatment of people who could very well live without attracting her notice. If she thinks she can tackle her unsolved Electra complex she should resort to other “therapeutic” ways (cfr “Religo et Patria”). I mean to drag her before a court of law for reasons spelled out all over this blog. You are right at least in one respect. This so-called “running commentary” IS Kafkesque and claustrophic. You should know I dislike cages, including the purportedly inverted type. That’s why I’m leaving, to get some fresh air.
@ Chris
You don’t tow a line, you toe it. For Crikey’s sake, man, consult the Axis of Drivel before setting out to express yourself in the English language. They do know these things, for fairness sake.
@ Peter Camilleri
Thank you for regarding me as a gentleman. I always do my best to be one. And I do consider myself as one (hence my dragging Mrs Caruana Galizia before a court of law) but it’s good to know there are others who share the notion. Well, truth is I knew Fr Camilleri was still around. “Bless his soul” didn’t imply he should be classified with the faithful departed. It was actually meant as a compliment for his venerable age and his newly-found form of self-expression in the writing of verse, in Maltese as I’ve heard. It was actually with respect that I mentioned his well-known mission of caring for boarders some of whom were dumped at College by their parents while the latter sowed their wild oats abroad. In the case of boys it was mostly St Aloysius, in the case of the girls there were other schools well known to the Axis of Drivel.
@ Mrs Amanda Mallia
M’am, believe me, I did not direct any comments (non-sensical or otherwise) at your goodself. As a matter of fact I wasn’t aware you were part of the hunting party. And, as for your intellectually brilliant comment regarding my age, I am younger (or less old, as you wish) than 65+. And I can still tackle turgid literature (as implied by the knowledgeable Mrs Caruana Galizia) and still wield other turgid matters with ease). However old I may be I act my act. It’s Mrs Caruana Galizia who is 40 acting 17. And…if I have any “deep-rooted hatred” I assure you, it’s not for people, but for what Mrs Caruana Galizia embodies: class-hatred, snobbery, presumptuousness, prejudice and generally anti-Maltese feelings. On the other hand, I strongly believe people should be allowed to choose what books to read. Absolutely. You wouldn’t know how liberal I am particularly in academic matters. I would like to remind you, however, that I do not write for children (no sarcasm meant here) and do NOT expect children to read my novels and history books. Secondly I completely concur with your disdain for idiotic words like “flet” “kuxin”, “lekcerer”, “hiter”, etc. Please address your valid and justified complatints to the right quarters. I have tried to knock some sense in certain people’s minds to no avail but have given up trying to abandon this stupid ortography which can only harm children’s education both in Maltese AND English.
@ Moderator
By allowing “Pepublic Man” (some pseudonym!) to spew his bile, you have strengthened my hand in my intent to sue Mrs Caruana Galizia for slander. Thank you.
[Moderator – Republic Man, I suggest that you sue Frans Sammut for calling you a bile-spewer. We’ll sue Frans and Kev for calling this blog Kafkaesque. I am suing Frans because I think that his mere existence slanders the human race. Fr Camilleri is suing Frans for claiming that he is dead. Daphne is suing Frans for calling her vicious and malicious, anti-Maltese, and for claiming that she has a complex about a woman called Electra. The Tal-Pepe are suing Frans for claiming that they were farmers who sowed wild oats. All the contributors who were left out of Frans’ list of sane people are suing him for implying that they are insane.]
@Peter ‘Jo Said’ Muscat,
‘Mr. D. Buttigieg please try to understand that there thousands of MLP supporters who voted YES as there certainly were PN supporters who voted NO in Referendum in question.’
What has that got to do with anything??
“f you make a bit of simple reasearch about double barrelled family names you’ll solve not only that enigma but you will find my real life GOZITAN identity.”
Got a problem with ‘double barelled’ surnames mr saeed?
@Peter ‘Jo Saeed’ Muscat
“Same with any Referendum. Depends how one looks at it!”
True true – Most people look at it democratically!
@Frans Sammut,
Crawling away are you? Run, RUN little man (and grow a spine) :)
@Amanda
Not that important :)
@Frans Sammut
Frans Sammut Friday, 4 July 1350hrs
@ Moderator
Sorry, I assumed you would be a woman, knowing that Mrs Caruana Galizia is such a man-hater for reasons best known to her and to some of her intimate friends.
Often people miss the meaning of the golden rule, “You should do to others as you want others to do to you.” It does not say to do to others as they do to you. If they ever did, because Ms Caruana Galizia’s comments were not dreadful she was just expressing her opinion. Intelligently she did not fall for his provocation she ignored him completely. Skit risposta Frans!
Mr Sammut failed to realise that he fell into Daphne’s trap, he failed to notice that he is fighting the battle of the wit in Daphne’s territory. Think Mr Sammut should have addressed the issue with good wit and humor. Instead he insulted everyone in the blog and called us names. I had this book called ‘’Samurai’’ for my Maltese A level, never crossed my mind that its author was so pathetic.
And lastly Mr Sammut should have ignored such posts to avoid further desolation and learn the lesson – if it is from Daphne it’s no roses and try to live with it. I think he over reacted big time, his response was way out of proportion especially when he threatened Moderator.
One last thing Mr Sammut, prosit for that post regarding Lisbon treaty, we would appreciate such interesting posts and not hogwash.
[Moderator – If Daphne were a man-hater, I don’t think she’d be living with four men.]
@Leonard Ellul Bonici
“Mr Sammut failed to realise that he fell into Daphne’s trap, he failed to notice that he is fighting the battle of the wit in Daphne’s territory” And he is completely unarmed!
@ Moderator – You wrote: “We’ll sue Frans and Kev for calling this blog Kafkaesque.”
I plead ‘not guilty’ – I never said this blog is kafkesque. It was Frans Sammut who twisted my words.
To make things easier for the Language Investigations Department, this is what I wrote:
“But here, Dear Frans, we fight sometimes with arrows, at times we fight with stones, and on other occasions we throw crap at one another – and like a mud fight it’s got its therapeutic values, unless the criminal justice system is roped in by some Turgidio Beria. That’s when it gets kafkesque.”
Mr F Sammut, do you have nothing better to do than write tons of drivel on these blogs. Get over it and get a life – do everyone a favour.
@ Mrs Caruana Galizia
You must be feeling elated by the confusion worse confounded you have managed to create in this thread. When the dust settles, you will still find me there waiting. See you in court, M’am.
@Frans
At last you noticed me! Crikey, cor blimey and ‘ow’s your father! I bow my head and stand corrected.
But I don’t think I need consult the Axis of Drivel, not when i can sleep soundly in the knowledge that you will correct the error(s) of my way(s). :)
Now chill out and go have a swim. You have a new leader whose charm offensive is turning heads (I thought him and Lou Bondi were going to make out judging by the photos in last week’s Circle), so follow his cue and relax! It’s only a blog!
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Didn’t you say you were leaving? How’s that tail between your legs? Can you answer THAT question? Didn’t think so!
@Daphne Caruana Galizia
ooooooohhhh you must be shaking in your shoes — Frans ‘little man’ Sammut is waiting for you and won’t go away …
@ Phillip Micallef
Are you the same Phillip Micallef who complained about our state-of-the-art MDH?
@Chris Borg
You want some examples of facism?
Murdering/torturing people in the police HQ?
Suppressing the free press?
Supressing the right to strike?
Victimising those who attempt to?
Obstructing ones right to human rights redress under the law?
Suppressing free education?
Stealing peoples businesses?
Suppressing the right to free assembly?
Gunning down those attending a polictical activity?
Using a cateogory of supporters to terrorise the rest of the population?
Discrimination at all levels of society? Water? TV? Universtity? Jobs? Telephones? VCRs? Import licences? Building permits?
When all these things are done by the state, then is a regime. Fascist? Communist? Whatever? A sham democracy!
Stop trying to rewrite history. Stop inventing myths. Stop being a cry baby. If anyone made it impossible for categories of maltese to remain working here (at a great loss to the country – doctors, med students etc) it was the MLP.
Thugs assaulting the head of the army and throwing him into the sea, smashing the law courts, highjacking vessels and blocking the port are all valid reasons for tear gas.
Stop confusing the PN with the church. the MLP picked an unwinnable battle with the church and lost, although it got tons of cheap cry baby advertising mileage. Nothing to do with fascism. The church is neither a party nor a government. If one band club expells members who belong to another band club its not fascism, its freedom of association and the right to run a private institution according to its own rules.
The MLP still can’t understand democracy, so how can it be expected to put it into practice?
When the MLP claimed they won the EU referendum they made themselves (and by extension, the rest of us) the laughing stocks of the democratic world, and there are stil people on thos blog claiming that partnership won!
Why do you think people keep asking labour commentators, politicians, and bloggers who won the referendum?
Its a simple pass/fail test of your understanding of democracy. There’s no debate involved. No other grades, just pass/fail. No amount of twisting logic and numbers. Its just a basic fact of democracy. When you get round to the idea that the Yes vote won, you’ll have passed. Until then, its the standard MLP grade, fail fail fail fail fail
@ Mike C
What are you exactly raving about? Are you for real, or are you a stand-in for David Buttigieg? You sound quite similar in your limited lexical ability as well as your stentorian voice. On wonders how you are still allowed to roam about without a strait-jacket and medication.
@People,
I have discovered (well, been told) the source of Frans ‘little man’ Sammut’s chip on the shoulder :)
Frans, did the nasty tal-pepe boys at school used to bully you? Oh poor baby, you must get over it you know, boys WILL be boys, you should let go of the past. Nasty boys, didn’t they know you would be a consultant to the wigged one himself?
tsk tsk tsk:)
@ David Buttigieg
Bully me? You ARE a joker.
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Yes, YOU little man. Oh the nasty tal-pepe boys!!!
You used to run then too little man but at least you were a child! What’s your excuse now?
As much as I disapprove of bullying it’s still no excuse for that chip little man, grow up!
@Frans Sammut – mela ma tlaqtx il-barra min din il-fossa [cesspit] Cikk, kif ilek tghid li ser tghamel dawn l’ahhar tlett ijiem? Baqa jghogbok mid-dehra li tara ismek fil-miktub u li xi hadd jaqra dak li qed tikteb, avolja biex jitnejku bik.
@ David Buttigieg and Kieli
You’re both so funny, I almost choked laughing. Is it me who is running or Mrs Caruana Galizia who is ducking behind you hoping to turn the tone of her taunting into something that could be classified as “funny” and therefore pardonable? But enough of her. Her I will meet in court. Now, if you two have anything to say except a load of inanities and absurdities, go on and say it. Try to make it useful. I am listening.
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Oh I am so honoured, the little man is listening. Yes Fransy wansy, it is YOU who has been running non stop, but I now know you are used to it from school.
Isn’t that chip on your shoulder too big? Ohhh poor little man, they were just kids for heaven’s sake:) No need for all that rage inside you!
Running from you? You must be delusional! Or else you’re being told what to write, in the hope that Mrs Caruana Galizia gets away from the heat. Try some more, maybe you’ll make yourself useful. If you don’t manage to be useful here you can always volunteer to appear in court in the defence of Mrs Caruana Galizia. Are you following, or not? Don’t look away. Look me straight in the eye when I talk to you. And try to behave.
… and by the way, where is that other elf, or is it gremlin, or, again, is it somebody’s alter ego, christened “Kieli”? Is he being briefed while “wild man” (oh, my gold!) Buttigieg who became rich in Trnasjordania trundles out his inanities between bragging about having made it rich and his candidacy to the latest “macho” (cor (not Cora) blimey!) on Mrs Caruana Galizia’s list. I am not yet sure whether this will be good enough to make to the law courts like my other, very serious charges.
[Moderator – There’s something very Freudian about the way you’re waving your charges about.]
@David Buttigieg
Can’t you see what Mr Frans Sammut is doing to you? He’s expecting you to threaten him with more words that he can use to nail you legally? Why don’t you change the subject and do us all a favour?
[Moderator – Michael Borg is Frans Sammut.]
@ Davey (Crocket) Buttigieg
Oh, do us a favour, Dave, and stop this nonsense. It’s nauseating.
[Moderator – Rog is Frans Sammut.]
@Frans Sammut: “Mrs Caruana Galizia who is ducking behind you hoping …” Somehow, one doubts that, don’t you honestly think?
truth, what is really riling you in all this, dear Frans, is that despite your repeated threats and obnoxious writings here, you are still being ignored by Mrs CG. You have now run out of things to say, except for your ‘see you in Court’ bleatings.
You have not even honoured your own declared departure from what you refer to as this ‘cesspit’since you still continue bobbing around on the surface.
@ Chris 1
Just for the record, did you mean to imply something when you mentioned “friends in the literary scene”? Just wanted to know whether I should include you in my list of friends I intend meeting in a much saner place in Republic Street. I would very much appreciate a straightforward answer since (1) you too hide behind a pseudonym, (2) you too intruded uninvited in my tentative conversation with Mrs Caruana Galizia, (3)you seem to know a lot about the local literary scene and may like to have the opportunity to share your deep knowledge with the rest of these groupies so eager to learn more about national literary culture and all that!
David Butiggieg, nhux ta’ b’xejn hadd ma jahmlek
David, IF what you’re saying is true than you should be ashamed of yourself to say these things.
@John A. Agius
Interesting that you should respond with a collection of insults, rather than address my comments themselves.
I have no connection to David Buttigieg, I do not know him, nor have I ever met him or interacted with him in any way.
I am just one of many who has a memory and uses it.
@ Mike C
People murdered and tortured in the depot? Were you living in Malta in the last few months?!?! A guy “jumped over the bastions” a month or so ago…
Free press? Ah well, not allowing labourite newspapers from entering public hospitals in the sixties was so free press friendly!
Right to strike? Pn wanted to ban it completely prior to the ’71 election…..
Human rights? Pn wanted to introduce a clause in the constitution saying that they could be broken anytime so as to protect the RC Church
Education? Free? Now that was something PN was really against….
Stealing businesses? Which businesses are you talking about? If you have BICAL in mind, I’m really astonished how a thief like cecil pace has the guts to play the victim after he deprived so many families of their savings, my family was one of them.
Suppressing the right of free assembly? Ahhh surrre, not allowing Labour to organise public meetings in Valletta didn’t do that. Neither the police beating the crap out of labourites did that. Sure sure.
Discrimination still exists. Just look at mepa. In the glorious sixties, red Xs were put behind the names of labourites on unemployment registers so that they would not get employed. Than they would get subsidised one-way tickets to Australia on boats which had actually been sent for scrap…..nah that’s not fascism. Not at all. It’s demo Christian love.
Ahhhh so the sufferings of labourites are just MYTHS. Ooohhh.
Blocking the port? Well if I live on the harbour and I know that a nuclear warship was going to enter the harbour I wouldn’t hesitate to at least try to block it….
It was the Church who picked a fight with Labour not vice-versa in the sixties. And back than the church and the pn were one and the same thing. Pn even published flyers saying REBHA KATTOLIKA REBHA NAZZJONALISTA…and anyway the PN government allowed Sir Micheal Gonzi to bury labourites in the mizbla in a State-owned graveyard.
IT was PN who introduced democracy here, during the National Assembly following WW2 when Labour and GWU made sure that the principle of universal franchise started being practised here…..
Referendum????? Just check out what PN did in 1956.
John A. Agius – MikeC is NOT David Buttigieg (though I have no idea who the latter is, except from this site).
As for “John A. Agius” … now where did HE come from? Is it just another name for “Joseph Zammit”, “Frans Sammut” or is it simply some other tedious, cantankerous old *art?
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut (Rog, Michael Borg – ashamed of who you are? tsk tsk tsk),
Yes, YOU have been running from me for ages by refusing to answer a simple question which would require a personl opinion which I understand is frowned upon by your ilk!
I also understand were you got your rabid class hatred from, even if unjustified, little man. Envy is SUCH an ugly emotion, especially when self-inflicted! Apparently you haven’t changed one bit since school poor baby!
Run RUN little man!!
@Amanda,
Well, I only post here and in ‘The Times’. I am far from being well known for any reason:)
@ Mike C. .. your attributes to the MLP fits the PN much better. You can go further and enlighten us about il-passat tal-Partit Nazzista … hehe in short PN ….
Your manipulation of political events and twisting of political facts are the PN’s only refuge. I wonder why you didn’t mention the POLITICAL murder of Raymond Caruana in your devious list!Or Karen Grech or Terrinu etc etc.
Nor did you mention Zeppi l-Hafi! Nor did you mention the recent MISTRAGATE, COPY GATE etc etc.More GATES to come soon.
@Peter ‘Jo Saeed’ Muscat,
What ‘copygate’ are you on about?
@ Chris Borg
Get the feeling you’re being ignored?
Frans Sammut Thursday, 10 July 1557hrs
Don’t look away. Look me straight in the eye when I talk to you. And try to behave.
This smacks of S&M Frans. Will you tell us if you are into black leather and stuff? Will you whisper about the whips and chains?
C’mon on Fransie, bare all….
@ Peter Muscat
Weren’t you writing a novel about Ministerial aids flying to London in the dead of night, licenced to kill, and what have you?
What happened to that? Or did your Mossad girlfriend sidetrack you?
@Frans Sammut
“Just for the record, did you mean to imply something when you mentioned “friends in the literary scene”?”
Heaven forfend! Whatever gave you that idea? Like your friend Freddie I would never dare insinuate/imply/suggest or even intimate anything of the sort. After all we are not in election mode, are we?
Still you must admit that placing your book on the MATSEC schedule sure didn’t hurt sales. :)
As i said not having read the book, i cannot comment, but i am making space in my leisure time diary to enjoy this summer with a nice glass of chilled wine under a starry sky. I will report back after having read it. Not that you should worry too much about my opinion! :)
As to intruding on your conversation with Mme Cruella de Daphne, i thought this was a public forum not a private chat room, apologies, it won’t happen again!
@Frans Sammut. You still wallowing in this ‘cesspit’ I see.
Just occurred to me that your persistent attacks and threats of legal action against Mrs CG are an attempt to get even with her for the half-page rebuttal DCG had had published in the The Independent in the lead-up to Malta’s access to the EU. That was her response to a piece that you had written wherein you sought to ppoh pooh her writings and, as I recollect, also questioned her credentials as ‘true’ Maltese; your piece was notable above all else for the bad spelling, faulty construction and poor grammar that you had used.
DCG’s article had corrected your spelling and use of grammar, and had compared your concept of Maltese patriotism, viz. your prissily reading bad poetry written in Maltese while standing next to the Maltese flag, with the genuine patriotism of DCG’s ancestors among whom, one executed by the French by firing squad along with Dun Mikiel Xerri, another barely surviving after being hit by a bullet in the neck. Those being the start of a long list of others of her notable Maltese forebears down over two centuries…kif nghidu bil-Malti hargitek tan-nejk.
Kif niftakar, inti dakinhar kellek tibla dak kollu li kont ktibt dwar Mrs CG u kont bqajt tahta. Urejt ruhek li ghadek mahruq b’dak li garalek 50 sena ilu San Alwigi, ahseb u ara kemm izjed mahruq bl’artiklu li semmejtlek. U issa minghalik ser twahhalula biex tpatti.
Frans Sammut: Is that really your writing voice or are you just pretending to be so pedantic?
@Chris Borg
To start with, I repeat, the only party to put these things into action so far has been the Malta Labour Party. So far since independence, it is only under Labour governments that our country has had to bear the shame of being certified by international human rights bodies as ‘partly free’.
For your information, countries currently sharing the same distinguished appellation include Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Yemen and Madagascar.
The MLP, via a series of anti-democratic laws, intimidatory acts and outright violence, went well along the way towards establishing a police state. With hindsight, the evidence is there for all to see.
Now THAT was a pjan ghal bidu gdid. And this one had structure and direction. Of course, it was nothing new, most of the eastern European communist states started out as young and inexperienced democracies and became dictatorships in incremental steps using much the same tactics as Mintoff. For more modern examples of this all you need to do is look at Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
With respect to murder and torture at the depot, so far the only ascertained instances happened under a labour administration. Only a labour appointed commissioner of police has been convicted of it. No other. There is a long list of court statements and medical reports showing the evidence of beatings and equally long lists of individuals who were found not guilty of offences they had confessed to simply because they had been beaten into making confessions, as is the practice in police states.
There is a substantial difference between the actions of a few rogue individuals (yet to be ascertained, although in the recent case with the immigrants, it seems pretty clear to me) and what are clearly state sponsored actions.
There is a difference between a racist policeman beating a defenceless immigrant and a commissioner of police elbowing aside his subordinates to ‘show them how to extract a confession’. And yet ‘new’ labour continued to use him as a consultant!
With respect to the banning of labourite papers, assuming I take your word for it, I won’t even bother mentioning the reverse situation on Airmalta as a rebuttal, but I’d really be interested to know how you think it compares to the burning down of the newspaper itself and for the regular beatings administered to buyers of nationalist papers simply because they had the temerity to walk with them in the street uncovered, or take them to work. I’d also be interested to know why it took so many hours for the first fire engines to turn up to put out the fires at the times.
On a lighter note, in 1986 I spent various months carrying out work for a parastatal company, and apart from the 100’s that joined from September onwards, and the fact that virtually no work was done at all, a favourite pastime actually involved buying the nationalist papers. Then they would turn to the classified advertisments section, and proceed to call each telephone number they found and insult and threaten anyone who answered. Fun, wasn’t it? Not a huge threat to democracy perhaps, but it gives you a flavour of the attitude that had been inculcated in MLP supporters byt the MLP, doesn’t it?
The right to strike, as far as I am aware the run-up to the 1971 election was a continuous series of strikes. Doesn’t sound like the PN tried to ban anything? On the other hand lock outs, beatings, demotions, firings etc etc were put into practice against striking workers by Labour Governments, no-one else. And again, ‘new’ labour took the UHM to court for striking!
As to your comment about human rights and changes to the constitution, again, why don’t we look at the actual track record. It is the labour party in government who deliberately left the constitutional court, our only avenue of human rights redress at the time, unappointed, so as to deny us that right to redress. All this at the same time intimidating the judiciary and passing laws limiting their independence.
It is the MLP who absolutely refused to insert a clause in the constitution to allow us to petition the European Court Of Human Rights, and was finally shamed into agreeing to it after years of pressure from the PN. Ironically, it was the hypocrite Dom Mintoff who put up most resistance and then went running so see if he could get some money out of it.
Free education? Lets start with the difference between free as in ‘b’xejn’ and ‘hielsa’. Money was never the issue, it was simply a very poorly masked incremental attempt at closing down the avenues of uncontrolled thought, so as to continue, in tandem with state broadcasting, as declared publicly, to bring up a socialist generation.
As to the issue of free in monetary terms, what you conveniently forget is that it was the PN who started a gradually increasing series of grants to the church schools with the aim of making them completely free and the MLP who stopped it.
When I mentioned the stealing of businesses I wasn’t referring to BICAL. I wasn’t referring to the church either, but as I mentioned the church schools I remembered that it was the MLP who passed a law in the 80’s confiscating ALL the church’s property, a law subsequently repealed by the PN. But what I was referring to was nationalisation by intimidation and forcing the acceptance of ridiculous sums of money as payment, with examples including the redifusion, the national bank, the precursor to airmalta, and the casino.
Labour meetings in Valletta? What I remember about those is the labour thugs regularly smashing the shop windows of those shops in republic street perceived to be owned by nationalists, not to mention the 21 times the nationalist party club of Valletta was broken into and smashed. I also remember labour thugs driving their cars into the crowd at a PN meeting, others beating up defenceless women outside castile, the police and the thugs shooting at the crowds at rabat and zejtun and countless other acts of intimidation and violence at perfectly legitimate and peaceful PN activities for which permits had been duly granted, even though it often needed a court sentence to get those permits.
And now we come to the myths. Yes, there is a huge number of myths about perceived labour suffering. And there is a very simple logic behind it, its called denial. It is an attempt at exaggerating things out of all proportion in order to somehow justify all the above and more of the same during Mintoff’s tenure in government.
Much like Nazi apologists somehow justifying the holocaust because the terms imposed on a defeated Germany after WWI were too harsh. Just like those moderate Muslims who are willing to believe that September 11th was organised by the Israelis because the alternative is not palatable to them. The scale of these events is far greater but your logic is the same.
Its denial pure and simple.
A case in point is this thing about the mizbla. It is unconsecrated ground reserved for non-Catholics or those who, like me, have renounced it. So according to this myth, all the foreigners and local non-Catholics were and are buried in rubbish dumps? The cemeteries of the foreign servicemen are mizbliet? I’m going to be buried in a mizbla? Fine with me!
As to the battle between the two labourites Gonzi & Mintoff, it started because Gonzi saw the pattern which Mintoff later enacted when he got into government, that of dictatorship by increments, and decided to act against it, because the evidence had shown that one of the first victims in these cases would be the church. He was simply defending his main organisation (the Catholic Church) from what he saw as an attack by his secondary organisation. (the MLP)
Don’t give me that rubbish about the labour party introducing democracy here. Sure it made a contribution, until Mintoff turned up and split the labour party into the Labour Party and the Malta Labour Party, and for the MLP, its been a downward spiral ever since. Just as the GWU stopped being a union when it accepted to become a weapon to be wielded by the MLP, therefore dragging itself down into the same cesspit.
Its interesting that you should mention the 1956 referendum. One of the interesting points was that so democratic law introduced by Mintoff called the law of ‘the trusted friend’. This means that someone would be allowed to come into the booth with you and ‘help’ you vote. Of course the fact that he was a labour thug and you were a not labour was not an issue was it? Only if you voted in a way the thug didn’t like you knew you’d get beaten to a pulp, so you voted the ‘safe’ way.
Interestingly Zimbabwe recently introduced a similar law. But then why am I surprised, Mintoff is still writing letters of advice to his buddy Robert Mugabe, maybe this was in one of his letters?
But ultimately, since I assume that you, like me, are not a politician or a party activist, can I ask you to temporarily put history aside and take the democracy test, just so I can tell what sort of person I’m debating with?
So tell me, who won the EU referendum?
Kieli – Better not mention Daphne’s ancestors, because Fransy Wansy will then get an even bigger inferiority complex than the one that’s been brewing for 65+ – ooops, that should have been 63+! – years…
Anyone bored with this blog can get a little light entertainment here:
http://mt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Sammut
I’m not sure what struck me most, but it was probably the “profession … School Headmaster” bit. (Capital “S”, capital “H” – gross grammatical error.)
thanks for the inspiration Vanni … how about a translation of Reed’s songs Frans?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwzaifhSw2c
MikeC, life is too short to reply to all of your turgid rant – so I’ll just list a few pints.
Malta was not “certified by international human rights bodies as ‘partly free’”. It was just the US State Dept, as far as I know that gave us that appellation. And since this is the same country that operates Guantanamo Bay, practises extraordinary rendition (kidnapping to you) and has admitted it tortures suspects, we know how much weight we can give to that.
If you want to know what “shame” is just remember that EFA was the only PM in Maltese history to be found guilty, by Maltese courts, of political discrimination – at least twice.
You are wrong about the “murder” at the depot. The man who confessed to the killing (a well known NP supporter) was given a free pardon (joining the illustrious list, with Queiroz and Zeppi l-Hafi, of criminals pardoned in order to keep their mouth shut).The man who was found guilty ONLY of being present and failing to stop the act was given 15 years.
I was amused to see you using the word “denial”. You seem to be the world champion at using that state.
wake up and smell the coffee.
Mike C…it’s so astonishing how you refuse to acknwoledge FACTS by saying that since independence it was only under Labour that police abused of their power, that freedom of the press was restrcied and so on. Incredible.
I will not repeat again what I said in my previous comment, however BOTH PN and MLP made “mistakes” while in Govt.
regarding former Commissioner Pullicino, it’s intersting to note that the police officer who actually killed Nardu Debono was no sent to prison….
regarding the burning dowqn of the times…it’s wrong. My intention is not to depict labourites as angels. However one must keep in mind that on that day there had been an assisination attempt on Dom Mintoff. Still, that doesn’t justify any act of reprisal which took place.
As far as I know, Labour wanted to nationalise the property which the Church controlled (mostly agricultural land) but on which there were no contracts to show that the Church actually owned that land. And anyway, Mercieca happily gave most Church property to govt. after the ’87 election…and anyway, Church property started being “attacked” under the British with the intorduction of the mortmain law
The mizbla was a psychological weapon. Up to the ’70s it was cut-off from the rest of the graveyard by a wall and rubble and other trash was dumped there. It wasn’t simply unconsecrated land…and it’s a state-owned graveyard…
Mintoff had already been in govt. twice prior to the interdett, so your argument is a little bit fallacious. And by the way, Mintoff was very influential even before the 1949 split…
Well the 2003 referendum is history too :) But anyway, I think the “yes” won in that referendum. I have no problems with saying that. However MLP’s stance in 2003 was identical to PN’s stance in 1956 (Integration ref.) And as I have said earlier in this blog the EU itself makes use of thresholds and quotas when it comes to referenda in democratising countries. Anyway, I think that Labour took that stand as regards the referendum as they wanted an election, and thus their aim was to push the govr. into calling an election.
My point is that it was not just under Labour that abuses took place. What astonished and offends me is how you trivialise and deny those abuses which happened/are happening under the PN. Quite similar to what holocaust deniers do (since you mentioned nazis…)
@ Moderator
I’m very satisfied that Chris or whoever explicitly withdrew his allegations regarding my books’ featuring in the Matsec and University syllabuses. Okay, he tried to retire with honour. But Mrs Caruana Galizia did not withdraw the other perhaps more serious allegations. And I will see her in court. The other bloggers who tried to intimidate me (very funny, indeed!) are beneath contempt and I will not waste my time answering them. Cheers!
@Ganni Borg
I see turgid rant is becoming a popular phrase on this blog. Since life is too short, (unless you REALLY mean the facts are on my side) I’ll respond to the comments you DO make.
There was condemnation from many other fronts, both governmental and non, although they couldn’t always get here to investigate/expand, because the Foreign Interference Act. (another one Mugabe has copied) prevented them from doing so.
The one I was referring to was freedom house, much the same thing as the state department, but Guantanamo Bay aside, if I’m going to have to decide between the credibility of a ‘partly free’ certification by the state department, and a certificate of democracy granted by Kim Il Sung, Caucescu or Gaddafi, the best Mintof’s regime could do, then its an easy choice to make.
This especially as the certifications of Freedom house are consistently endorsed and the pattern of similar regimes getting similar ratings is consistent across the decades.
With respect to your comments about EFA, remember that at least in this case, there was a court to go to in order to get redress. Under labour, there wasn’t. Otherwise there’d have been hundreds if not thousands of sentences.
As to the bit about Nardu Debono, I think I’ll stick to the officially documented version not the one based on the consumption of a few pints (sorry, couldn’t resist that one, since you mentioned it), thank you very much.
@Chris Borg
I see you’re still in denial and full swing myth creation. AND your grasp of historic facts is a little tenous. All I say is backed by court sentences which if you don’t mind I’ll take a little bit more seriously than the orizzont, super one or Anglu Farrugia. (Ganni Borg please note)
There was no assassination attempt on Mintoff, it was just an unstable suldat tal-azzar who wanted to speak to Mintoff and waved a gun at those who didn’t let him into Castille. He never came anywhere near Mintoff and just like in other police states it was used as an excuse to target political opponents. The suldat tal-azzar ended up at Mount Carmel. But as usual Malta has to suffer the consequences of internal labour fights, like the Gonzi-Mintoff fight.
Not sure what you mean about Nardu Debono. Lawrence Pullicino was convicted of manslaughter, which means you’ve killed someone but didn’t actually mean to, but apart from that I don’t get your point?
I find your other comment about Church land also rather perplexing. You say:
“As far as I know, Labour wanted to nationalise the property which the Church controlled (mostly agricultural land) but on which there were no contracts to show that the Church actually owned that land”
Actually is was ALL the Church property, but whatever the case, you’re forgetting one of the basic human rights, the freedom of enjoyment of property. It is interesting to note that the church gave it to the government after 1987, where the government agreed to manage it and give the resulting income to the church in order to make the schools free and sustainable. See what you get with diplomacy?
But the labour party chooses confrontation as a weapon of choice, whenever it has the choice. Why am I not surprised? Because Mintoff gave birth to the MLP from the LP on exactly that issue, whether to choose confrontation or negotiation (with the British – re the rundown).
And what do the attacks of the oppressing colonial power on the church have to do with the confiscation law except to demonstrate my point that it was an oppressive law?
Also, again, you make the mistake of somehow trying to put what you call ‘mistakes’ on a par and somehow try and come to the conclusion that everyone did it, so leave labour alone. You may get offended, but I don’t trivialize, I put into perspective. The point is that anything the PN has done fades into insignificance compared to the MLP and anyone with the facts at hand knows that – so denial or denying won’t work.
You mention that you believe the ‘Yes’ vote won, but doesn’t that automatically mean that the MLP at least up to 2003 didn’t believe in democracy? (It still thinks it won the referendum). And no, the PN’s stance was not the same in 1956, and it was the colonial power who made the decisions then anyway, not the PN opposition, and everyone else in Europe greeted the MLP’s reaction to the 2003 referendum with laughter, derision and disbelief.
The fact is that the MLP is such a convoluted mess of contradictions with more chips than McDonalds that the only way out is to make a new party. Using a child (16 years of working for the party machine don’t make him any less of a child) to give it a light coat of paint won’t make much difference, nor will it manage to hide the dark stains.
@ Corinne Vella
For your information I had nothing to do with the inclusion of my bio on wikipedia. I am not half the egocentric person you are trying to make me out to be. I do not go about advertising myself as some others (you know who) do. I prefer to let my books speak for me. Now, careful, Ms Vella. I warn you too. Try calling me a liar and I will be suing two Vella sisters, not one. But if you think otherwise, go on, make my day.
Frans Sammut – You may have a little bit of trouble with your eyes, you know, since “Amanda Mallia” and “Corinne Vella” are not even spelt remotely in the same way, so I can’t imagine how you mixed them up.
Oh, these “Vella sisters” (as you like to call us)! We really must be troubling you: I post a comment, and Corinne gets a ticking off from you instead, whilst Daphne gets dragged into it unnecessarily, yet again.
Anyhow, as to your “egocentric” comment – nobody mentioned egocentricity, except for yourself, that is.
MikeC, I suggest that you do a bit of research before you post here – you might avoid making a fool of yourself.
The facts about the Pullicino case are as I wrote – you obviously only know the PN spin. Pullicino was NOT convicted of manslaughter – only of failing to prevent a crime.
And when you mention the Nardu Debono case, why not be honest with yourself and us and also say that Debono was a notorious PN thug who was caught red-handed placing a bomb that, had it gone off, would not only have killed Pullicino and his family, but anyone else living in the block of flats. Has THAT bit of history escaped your memory?
You memory is also defective in regard to the church land, on several, counts. As someone has said here, the Lab Gov only wanted to take over the land for which the church did not have clear legal title. That is a documented fact.
And in 1987, the Church did not GIVE the land to the Gov – it sold the bits it did not want for a hefty sum (millions) and kept the best bits to develop herself.
Check your facts before you post.
@ Frans Sammut
I never withdrew any allegations as i had nothing to withdraw (as my wife kindly often reminds me).
Here is what i wrote:
“This is not to say/imply/suggest that your novel is no good, or that heaven forfend you have friends in the Maltese literary scene. God Forbid, anyone would think such a thing.”
I never alleged anything any more then our good friend Fredu ever alleged knowledge of ‘friends of friends’
(exits retiring to beneath the contempt from whence i came)
MikeC, when you take a cure against braiwnashing, I’ll think about answering your comments.
And by the way, that guy had actually entered into Mintoff’s office and shot. He missed Mintoff for a few CMs.
Frans Sammut: “@ Corinne Vella …Now, careful, Ms Vella. I warn you too. Try calling me a liar and I will be suing two Vella sisters, not one. But if you think otherwise, go on, make my day.”
I’m quaking in my shoes. Frans Sammut is going to sue me because my sister mocked his online biography. We once shared a surname, so I am answerable for the imaginary crime of having a sister who has a sense of the ridiculous. You won’t need a lawyer for this one, Mr Sammut. You’ll need a court jester.
Here’s another twist to your legal case: how are you going to disprove that I haven’t looked up your biography, much less read it?
Chris Borg – I can vouch for the fact that MikeC is very independent-minded, and certainly not one to be brainwashed, having a very good brain of his own. (Not trying to curry favour, Mike – Just had to say it, though!)
Corinne – U le, Cor! I wasn’t mocking his biography! How did that even cross your mind? Ma’ tarax! I was only suggesting it as an alternative for people (like Frans Sammut himself, maybe) who may be fed up of this blog! :)
I see Frans Sammut has finally carried out his threat to leave this blog.
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Still too much of a coward to answer a simple question aren’t you. People like you make me sick. You try to act like you are some tough guy but just like you were the cowardly wimp at school so you are the cowardly wimp now.
You attempts at disdain are pathetic to say the least. You are not capable of handling a debate so you run like a coward.
True enough for a rabid labourite who is also the wigged one’s lackey answering the question truthfully is difficult, after all you supported the labour party through those years of state condoned violence and savagery in the eighties so I expected so little from you! And you have proved me correct!
I know that you know Membership won the referendum, you knew it as soon as the results were announced just as the wigged one knew! This simply shows how much you believe in democracy that you supported a party that was willing to ignore the will of the people as expressed democratically in the said referendum!
Adieu little man,
You have answered my question!
@Chris Borg
You are either
1. Too young to have been around in the seventies/eighties
or
2. Have a serious fault in your awareness of what was going on around you.
or
3. Have the IQ of a peanut
or
4. A very gullible person
David, what a briliant potted description of the average PN supporter/Net listener.
It’s good enough for a textbook.
Amanda, if MikeC is so “independent-minded, and certainly not one to be brainwashed” how come he seems to have taken on board and interiorised ever shade of every nuance of every spin put out by the PN over the last 30 years?
Corinne – Don’t be so sure – He’ll probably “re-appear” as “Joseph Zammit” or under some other name, as many people who claim not read this blog (let alone comment on it) do …
@Ganni Borg
“Amanda, if MikeC is so “independent-minded, and certainly not one to be brainwashed” how come he seems to have taken on board and interiorised ever shade of every nuance of every spin put out by the PN over the last 30 years?”
Because many people (like I assume MikeC and Amanda) have lived through those years and unlike you have a brain to reason with. We saw what was going on with our own eyes and can also simply compare our lives now to pre 87 when we were no better then Zimbabwe is today!
@ Moderator
I have been away from it all for three days with a brief interval. So I cannot tell what you have been up to, particularly the owner of this “notebook”, viz Mrs Caruana Galizia.So I cannot tell what you have been up to, particularly the owner of this “notebook”, viz Mrs Caruana Galizia.
Meantime reading the national newspapers I came across some comments regarding the same person that may have escaped the attention of your readers. For their sake I am reproducing some excerpts shedding light on the reputation she enjoys outside what Prof E.A. Mallia termed “the Daphne-centred universe.”
“Socrate” writing in “l-orizzont” said (in translation): “ ‘l-orizzont’ of July 9 carried a missive penned by my friend Frans Sammut dealing with (beg your pardon) Daphne Caruana Galizia. I say ‘beg your pardon’ because I sincerely dislike besmirching this newspaper by mentioning her name. I sincerely do not know why the highly educated Frans Sammut, a man of integrity and of great ability, wasted his time to mention this ‘kind of woman’ (sic) giving her so much attention. Because I, personally, would rather have a debate on Magħtab and Il-Kortin as I feel cleaner them than discussing Daphne Caruana Galizia (yak).”
You could consider the foregoing as too harsh, almost as the no-holds-barred ad hominem attacks regularly leveled by the self-same “kind of woman” – a concept I admit being unable to grasp myself and would ask the correspondent to elucidate further if I knew his identity.
I would also suggest turning to Dr G.G. Debono writing in “The Malta Independent on Sunday” of July 13. Dr Debono wrote that, “Just because (Mrs Caruana Galizia) has a newspaper column all to herself, this does not mean that she can abuse this privilege by misleading the public with incorrect information. Neither does it give her the right to insult readers … this is arrogant and patronizing in the extreme and is made all the more distasteful by her obvious bottomless ignorance about what she pretends to discuss.” Dr Debono proceeds to define her “arguments” (which he dismisses as mere Govt propaganda) as “wishy-washy rubbish”. He questions her being entitled to discuss matters she is incapable of comprehending, highlighted her “exalted and sweeping assertions” finally concluding: “Readers are warned to henceforth regard all her pronouncements on the subject of renewable and alternative energy with the greatest of suspicion.”
In the same newspaper edition, Prof Mallia exhibits his fine sense of humour regarding Mrs Caruana Galizia’s column where she included him among “natural energy obsessives” thus: “It must be admitted that whatever sense there was in (the) editorial pales into insignificance beside the wisdom encapsulated in Mrs Caruana Galizia’s (arguments)”. He then proceeds to heap ridicule on those arguments she apparently developed, in his words, “with a truly remarkable display of inside knowledge of the Daphne-centric universe.” Prof Mallia goes on to describe her writing as having “simply too many howlers”, pointing out that in her never ending tirade she “shot herself in both feet several times over.” By way of concluding, Prof Mallia insists that she “should desist from trying to teach us to suck eggs.”
I hope your readers got a better view of Mrs Caruana Galizia’s image among really independent opinion-makers of repute.
But, of course, her elves may try to dismiss the foregoing by inferring that “Socrate”, “Dr GG Debono” and “Prof EA Mallia” are Frans Sammut. Oh, for pete’s sake!!!
@ Corinne Vella
Are you sure I need a court jester, when you’re around? But your sister will sure need a court lawyer come autumn or thereabouts.
@ David Buttigier
Have you chewed enough on what Ganni Borg told you about the subject you are obsessed with? If you haven’t managed to grasp what he said, how can you expect to understand what I would have to tell you. Would you dare use the same language if you were to face me in real life, buster?
I see Frans Sammut is back, sidestepping inconvenient questions and making dark threats involving law courts.
Why do you think law courts are scary, Frans?
Oh, and Frans, yes I do think you need a court jester – it might help you develop a sense of humour and become much more able to take yourself a little less seriously.
@Frans ‘Little Man’ Sammut,
oooooohhh maaaaa, the little man is acting tough!! Didn’t you learn anything at all from your school days?
You were a wimp back then and wimps don’t change no matter how much they age so do stop trying to act all bully-like ‘buster’, you certainly don’t impress anybody.
Bye bye baby, I won’t ask you any more one word answer questions as they are way to difficult or scary for you that you run squealing from them, besides like I said, your squealing has already answered the question!
Bye bye little man, hope your quest for a spine is successful:)
@Frans
If you are referring to Ganni Borg’s description of referendums (or referenda for the more classically inclined) and how to interpret them, then I must admit my estimation of you has gone down quite a few notches
@Frans Sammut – mela bqajt hawn? Wara dawk il-paroli kollha tieghek li ser titlaq u li dan il-post huwa fossa [cesspit].
San dan it tant, bil-kliem kollha li ktibt hawn ghadek ma rrispondejtx id-domanda kardinali li kienu ghamlulek fil-bidu ta dan kollu, viz. Min rebah ir-referendum? Daqshekk issiba bi tqila li tammetti l-verita dwar dan?
for Frans “I’ll see you in court” Sammut (if you’re patient enough you might spot the lady herself)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ex_ggs6iJM
@Il-Borgijiet et al
Can’t I spend a day at the beach with the jellyfish without coming back to find you debating my reliability/independence/soundness of mind?
Of course if I was brainwashed I’d claim that they were labourite jellyfish.
Interestingly I was going to add a smiley to this paragraph when I remembered reading an article in the orizzont last year which DID imply they were the government’s fault, so how’s that for brainwashing and spin?
But back to the topic at hand. I was around at the time. I HAVE checked my facts. And not in the orizzont, otherwise known as the beano. It is you who have your facts wrong. Unlike you I am not naïve enough to listen to the parties’ organs in order to form an opinion.
You are quite right, Lawrence Pullicino WAS convicted of failing to prevent a crime he should have prevented, but this IN ADDITION to the manslaughter charge (the convoluted legal term talks about complicity in causing injuries leading to death).
He was also convicted of perjury in a magisterial inquiry, and all these charges were subsequently confirmed on appeal. You don’t get a 15 year sentence for failing to prevent a crime!
Don’t make me laugh!
And YOU have the cheek to tell ME to check my facts?!!!!!!!!!
Incidentally, I have read Nardu Debono’s autopsy report. It was over 20 years ago when I read it and I don’t have access to it anymore. I just remember being thoroughly horrified. This was not a man who simply succumbed to one unlucky blow that hit him in the wrong place. And I’m not someone who’s particularly squeamish, especially since before then I’d read a few other autopsies from human rights organisations in other countries.
I base my opinion only on events which are amply documented by reliable sources, on those where I was a witness or had first hand contact with those who were, on court judgements, on medical reports and by analysis of what the MLP’s own organs of the time reported (including xandir malta) as compared to what was going on under other oppressive regimes and noting the similarities. One has only to look at the laws passed by the MLP which are now being copied by (or passed on to) Robert Mugabe.
Of course it’s difficult to see what the independent broadcasters were saying because, surprise, surprise, there weren’t any and they were illegal!
Just like in……..
Zimbabwe and Venezuela!
I have listened to human rights lawyers go through the laws that were passed and explain to me how they could be exploited to intimidate, discriminate, and incrementally reduce democracy.
Malta’s human rights situation under the MLP is not a subject where I have been brainwashed.
Perhaps the British High Commissioners were brainwashed too? One of them, in his annual report to London, said that he was uncertain whether the MLP would even bother to hold an election. And in case you were wondering, his name was C.L.Booth and he wrote it in his report of 1984.
And here’s another brainwashed High Commissioner, Robin Haydon, writing as early as 1975 on the way Mintoff ran things:
“This is not a dictatorship, but it could be the first step towards it”
Oh, and here’s another one in 1980, High Commissioner D.P. Aires:
‘The next election could be more than a year away and much can happen in the meantime, given Mr Mintoff’s talent for reprisals on those who thwart him and for authoritarian manipulation of rules and regulations to secure his ends. 1980 will be remembered for the way in which pressures were brought to bear on the judiciary’
That paragraph could be applied to Zimbabwe today – notice the trend?
Oh, and by the way, the pressure on the judiciary got much worse, up to the point where in 1985 the Prime Minister moved a motion which effectively gave him the right to suspend a judge whose judgments he didn’t like. Musharraf did the same thing in Pakistan in 2007.
Same High Commissioner, 1981:
“The times of London offended Mr Mintoff, and no longer appears on the newsstands. Its regular correspondents and a BBC team were not allowed in to report the elections because of alleged bias.”
Errm….. Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, for the last 3 or 4 years?
Same commissioner again, also 1981, remember my comments above about broadcasting, and note that this was an election year:
“A depressing feature of 1981 was the government’s control of television and radio, which, with the newspapers of the GWU were instruments of party propaganda. Except for their usual quota of party political broadcasts, the opposition were either vilified or ignored’
No doubt these guys were all brainwashed because they were reading the nazzjon, or more specifically the in-taghna, because due to another anti-democratic law, you could not use the word Malta, Maltese or nation, only the state could use them.
I have also, over the years, had conversations with eastern Europeans who went through the same things in varying degrees, generally worse than us, before the fall of the iron curtain, and in certain cases, after, such as Romania, where they ended up with a regime much like Mintoff’s (coal miners instead of shipyard workers). Most of the time I found myself recognising the same tactics happening here.
I note with interest that one of you thinks that having a criminal record or being suspected of a crime is justification for being beaten to death by the police. You have not even begun to grasp the basic concepts of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It’s a given that the intended victim of the crime for which one is being investigated should never come in contact with him, let alone run the investigation.
It is my contention that the MLP has not changed since then and if your attitude is that of the typical labour supporter today then this confirms it.
I hope against hope that you are just young and misinformed victims of your own party’s propaganda. Otherwise, we’re in for a bad time. A country which fails to acknowledge its history is doomed to repeat it.
If your posts are in good faith, they sadden me.
David Buttigieg re Ganni Borg’s comment re MikeC – Well said. I think you certainly hit the nail on the head.
Frans Sammut – For somebody who professes to be an author of several books (albeit in the Maltese-language, to be fair), your use of the English language is a bit mind-boggling, being peppered with what can only be considered to be Cockney expressions. (Cor blimey, buster, … the list goes on.)
% Moderator
I think you can attempt being a “moderator” by moderating the tone of some of your bloggers particularly one David Buttigier. He is a disgrace to your blogs.
@ Amanda Mallia
Beg your pardon, Ma’am. Regarding the “mind-boggling” nature of my English, those who are in the know actually call it versatility. It is due to my dexterity in handling several linguistic registers. I couldn’t help using Cockney expressions when replying to some of your less intellectually endowed bloggers. I wouldn’t dream of using that kind of lingo with your ladyship. Thank you, Ma’am, nice talking to you. This is wishing you a very nice day.
@ Chris 1
Go on, admit it, man. First you tried to infer certain goings-on at inside the Department of Maltese, then you withdrew your occult allegations. Finally you try to repudiate both positions at the same time. For your information, my novels have had a presence on university courses for decades. So, I cannot really tell whom you are accusing of belonging with “friends of friends” (the very apt phrase used by Dr Alfred Sant in other, more lucrative, spheres of Maltese life). By eliminating those who left this vale of tears over the years, like Professors Aquilina and Fenech, you may comfortably zero in on the others who are still very much alive and kicking. Just try naming them (those who can still react) and I bet you, mister, they’ll drag you before a court of law before you can say “Chris 1 or Christu”! Go on, try it and make my day. At least I would have the pleasure of knowing who is behind the convenient pseudonym.
@Joseph Zammit,
could it be you are the little man himself seeing you share his typos? I wonder?
@ Buttigieg
I wouldn’t mind being associated with Frans Sammut. I would only mind being associated with the likes of you.
@ Joseph Zammit
Thank you, Mr Zammit, for trying to enlighten the idiot who goes by name of David Buttigieg. He is such a numbskull! He cannot understand that the referendum was won by the PN because the EU so decided. Had the case been different, the EU would have admitted that less than half the electorate voted for membership. But why try to convince intellectually inferior creatures like this Buttigieg? He might be well-versed in the electoral system of Jordan (such as it is!) but he ain’t got the foggiest about the systems of the Western world apart from those deliberately selected by his mentors. What this Buttigieg fellow was really trying to do was to derail my arguments regarding the perfidiousness and serious allegations indulged in by his Misress Caruana Galizia with whom I had taken issue. Do you think I have enough time to argue with such idiots as this Buttigieg elf? Try as he might, wallowing in foul utterances for lack of proper vocabulary, he isn’t up to scratch. Worst of all, when I challenged him to face me in real life, he just stood down and ran. Scram, scum, you’re nothing, that’s what you are, absolute zilch.
@Zammit (yeah right),
Well birds of a feather …
In this case the same feathers – poor little man :)
Joseph Zammit (aka Frans Sammut?) – Are you referring to comments directed at Frans Sammut (aka Joseph Zammit?)?
David Buttigieg – Watch out: both Joseph Zammit and Frans Sammut “ghandhom ghalik, mid-dehra”!
Frans Sammut – You said “my novels have had a presence on university courses for decades”. Is it because there is no viable alternative, or is it simply because your novels are so wonderful? I’m only asking out of curiosity’s sake, because you got me thinking.
As for your previous comment to me, “versatility” in the usage of languages would mean the ability to express oneself properly, and in the correct tone in other languages (without reverting to expressions otherwise used by the likes of Eastenders characters).
Kieli – Forsi Sammut ftit ilu f’dan il-blog qal li m’ghandhux x’jaqsam mal-“Wikipedia entry” tieghu huwa minhabba f’din il-bicca:
“After the referendum for Malta’s entry into the EU he took the strange position that the NO vote won claiming that if one added the abstentions (which included a large amount of deceased persons) and spoiled ballots to the No votes, then the amount would exceed the yes votes. The referendum results were later confirmed by an overwhelming election victory for the government which was advocating membership.”
li tinsab hawn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Sammut
No MikeC, I am not a teenager – far from it. I can remember all you can and probably more. For example I can remember the time, in the 60s, when it was impossible to get a job in Malta unless you had a bit of paper signed by the kappillan and the local NP MP certifying that you were true blue. I do not have a memory-bar that blanks out anything pre-1970 unless it is related to a picture of GBO waving a bit of paper.
Therefore, I can see you extraordinary assertions for what they are – gross exaggerations at best, deliberate misinformation at worst. No wonder you hope I am a teenager and thus that much easier to fool.
Some specific points:
– The representatives of a Government which (years after our supposed independence) Mintoff had just forced to relinquish its hold on strategic parts of Malta (like the ports, the airport, broadcasting, etc) while, at the same time, increasing its contribution to our economy astronomically can hardly be considered as unbiased, can they? Naturally, you believe every word cos it chimes with your mindset.
– No matter how many times you repeat it, you cannot rewrite history and make it read that Pullicino was found guilty of manslaughter. He wasn’t. While on this subject, it may be relevant remember that his (relatively minor) conviction was obtained on the strength of a confession from the man who actually DID kill Debono; a well known PN supporter called Gejtu Pace, who was “singing for his supper” – the “supper” being a Presidential Pardon. So the “bottom line” of that trial was that the man who actually committed the crime walked free while the man who was only found guilty (7-4 if I remember correctly) of failing to stop it got 15 years. Did you mention Zimbabwe?
And no, I do not think that the fact that Nardu Debono, a well known PN thug, was caught placing a bomb outside Pullicino’s flat justifies and violence on the part of the police – far from it. If Pullicino knew about and did not stop it he deserved to be booted out of the corps with ignominy and punished (though certainly not 15 years). But it is a material fact and anyone who talks abut the case and ignores that aspect is being less than honest (to put it mildly) with his readers.
Indeed, as you say “A country which fails to acknowledge its history is doomed to repeat it”. And the discrimination, favouritism and nepotism which is rampant in the civil service at present is very reminiscent of the worst years of the 60s.
@Amanda,
It looks like ‘someone’ removed that paragraph from the little man’s page. I wonder who???
And yes maaaa he and himself(Joseph Zammit) do have it in for me, how scarey!!
Actually he has given me a legal case against him, as he has to Daphne, he accused us both of committing adultery together. Now that IS a serious offense from the ‘little man’
“What this Buttigieg fellow was really trying to do was to derail my arguments regarding the perfidiousness and serious allegations indulged in by his Mistress Caruana Galizia with whom I had taken issue.”
@Daphne – a joint case against him?
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Looks like I can play you at your own game, however unlike you I actually do have a case!:) I think I may sue you for the fun of it!
Yes little man, YOU are going to give lessons in democracy :) Like I said little man, I know you know who won though you can deny it till you are blue in the face!! Even you leader admitted as much after all :)
You are a sad case little man, especially when you try to pose as an intellectual. And as to your supposed ‘challenge’ to meet face to face ?
Parole parole parole …. But it DOES show how .. err .. intellectual you are (LoL) Comparing ourselves to the likes of Stephen King are we?
Adieu little man :)
@Frans Sammut: Kemm qed toghbok il-fossa [cesspit] mid-dehra Frans; daqshekk sod il-karattru tieghek meta ghedt li ser twarrab. Insomma: “He cannot understand that the referendum was won by the PN because the EU so decided. Had the case been different, the EU would have admitted that less than half the electorate voted for membership. But why try to convince intellectually inferior creatures like this Buttigieg?”
OK, Frans. So how do YOU – an intellectually non-inferior creature by your own inference – interpret the result of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, with limited voter participation and its adverse result where EU plans are concerned? The EU immediately acknowledged and accepted the result, despite its adverse ramifications on the LT project.
No doubt you will try and dodge this one, as you have been doing in regard to the question put to you repeatedly as to who won the Malta EU accession referendum.
@ Frans Sammut: “It is due to my dexterity in handling several linguistic registers.”
…such as Dandy and Beano?
Frans Sammut – I am still waiting patiently for your reply to this one:
“Frans Sammut – You said “my novels have had a presence on university courses for decades”. Is it because there is no viable alternative, or is it simply because your novels are so wonderful? I’m only asking out of curiosity’s sake, because you got me thinking.”
Well?
@ Moderator
Please educate your correspondent David Father of Chickens that in this context “Mistress” does not imply what he inferred but is simply the feminine of “Master”. I have been saying all along that he is her lapdog, so she is his Mistress. But of course the Father of Chickens has such a poor knowledge of English that he wouldn’t be able to follow cogent thought in that language and can only reach the Dandy/Beano level mentioned by his alter ego Kieli. And again I challenge him to repeat his insults when he meets me face to face. He is such a joker, an intellectual midget, a complete non-entity that I would meet him only if he asks, with cap in hand, for an appointment. Then I might deign to meet him. I am not in the habit of meeting non-entities unless I’m really bored of everything else. Oh, gosh, such an idiot, this Father of Chickens!
@ Amanda Mallia
Are you serious? Why don’t you ask that question to the Department of Maltese? It is they who choose the books they place on university courses. While you’re at it, you may want to ask the different commissions who awarded two of my novels the national book prize in years when you will notice, the PN were in government. You might also want to ask the New York publishing house that published a translation of another novel of mine. Are you satisfied, now?
@Moderator
I suppose your readers deserve to be updated on what is going on outside what Prof Mallia described as “the Daphne-centred universe. This open letter to the Home Minister was published yesterday in l-orizzont. The translation is mine, handed to you gratis et amorem,on a silver platter. Enjoy:
An open letter to the Minister of the Interior
By Cittadina Onesta – Valletta
Honourable Minister,
I recently read that Mrs D Caruana Galizia enjoyed continuous security round her residence 24 hours daily.
May I, as a citizen who always paid he due taxes, be informed on which criteron and for what reason Mrs Caruana Galizia was given this privilege?
As far as I know there is no other woman in this country that turns people’s stomach with the bile-laden articles she writes against anyone who does not agree with her politically. Apart from this, she recently chose to describe the readers of this newspaper as vulgar. With one fell swoop she bandied everybody together.
I will speak for myself alone; I have never uttered a word with the bile and hatred she exhibits in her articles. Neither did I try to ridicule anybody as she does. Not did I approve of foul language as she did when her son behaved in a crass manner at University. By the grace of God, I gave a good education to my children and today they occupy important and respectable posts. I met her at several receptions and was always more decently dressed than she was. Never did I behave in such a manner that my hosts regretted having invited me. Never did I go out into my garden to feed my dogs in the buff.
So on what criterion does she, simply because she is big-headed and forms part of a political strategy, insult me without even knowing me, simply because I read this newspaper?
And because she can act in such a despicable and continually provocative fashion, without anybody restraining and reining her in, the State uses my money, after she inveighed against me without any provocation, provides her with daily round-the-clock security.
Are you aware, Honorable Minister that with your stance you are encouraging Mrs Caruana Galizia to carry on with her repugnant articles?
[Moderator – That letter sounds a lot like you wrote it.]
@ Moderator
How does that letter sound “a lot like you wrote it?” Are you serious or are you just following instructions from the dame within the moated grange: get Frans Sammut off my back, or something to that effect? If you are curious to know more about the writer of the missive rather than its contents, why don’t you contact the editor of the newspaper under review? Between one editor and another there should be sufficient trust regarding the issue of the identity or non-identity of contributors. Until you do that you will continue to sound on the defensive, dodging other people’s opinions and hell bent on imposing your (i.e.Mrs Caruana Galizia’s) own. Not very democratic, if you asked me. Indeed not democratic at all.
Frans Sammut: It’s interesting that you see nothing strange in someone’s home and life being protected by the police following a bomb threat. The writer terms the presence of the police a ‘privilege’. Perhaps that person also wishes to enjoy the privilege of receiving bomb threats?
It’s also interesting that you see nothing strange in someone writing to a newspaper to ask a minister why s/he (the letter writer) is called vulgar when s/he “gave a good education to my children and today they occupy important and respectable posts”. Well, clearly not important and respectable enough to explain to their parent that a police presence around one’s home is no more a privilege than the bomb threat that prompted it.
Your self-styled intellect would be better employed explaining such basics to people who have yet to learn them, than in making bombastic and uninformed comments here.
@Frans Sammut
What’s the name of the publishing house in New York that published you a novel? Can you give us a URL? :)
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Rest assured that my command of English is far superior to yours, and will always be :)
Alas, in contemporary English to be someone’s mistress implies that you are having an affair with them, but I don’t expect you to know that, no worries little man.
As for ‘deigning to meet me’ little man, I call you so because that is exactly what you are, a little coward who has yet to answer a simple question, a one worded answer is all that was required, but you lack the back bone to answer it. One word little man, Membership or partnership!
As for Klieli, alas I am not him/her. Actually I don’t have the foggiest of clues as to who he/she is! Still, little man, you who have posted here using so many different names have some gall to accuse others of descending to your subterranean levels :)
As to me being a non-entity, well true enough, then again so are you, being consultant to the wigged one does not make you an ‘entity’ dear little man :)
Back to the point of meeting you face to face as you put it little one – such crass vulgarity so typical of a labour supporter :) What will you do, little man, beat me up? Tsk tsk tsk, is this the way for a self claimed intellectual who according to Wikipedia
“is considered [citation needed] by some, to be one of Malta’s foremost literary persons”
Which “some” I wonder? Also, I assume it was you who removed the paragraph quoted by Amanda earlier in the post, are you now ashamed of your stance at the time? Well in that you are finally right little man :)
Now run away little man, stop trying to pretend you are tough and all that, you are just a little man without the smallest of backbones who thinks being one of the wigged one’s biggest brown noser and the author of a couple of Maltese novels (I won’t comment on them because quite frankly I’ve never read them) make you something. You ain’t!
Cheerio :)
@ Silvan
Try Amazon Books, mate.
@David Father of Chickens
Go get a life, goof.
@ Corinne Vella
I am delighted to note the decent, sober tone of your post and have no qualms responding in similar fashion. No, I do not think it is nice to know that some people need police protection round the clock. But, yes, I do think that Mrs Caruana Galizia is privileged in having obtained such protection from the police. I know other people who asked for the same protection but were denied it. The contrast suggests that only privileged people (who know even more privileged people) get this kind of protection. On this score I agree with the author of the missive cited above. Apart from that, the point I originally tried to make when Mrs Caruana Galizia set out on her latest diatribe addressed at myself, was that calling past Labour leaders “sociopaths”, exhibiting the urge to slap the current one in the face (incredible but true), calling certain lawyers names (albeit in 10-year olds’ fashion), hurling abuse at a former IGM member, giving offence to the entire readership of a newspaper does not augur well for one’s popularity or one’s health or that of one’s family; rather, it attracts the opprobrium of a sizeable chunk of the population becoming conducive of a certain unpleasant climate. That was my point. Now, did this reasoning warrant an accusation of endorsing or even condoning violence on my part? Does that make sense? Does it leave me the option of not suing Mrs Caruana Galizia who is responsible for this “notebook”? Does it justify the need to instigate semi-illiterates like David Buttigieg to indulge in foul language and senseless inferences? Now does it? Ponder the point, Ms Vella. I wouldn’t mind if you came back with more sensible ideas.
@Little man,
Still running I see :) Run RUN little man!
@Little man,
p.s.
Actually I am an avid reader, of GOOD books! The reason I never read any of yours is quite simply I tend to go for real authors:)
@ Frans Sammut
Just did mate. And didn’t find your NY-published novel.
Frans Sammut: That’s a rather long winded way of saying that a bomb threat is a natural consequence of saying things other people don’t like. Read that carefully, Mr Sammut. Nowhere in your volumimous comments do you say or imply that bomb threats should NOT be a natural consequence of saying things other people don’t like. That is not the same thing as saying you actually like the idea.
You seem to be horrified at the thought of ‘giving offence to the entire readership of a newspaper’ but not, it appears, at the possibility of a bomb threat being the ‘natural’ consequence of saying what one thinks. That, please note, is your idea, not mine.
I do not know David Buttigieg but you imply that you do, and therefore that you ‘know’ who ‘instigates’ his comments. Why not identify the mysterious ‘instigator’ and show that you are not just jumping to conclusions because you can’t entertain the possibility that someone out there doesn’t take you seriously?
You see, the trouble with what you call ‘reasoning’ is that it is no such thing. You’ve hatched a conspiracy theory and nothing will disloge it from your mind.
Frans Sammut: Daphne’s home, as you apparently need reminding, was set alight as most of the family slept inside. There is no way anyone of sound mind could justify that sort of thing being a ‘natural’ outcome of saying things that bother, upset, insult or infuriate other people.
Here’s the thing: you went to the trouble of translating a letter published in l-Orizzont and missed the letter writer’s essential message, which, you apparently need pointing out to you, says more about the letter writer’s nastiness and ignorance of democratic structures than it does about the person criticised.
During your painstaking translation you apparently did not notice that the letter writer does NOT ask why police protection is not extended to everyone who deserves it. Rather, s/he questions why police protection – in the wake of a bomb threat – is given to someone who the letter writer apparently thinks deserves all she gets – or would get, if only the Minister of the Interior would do his job properly and prevent the police from providing protection so that the threats made would actually be carried out and the person concerned would be cowed into silence.
There is no other way of reading that letter, Mr Sammut, yet you have contrived to believe that there is, foolishly citing the letter in support of your claim that people do not always get the protection they deserve.
@ Moderator
Your correspondent David Father of Chickens is a freak.
@ Silvan
You’re incapable of looking up a book, let alone read it. Go fly a kite, mister.
[Moderator – Why don’t you just give us the link?]
Frans Sammut – I don’t take the Akkademja tal-Malti or similar organisations/what have you seriously. How can one do so, when a prize has, in the not-too-distant past, been awarded to, for example, “the best author” when there was only one “nomination” (what a joke!) in the said category? I’m serious! The “author” in question was none other than your good friend Alfie. I can’t remember the exact award or body awarding it, but I certainly remember the ridiculousness of it all.
Frans Sammut – Before I even read the moderator’s comment at the bottom of your “Orizzont” quote, I came to the same conclusion … It’s either that or it’s simply a case of the usual unifying Labour element – hdura, for which there is no faithful English tranlstion.
Frans Sammut – Oh, and the non-person penning that bile in the Orizzont definitely lacked the balls to put his/her name to it, something which you could never pin on my sister. At least she’s got the guts to say what she feels without hiding behind some ridiculous nom-de-plume, knowing full well the repurcussions that sometimes brings.
Oh and another thing, Mr Sammut – Your Wikipedia entry staes that you were the cultural consultant to Sant from 1996 to 1998. WHAT culture, may I ask, because you seem to be in dire need of some yourself …
@Sylvan
here it is…
http://www.amazon.com/Malta-Revo-romantraduko-Esperanto/dp/1595690646/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216392102&sr=8-1
Its called ‘The Malta Dream’.
But you might find it a bit difficult to understand. Its in Esperanto! (from one little used language to another I suppose. Come to think of it that’s not true. Many more people speak Maltese then Esperanto!)
In any case its a small legit publishing house called Mondial. They do rare and unusual books. But at least its not vanity publishing like our good friend Frans ..Ebejer! And the author gets 10% royalties on sales.
Sammut’s book is a biography about Mikiel Anton Vassalli
At least Frans Sammut can say he’s in good company. Other translations into Esperanto in this series include Goethe’s ‘Faust’, Thomas Mann’s ‘The Beloved Returns’ and Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe.’ Is there a thread in all this? I wonder…
Frans Sammut – For somebody who claims to be an intellectual, the comments you post here and the level of English you use certainly prove otherwise. It just goes to show that (as I once read somewhere, but can’t remember who said it) “you can drag a man to university, but you certainly can’t make him think”.
As for the name-calling, the “bile” you write (to quote you), the massive chip on your shoulders and the “hdura lejn min (tahseb) li ghandu”, they seem to be unifying Labour elements. With people like you, there’s no hope for things ever changing.
Frans Sammut: You’re not above insulting people yourself, I see. Now tell me, in a situation like this would it be perfectly natural for you to receive a bomb threat? Please don’t get hysterical. I’m not making any such threat myself nor am I instigating one. I’m simply asking you whether you really think it’s normal for a bomb threat to be the natural consequence of ‘offending’ people, to use the sort of expression beloved of Maltastar.
Incidentally, the verbal noun is ‘reading’ not ‘read’.
Frans Sammut – Are you posting comments here to detract attention from Daphne’s lengthy reply to you under “Yet another rabied attack …” on this blog? Or maybe you are not man enough to answer her?
Cor blimey, mister/buster/goof, you sure gotta read them, mate, before you go fly a kite/go get a life, cittadina onesta!
(Which gives me an idea, Mod – Now that the “Elf comment generator” is a bit old hat, could we have a Frans Sammut comment generator instead? Now, THAT would be a real laugh!)
@Frans ‘little man’ Sammut,
Oh dear, I seem to have hit a nerve – ouch :) Temper temper LoL – as for being a freak – nah, I would never read your book intentionally!
@Amanda
“Oh and another thing, Mr Sammut – Your Wikipedia entry states that you were the cultural consultant to Sant from 1996 to 1998. WHAT culture, may I ask, because you seem to be in dire need of some yourself …”
DON’t tell him that, he got enough of it at school poor baby :) Pity he didn’t learn anything from it resorting instead to a deep burning class hatred (envy really)! That is the source of all hdura as you so rightly put it.
@Corinne
“Why not identify the mysterious ‘instigator’ and show that you are not just jumping to conclusions because you can’t entertain the possibility that someone out there doesn’t take you seriously?”
Someone?? Just one?
He is sure that Daphne is the one instigating me :):):)
@Little Man,
Membership or Partnership?
@Amanda
“Frans Sammut – Are you posting comments here to detract attention from Daphne’s lengthy reply to you under “Yet another rabied attack …” on this blog? Or maybe you are not man enough to answer her?”
BINGO!!
@Corinne and @Amanda
Ladies, ladies, calm down. it seems the heat is getting to you. We all realise that the utility rates have gone up, but it may be better to switch on that air conditioner for a bit until we clear the air :) remember its only a blog and one man’s, sorry, author’s opinion. so relax!
@Frans
Apologies not getting back to you earlier. Its been rather busy at this end.
I’m not sure i understand what you meant by occult allegations. I don’t seem to remember having any dealings with the devil. And you certainly can’t be referring to the Department of Maltese.
I also don’t remember Dr Alfred Sant using any phrases in a lucrative sphere of Maltese society. Incidentally what is a lucrative sphere of Maltese society? Seriously.
And finally I’m not sure why Chris 1 is a convenient pseudonym. Convenient for whom?
As to the state of Maltese literature in Malta, well, what can I say? Literature is a bitchy business the world ever, and was ever thus. Why should it be any different in Malta?
To be frank there is more fun to be heard listening to the gossip in the trade then there is in reading the ruddy stuff itself.
The funniest part of all this,is that we take ourselves so very seriously! So a word to everyone. Its summer. Go and enjoy life. Even that Jimmy boy who found the travelogue boring!
Oh and PS Frans. if you think I’m skirting the issue..you guessed it. If you think I could be bothered to get into a fight over such an inconsequential matter, you take my for a greater fool then I know I am.
I see that Amanda is accusing others of “ħdura” when she know full well that her sister is the chief purveyot of that particular commodity in Malta.
Strange but true.
Chris I (formerly known as Chris): I don’t own an air conditioner.
Ganni Borg: What’s a purveyot?
Ganni Borg: hdura is rooted in envy. On that score, I am the object of hdura, not its ‘purveyor’. If you want examples of hdura, read Marie Benoit every Sunday, Kurt Farrugia on Maltastar.com and L-orizzont every day. Oh, and hdura is not a commodity, tradeable or otherwise.
I see that during my absence Frans Sammut has demanded to know, several times, why there have occasionally been policemen outside my door. He imagines that I asked for police protection because he doesn’t know that it was foisted on me against my will, the police commissioner having decided that A THIRD attack on my family home, and this time during a tense general election, would be a rather bad idea.
As somebody with an innate understanding of human nature, I have no doubt that Sammut’s demented reaction to the presence of security officers outside my home for a few weeks is rooted in the possibility that his son may have asked for, and been denied, similar protection for himself. That son was caught by airport security trying to board a plane with a gun in his handbag, an incident that made the news and has led to prosecution, in a case which is either still unresolved or unreported. The excuse he gave the police is that he was being threatened, or feeling threatened. When assessing a person’s behaviour or comments, it’s important to know where they are coming from, and this is where Sammut is coming from. His son was given no protection and felt obliged to go around with a gun, but that nasty bitch Daphne got protection even though the attacks, actual and threatened, on her home are, in his estimation, self-inflicted. I am curious to know why Sammut Junior was feeling threatened, given that the worst public scene he ever made was to act as notary in the Hotel Phoenicia’s ballroom, when Alfred Sant signed his hilarious ‘patt mal-poplu’ in the run-up to the 2003 general election. This patt tal-poplu was fashioned like a treasure map in a pirate movie, yet the redoubtable Sammut Junior handled it with pride rather than painful embarrassment.
I have one of Sammut Senior’s great works sitting permanently on my desk. I’m looking at it now – ALFRED SANT, IL-VIZJONI GHALL-BIDLA, MINN FRANS SAMMUT, mahrug mid-dipartiment tat-Taghrif, Partit Laburista, 2008, dedikat lil Josephine Sant, li qlubitha ntirtet minn binha. You have to hand it to Sammut: he can teach us a few lessons about brown-nosing.
For the benefit of those who don’t have access to this stupendous work of literature, which may soon become compulsory reading matter for A-level students, I’ll quote a piece:
“Lil Alfred Sant ili nafu aktar minn 40 sena u l-aktar haga li dejjem ghoozejt fih hija l-umanita tieghu. Huwa bniedem intellettwali mill-kbar – zgur li wiehed mill-aqwa intellettwali li ghandna hawn Malta…..Xejra ohra fil-karattru tieghu hija s-sahha fizika li mhux soltu ssibha fin-nies intellettwali.”
This sick-making hagiography is very poorly written. The rules for good writing in Maltese are no different to those for good writing in English, Frans, which is how I can tell. Yet Sammut can’t seem to distinguish between the ability to write in Maltese and the ability to write, full stop. He thinks that because his Maltese is good, then it must follow that his writing is good, too. Yet his writing is as bad in Maltese as it is in the English examples he has posted above: crass and wooden, and heavily weighed down by cantankerous phrases.
Well, what can I say? This is a man who thinks that Alfred Sant’s impressive physical health (and remember, he wrote this about a man with cancer) is an aspect of his character. They tell me he’s a schoolmaster. I hope he doesn’t teach biology. Sammut thinks that it’s unusual for intellectuals to be physically strong. Why – because people are not allowed to have both brains and physical strength? Would that be considered grossly unfair in socialist terms?Next thing he’ll be telling us that it’s unusual for clever people to be physically attractive. Fortunately, he doesn’t have any problems squaring that one with the reality of Alfred Sant, or himself for that matter.
Sammut should bear in mind that he is posting comments here only because I allow him to do so. This is my privately-owned blog and I can do what I wish with it, including barring ghastly people in the same way that I would have unpleasant guests thrown out of my home. However, I don’t mind the occasional idiotic demonstrator at my gate, no matter how annoying he might be. I don’t feel the need to bring out the tanks or the shipyard workers. Unlike Sammut, I am not Old Labour.
Because Sammut comes across so determinedly as an ill-bred boor, I feel the need to explain to him that he is in the ill-mannered position of using my privately-owned blog to threaten and insult me, which is the equivalent of ringing me at home to hurl abuse and threats down the line, in which case I would slam down the receiver. I am not cutting Sammut off here for the simple reason that the forum is viewed by thousands. It delights me to know that he has voluntarily placed himself in the public stocks and made himself utterly ridiculous before such a wide audience.
Sammut needs to be told once more that his books are not just bad. They are beyond awful. The fact that he can’t see this speaks volumes about his intellect. He is fortunate that the only people who can judge his sub-standard novels for what they are worth are those who can read Maltese. If they were written in English, he would be exposed to far wider criticism and forced out of denial. I have yet to see anyone reading a Frans Sammut for pleasure, and if they do, you can be sure that it’s because they can’t read English (or any other language for that matter) and so don’t have access to anything better.
Sammut also needs to be told that I am bilingual, and this is a good place to point out that my Maltese is much better than his English as demonstrated here, because it is contemporary and idiomatic, which his English is not. I imagine he subscribes to the Labour-generated myth that I don’t speak or understand Maltese, which runs parallel to that other Labour-generated myth that claims I look like a witch. Both myths are so much believed by Labour ghouls that when Jason Micallef first clapped eyes on me he decided that I must have had extensive plastic surgery because I am actually quite easy on the eye, and famously made a fool of himself by saying so on prime-time television. It never occurred to him that perhaps his informers had lied, because a crucial part of a hate campaign against any woman is portraying her as an ugly and evil witch. In that, nothing has changed since the Middle Ages.
Sammut appears to believe that one should have ‘professional qualifications’ to work as a journalist. No, Sammut: you just need to be good at the job. What use a degree in journalism if your writing is as bad as Frans Sammut’s and you don’t have the right instinct for a story? Sammut confuses journalism with the professions that require warrants to practise (architects, dentists, doctors, lawyers). I imagine that, because he seems not to understand the niceties of freedom of expression, he is one of those people who believe that journalists should be suitably qualified, approved by a board of persons such as himself, and given a warrant, which can then be withdrawn as the board deems fit. Sammut would have withdrawn mine by now.
I have observed that when people have an inferiority complex of some sort, or feel inadequate in some department, they bang on and on and on about their intellectual accomplishments, their academic achievements, and the letters after their name. Oddly, I have yet to meet a tall, beautiful (or handsome) person from the kind of background that Sammut would scathingly refer to as tal-pepe, who has this kind of hang-up. It’s not because tall, good-looking tal-pepe people are intellectually challenged, but because they don’t feel they have to use their academic achievements or their intellect to make up for a perceived inadequancy elsewhere.
In short, Sammut, if you had been born tall, handsome and tal-pepe, you wouldn’t be the seething mass of grudges you are today, trying to prove yourself by deploying your less than impressive intellect, and snapping like an irritating terrier at my heels because my very existence presses all your resentment buttons.
@Corinne
Join the club! :) And it’s not yet August!
No air conditioner! Boy, for a tal-pepe club, we’re sure letting the side down. Tsk, tsk,cor blimey, stone the crows, etc. (exits stage left muttering other cockney inanities)
@Little man,
“Sammut’s demented reaction to the presence of security officers outside my home for a few weeks is rooted in the possibility that his son may have asked for, and been denied, similar protection for himself. That son was caught by airport security trying to board a plane with a gun in his handbag,”
Oh so sorry, I didn’t know,
THAT WAS YOUR SON ???????? .. .. … …. .. …. …. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
I see he inherited his father’s brains:)
“Lil Alfred Sant ili nafu aktar minn 40 sena u l-aktar haga li dejjem ghoozejt fih hija l-umanita tieghu. Huwa bniedem intellettwali mill-kbar – zgur li wiehed mill-aqwa intellettwali li ghandna hawn Malta…..Xejra ohra fil-karattru tieghu hija s-sahha fizika li mhux soltu ssibha fin-nies intellettwali.”
Oh yuck, do you keep his picture in your wallet too?
“Oddly, I have yet to meet a tall, beautiful (or handsome) person from the kind of background that Sammut would scathingly refer to as tal-pepe, who has this kind of hang-up”
Ahh little man , your school-days nightmare weren’t they :)
Corinne Vella, when people start nit-picking about typos, it’s a sure sign they feel they are on the losing side of the argument.
“Ganni Borg” (which, I know, is only a nom-de-plume) – Daphne has put my thoughts into words with this:
“Ganni Borg: hdura is rooted in envy. On that score, I am the object of hdura, not its ‘purveyor’. If you want examples of hdura, read Marie Benoit every Sunday, Kurt Farrugia on Maltastar.com and L-orizzont every day. Oh, and hdura is not a commodity, tradeable or otherwise.”
Int wiehed min dawk li ghandek hdura biex tbiegh ……..
“Ganni Borg” – One thing you could never accuse my eldest sister of is “hdura”. Thankfully, it’s not one of our family traits.
Chris 1 (formerly known as Chris) – It’s not the heat that’s getting to me; let’s just say that I don’t tolerate fools easily.
Looks like you scared Frans Sammut off, Daph! He can’t post more comments now, because we’ll know that he’s read yours. (Though he could always come back as Joseph Zammit once again.)
@Frans
Ghaziz Frans, se niktiblek bil-Malti ghax donnu bl-Ingliz mhux li tant thossok f’tieghek. Tlabtek il-link ghar-rumanz tieghek ippubblikat bl-Ingliz minn dar tal-pubblikazzjonijiet fi New York mhux ghax iddubitajt mill-onesta’ tieghek izda ghax tabilhaqq kont interessat inkun naf. Il-fatt li ma tezisti l-ebda prova li kellek rumanz tieghek maqlub bl-Ingliz u ppubblikat minn dar tal-pubblikazzjoni fi New York juri bic-car ic-ckunija tieghek – mhux bhala kittieb imma bhala bniedem. Meta tqis l-eta’ tieghek u li ta’ dik l-eta’ wiehed suppost ikun akkwista certu gherf baziku (izjed u izjed jekk it-tali jippretendi li huwa intellettwali), allura jkolli nikkonkludi li l-meskinita’ tieghek, Frans, tirrifletti l-meskinita’ ta’ poplu maghluq fin innifsu li biex ikabbar l-ambjent tieghu jdawwar il-hitan kollha bil-mirja u allura jibqa’ jara lilu biss. U jikber bl-idea li hu fic-centru, li hu “l-intelletwali”, li hu “l-aqwa” u li haddiehor huwa inferjuri. Frans, onestament, taghmel hafna izjed gid lilek innifsek u lir-reputazzjoni ta’ kittieba ohra jekk ma tinzilx f’certu bassezzi.
Amanda years of articles say otherwise – it’s all there in black and white.
Incidentally, I wonder what a Freudian analyst would make of someone who is firmly convinced that everybody else is envious of him/her.
@Ganni Borg
My jellyfish sting is OK now and thank you for asking.
I ended my last post with a comment about the good faith or otherwise of your posts (and those of the other Borg, of which we know there are many, real or not) and on the basis of this last one I’m leaning towards the bad faith theory.
Either that or you have based all your memories on the orizzont and a surfeit of repeated-election-loss driven moping sessions sipping beer at some MLP club whilst bitterly moaning at the injustice of the world.
Certainly your repeated twisting of the facts in the Pullicino affair would suggest the former. The phrase ‘if he knew about it’ is particularly revealing. Your denials of existing, documented court judgements also support this theory.
Incidentally, in Malta you cannot be found guilty of a crime in a jury trial by 7-4, because the Maltese system employs 9 jurors. As most people know, Maltese juries are also notorious for not returning unanimous verdicts because ‘everyone knows everyone’ and in this way each juror can claim to have voted not guilty if ever confronted by the accused.
He was found guilty of the charges by a vote of 7-2, (complicity in causing an injury leading to death, failure to prevent a crime he was duty bound to prevent, perjury in a magisterial enquiry) and not guilty of the additional charge of perjury in a criminal trial by a vote of 6-3.
Tell me, were you one of those labour supporters clapping and throwing flowers at him outside Kordin when he was released in 2000?
I am not making extraordinary assertions, I am simply recounting the historic facts. I have probably forgotten far more but no doubt, I will continue to remember. I’m not sure whether I should be thanking or cursing you and other MLP apologists for bringing back these memories. A lot of memories seem to come back when one of you accuses the current government of something, rightly or wrongly as the case may be, and I begin to remember episodes far greater in scale and effect during the Mintoff era.
One of the legacies of that era is the promotion of mediocrity and the inculcation of the free lunch and ‘I’m owed a living’ principles. It seems to me your memories of the sixties must be clouded by this thinking.
With reference to my and your view of the sixties, GBO’s piece of paper, and Mintoff’s ‘forcing’ the British to do this and that, I suspect I’m going to start a polemic (which I’m not going to respond to) but here goes.
Your statement that the British would be biased (although the topic I was addressing was a previous accusation of brainwashing not bias) in their judgements because Mintoff ‘forced them to relinquish their hold’ is not only inaccurate but does not support your point.
The comments the High Commissioners wrote were not written to obtain publicity, but simply to report on the facts as they saw them in order to be properly equipped when making strategic decisions. Their objective would be to be as objective and unbiased as possible.
As to Mintoff’s ‘forcing etc’, it’s a rather optimistic view of a combination of the forced take over of property owned by private companies and brinkmanship resulting in a tenant deciding the deal was not good enough and opting not to renew the lease!
So lets not beat our breasts about Malta’s fight for freedom and call a spade a spade. I would also have liked to have Malta become an independent republic with no foreign bases all at one fell swoop. And lets face it, if there is an anglophile party in this country it’s the MLP not the PN.
My national pride would like to stand up and say that we fought and suffered for our freedom against all odds, against a foreign enemy and ultimately prevailed, but my brain tells me that we were used for 162 years and dumped when we had no more value (162? 172? 177? – what’s the difference?)
The fact of the matter is that by beginning of the 60’s (before, really) the British didn’t want us or need us anymore. In fact, if we didn’t ask for independence they would have shoved it down our throats.
As an aside, it is interesting to remember that at the time of the independence referendum, many nationalists were inclined to vote no because they anticipated Mintoff’s attempts at dictatorship and preferred the idea of foreign domination rather than local dictatorship. Most eventually voted yes when they realised the British were going to give us independence whether we liked it or not.
Its ironic that the closest thing we have to ‘throwing off the yoke of oppression is not 1964, 1974 or 1979, but 1987.
Back to our so-called battle for freedom, the fact is that, as usual, we were faced with a choice between negotiation and confrontation, and, again, as usual where Mintoff is concerned, the choice was confrontation leading to a bad deal with loss of face in the short term and economic stagnation in the medium term. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, can you?
And finally my view of our ‘fight for freedom’ is that on the 21st September we celebrate being kicked out of the orphanage, on the 13th December we celebrate stamping our foot on failing to get the deal we want, and on the 31st March we celebrate the end of the bad deal we negotiated. The day that comes closest to warranting a celebration is the 21st September, but in reality we’d probably be better off just celebrating the 8th September or preferably the 17th January 1799 and drawing a veil over the rest.
I’m not going to be writing in to defend the above paragraph, by the way.
Still, as I mentioned, my national pride would love us to have become an independent republic with no bases after a heroic struggle (or not have been a colony in the first place) but the only consolation is that as long as we are net beneficiaries of the EU budget and the British are net contributors, we can indirectly collect some of the back rent they owe us.
Again, I can’t help remembering that it is the MLP which conspired to try and stop me having even that minimal amount of satisfaction.
Ganni Borg – The moment people like you start posting such comments, the more they prove that – no matter how much (in their own eyes, at least), they have “moved up” in the world – the chip on their shoulder has not, AND WILL NEVER EVER go away.
Some things will never change. “Hdura” and “mibeda lejn min (tahseb li) ghandu” are but two of them. That is why you don’t have the guts to post comments under your REAL name, because you can’t profess one thing and act another way, can you?
Ganni Borg: What argument?
“Ganni Borg” – The last thing you could do is compare Daphne with somebody narcissistic, such as yourself or “Ray Borg”
@Silvan
Sammut never said there was an English translation of his book! :)
Sisters To the Rescue – Rock On!
Amanda wrote “The last thing you could do is compare Daphne with somebody narcissistic, such as yourself or “Ray Borg”
What would Amanda say to a person who, a few years back, solemnly informed us that a taxi driver in a foreign city had asked her if all the women in Malta were as good looking as she was?
(PS: I have no idea who Ray Borg is.)
Ganni Borg: at least we use our real names, unlike you – which is why your opinions are devoid of credibility, falling into the category of ‘Disgusted from H’Attard.’ Are you a man or a mouse? Or maybe you just don’t want us to know who you are because it would be too embarrassing? Or maybe you want to be able to suck up to me as and when necessary? Jahasra, x’mentalita miskina.
@ Amanda Mallia
You might wish to agree that each individual suffers from, and simultaneously enjoys, some degree of personal narcissism and, of course, I do not hesitate to include myself.
@ Corinne Vella
With all due respect towards you, any “independent” person, who follows respective, communicative exchanges in media and cyber space, will, or must, sometime win the impression that your good self and Daphne do act in a “closely-knit sisterly” tandem, which per se is not a crime. Hence, one could benevolently understand Ganni Borg’s last remark.
Leo Said – I know of no such case in any of my blood-relatives, and thus not being accustomed to it – find any such behaviour insufferable.
Ganni Borg (& Leo Said) – It is not a case of sisters sticking up for each other. You would know that despite being quite different in appearance and outlook, my siblings and I do share the same principles and morals, and are not afraid to speak our mind, and do so USING OUR REAL NAME. We would, and have done, the same for others, and never do so with the intention of any gain. The same cannot be said about you. At least we have the guts that many others sorely lack.
Ganni Borg – Re taxi driver comment – First of all, I don’t remember it, secondly, I would say that it’s irrelevant, and thirdly: why? You seem to be keeping track of irrelevant little snippets about Daphne, confirming simply that you – like “Ray Borg” and others – are not much more than a sniping bitch with an axe to grind, and a mega chip of your narrow shoulders! Maybe it’s time you went back to talking in front of the mirror – At least your reflection won’t contradict you.
Let’s see – on this blog we have Amrio, MikeC, Chris I, Kieli, Silvan, Undecided, Gozo, Kevin – just to mention a few. All anonymous posters, yet I have never seen any criticissm
Are we to understand that it is ok to agree with you anonymously and chicken to disagree wuth yoyu anonymously?
Leo, Corinne and I don’t act in tandem. We rarely meet or speak to each other over the telephone. We stand out because the presence of women in public debates is unusual, and the presence of those who can make a coherent argument more unusual still. The fact that we are sisters is the common link to this predisposition, but it is not the common link to anything else.
Ganni Borg, it wasn’t a taxi driver, it was an Italian politician in Rome. You quite clearly belong to the ranks of those who so obsessed with me and every nuance of my behaviour that you track every word I write or say, and file it away for future reference. The incident you mention took place in the winter of 1998 (I have the memory of an elephant), which means that you have been ruminating about it for a full decade. Please join the unofficial club of Daphne’s neurotic stalkers, which is run by Marie Benoit and frans Sammut. I’m quite sure they’d be thrilled to have another fanatic on board.
MikeC, your jellyfish sting may be better, but you nerves still seem to be frayed and raw.
Actually, your post is quite suited to the festa season, as it’s like one of the murtali – a big bang, lots of bright spots going in every direction and disappearing into nothing after a few seconds.
As usual, I will answer (where an answer is possible. given the diffuse nature of many of your statements) in point form.
– I’m glad to see that the word “manslaughter” does not figure in your post. You seem to have seen the light. I would like to think that you have realised that you cannot rewrite history to suit your perceptions, but you comments about the process leading to Malta’s independence indicate otherwise.
– Your allegation that I was one of those celebrating Pullicino’s release in 2000 is dishonest, to say the least. I have made it clear in previous posts that if (that “if” is a rhetorical “if” – I imagined you would have a better grasp of the English idiom) if, as I said, Pullicino knew of what was happening to Debono and failed to stop it, he deserved to be dismissed and punished. But not 15 years in jail while the man who had actually committed the crime walked free with a presidential pardon. I believe in justice, not in political revenge for real and perceived wrongs.
– I will not grudge you your glee when you “caught me out” inadvertently writing “7-4” instead of “7-2 ” as I intended. Enjoy. But your remark that “Maltese juries are also notorious for not returning unanimous verdicts because ‘everyone knows everyone’ “ is a double edged sword, because it would entitle me to speculate that those who voted for conviction may well have done so to please the authorities who were clearly bent on “getting” Pullicino at all costs. Apparently you only agree with juries when they return the verdicts you want then to – just like your former leader who slammed the whole jury system when 3 juries stubbornly refused to believe the evidence of his dear friend of the good and not-so-good qualities.
– When all is said and done, the basic facts of the Nardu Debono Case are as follows:
a) Nardu Debono, a well known PN thug, was caught red-handed placing a huge bomb outside Pullicino’s flat;
b) He was arrested, assaulted at the depot and died of his injuries;
c) The man who confessed to actually killing him (Gejtu Pace) walked free with a presidential pardon;
d) Pullicino was found guilty of complicity and of failing to prevent the crime and got 15 years.
e) A little known fact is that the policeman (I forget the name) who was found to have removed Debono’s body from the depot and dumped it, was retained in the corps and received several promotions under the PN gov.
Those are the facts – which are sacred. Only comment is free.
– You may well be right in saying that, by the late 60s, Britain was ready to shed its colonies, but you are forgetting one vital element – the NATO strategic picture. Read it up.
– Since you have stated a priori that you will not defend your views on the road to true independence, I will not comment on them, except to say that you have made it clear that you are one of those who still hanker after British rule. After nigh on twenty years of PN rule, I cannot really blame you.
Leo Said: Thank you. I now feel reassured that I won’t be thrown into jail for saying what I think publicly and in my own name. Some people believe otherwise.
PS “benevolently understand” as opposed to what? Malevolently understand?
Leo Said: Incidentally, why is your sole contribution here a word in defence of “Ganni Borg’s” criticism of someone else’s comments? Surely, as someone who follows exchanges “in media and in cyberspace” (now there’s a redundancy, if ever there was one) you have several well informed opinions about a great many things more than that?
http://www.youtube.com/user/SammutMalta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Jean-Pierre_Sammut
http://www.freewebs.com/liberalalliance/newspage.htm
http://www.korea-dpr.com/kfaorg/official_delegates.htm
http://freekorea.us/2005/01/05/solidarity-anti-imperialism-and-hot-babes-2/
http://huntinginmalta.org.mt/index.pl/forum?func=showMessage&mid=107132&sid=&wid=62
Q.E.D.
Dear Daphne, not having been there, I cannot say who made the actual remark (if it was ever mad, which I doubt). What I am 100% sure about is that, when you wrote about it, you said it was a taxi driver.
I remember it well – how can you forget something that made you laugh for a week?
Corinne, there is no redundancy in “in media and in cyberspace” as the media could be a printed newspaper which is not in cyberspace.
@Religio et Patria
Oh the Little Man must be so proud!
@Ganni Borg,
If you are trying to sell a load of tripe that you bought about a time you did not live through (either that or you are you are a rather dim person who never left these shores during that period or a compulsive liar) do not insult the people who lived through the ordeal that was the labour governmen by denying the trials we went through.
I still remember when I was 10 and labour tried to deny me my basic right to an education by closing down my school, forcing me to study underground.
I still remember the daily violence in Malta, which as a child was terrifying, and my parents warning me EVERY day not to mention politics outside the house.
I still remember not even being allowed chocolate or pasta or even a simple remote controlled toy. My father had to smuggle one in for me! Cordless phones were another strict no no.
These are facts, Ganni Borg, undeniable simple facts!
Ganni Borg: There is. Cyberspace is a medium. The media cannot be a printed newspaper. The latter is singular; the former is plural.
Attacking opponents through attacks on their families must be catching, like the plague. And just as vile.
David Buttigieg – “Ganni Borg” ovvjament wiehed li kien “ta’ gewwa”, u li kien (u ghadu) Laburist ahrax, wiehed min dawk ta’ dawk iz-zminijiet koroh. You can’t expect much better from such a person.
David Buttigieg, I’m suprised you did not mention Mars Bars – I thought that was the main reason for all those foot-stamping tantrums.
– Did you ever stop and consider the fact that the restrictions were necessary to build up the economy from scrtach after absolute void left by the PN Govs of the 60s? Did you ever think that if there had been cooperation instead of obstructionism and sabotage, the retrictions would have been lifted that much sooner?
– Re the schhols issue – could tell me why the PN Govs post-87 have not reversed any of the reforms carried out at that time?
Take your time.
Really, Ganni Borg/Victor Laiviera? Frans Sammut makes out that he is scandalised because I am the sort of dreadful mother who actually has – horrors – a 19-year-old son who says ‘fuck off’, my god. I think people should be told that he has the sort of son who tries to board a plane with a gun in his handbag, and another one who is the weirdo in Religio et Patria’s web-links above. Not only are they weird, but they’re hardly – oh, how shall I put it? – slim and beautiful. No wonder our Frans is such an angry man.
Ganni Borg: It’s not a good move to cite the economic policies of the government of the 70s and early to mid-80s. Mars bars were the least of the problem. Economies are not built up from scratch by inhibiting legitimate private enterprise nor by foisting sub-standard goods on one’s home market. That rubbish could be sold for money says much about the state people were kept in. That the market for goods and services could only be protected by preventing the entry of alternatives says much about the quality they offered. Ironically, you make your absurd arguments using a computer. Remember the time when those famed restrictions, which you applaud as sound economic policy, positioned technology as an enemy of the socialist state?
Ganni Borg, blanket protectionism didn’t build up the economy – come on, we both lived through it and we could see the economy was wrecked and that there was mass unemployment. It served to build up a few companies (good luck to them) and to make very few people very rich while everyone else went without. Socialists like yourself always ignore this aspect of things: that a market economy is the best guarantee of the greater good.
Isn’t this debate lovely? Xarabank – the online version.
@Ganni Borg
“Did you ever stop and consider the fact that the restrictions were necessary to build up the economy from scrtach after absolute void left by the PN Govs of the 60s?”
Only if the government is absolutely incompetent (as to be fair was the labour government)
“Did you ever think that if there had been cooperation instead of obstructionism and sabotage”
Did you really expect people to consume that CRAP? Desserta anyone?
“Re the schhols issue – could tell me why the PN Govs post-87 have not reversed any of the reforms carried out at that time?”
Actually they should have been, but the point remains that I was prevented from attending school! And I did not attend a church school by the way but a private school so the issue of church property did not even apply but those brutes stopped me going to school for a whole term anyway, in fact my school was closed for longer then any church school!
M Pace – Why not drink that long-awaiting bottle of champagne?
Daphne – Re Religio et Patria’s “Liberal Alliance” link, it doesn’t say much for any associates of a certain John Zammit (like J P Sammut, for example), who also seems to run this website:
http://www.freewebs.com/dommintoff/
Frans Sammut has another son to be proud of, besides the famous Mark-Anthony tal-patt mal-poplu who tried to get through airport security with a gun in his bag. He’s 33-year-old Jean Pierre, a fan of Norman Lowell, a member of the ‘Liberal Alliance’ and an ‘official delegate’ of the Korean Friendship Association, besides being a major fan of Kim Il Sung. He posts avidly on the Viva Malta forum, has quarrelled with Wikipedia because his pages were deleted, and he responded by telling them ‘Do you KNOW that this man is MY FATHER?’ and posted a link to Frans Sammut’s profile. And some people actually posted comments in the belief that he is Malta’s ambassador to Korea.
Check this link:
http://freekorea.us/2005/01/05/solidarity-anti-imperialism-and-hot-babes-2/
And here’s Frans’ son-to-be-proud-of arguing with those who are anti-Kim Il Sung:
…..The hoaxes just do not match ! My “dear” Jewish-Americans …. i can’t tell you to stop writing bullshit because, actually, you are the Sons of Bullshit itself ! But may i please suggest to you that, at least, you should co-ordinate your hoaxes !! Ha ! Ha ! When you invent a hoax: make it credible !! Nevermind ! Adolf Hilter did not manage to teach you a lesson, let alone if i could ! But nowadays there is a new “teacher” named Nuclear Weapon (Mr Hitler was not lucky enough to have it !). I’m sure that this new teacher will finally teach you Jews a lesson !!
Stop the lies about Korea ! Yeah, I’ve been in the Kareoke hall mentioned in this web-site. Hyangsan Hotel is a gigantic building which was built by the Koreans exclusively. (Unlike Koreans, the Americans always cry for Japanese help when it comes to architecture!)Accompanied by Mr Pak Kwang Ung and Mr Pak Jang Sik, I went up to the top floor, where, yes, there is a kareoke hall hosted by a lady. But it is not true that that lady offers (or is forced to offer) sexual services ….. IT IS A LIE !!In the world, Korea is the only HIV-free country, and Koreans want it to stay that way. Thus it can’t be true that there are slave-like ladies who are having sex with foreigners … I mean, such a thought does not even follow logic … Koreans would never engage in sexual contact with foreigners … … and if, for the sake of the argument, there are such ladies, then how is it that a particular Jewish-American web-site says that Generalissimo Kim’s son went to Japan (secretly) to visit a brothel ?
Jean-Pierre Sammut
Official Delegate:
Malta – Korea
The next time I meet Alfred Sant’s former cultural adviser, I must congratulate him on having produced two grown men who are just like their father.
Come to think of it, reading that post by Jean Pierre Sammut, the similarities to his father’s rhetoric somewhere up above on this thread are rather striking. It must be a pretty exciting household to live in, I must say.
@Daphne
“Come to think of it, reading that post by Jean Pierre Sammut, the similarities to his father’s rhetoric somewhere up above on this thread are rather striking. It must be a pretty exciting household to live in, I must say.”
Oh yes, it would make a fascinating realiy TV show.
Frans Sammut must be sooooooooo proud!
@Ganni Borg
I’m not sure where you got the idea that my nerves are raw, but on the subject of stinging, you really shouldn’t be talking. After all, you are the one who has watched his party degenerate from the Boffa peaks to the third rate circus act it is today, passing through a police-state period as it did. I’m sure that has given you an ulcer or two, especially the mental hoops you must force yourself through in order to defend it in the face of evidence of the indefensible.
Interestingly, I’ve never come across your articles, but then again I don’t actually read the labour papers very often, since as far as I am concerned they are just an amateur version of Pravda. Somebody has accused you of hdura, and I wasn’t going to bother, because hey, everyone can get a little intense when making a point. But people who HAVE read your articles, assuming you are the same Ganni Borg, have described you as such, so I suppose that puts your posts into perspective. I wonder, do you not even realize, that to anyone who remembers the 70’s & 80’s well, any contributor to the MLP organs or Xandir Malta has close to zero credibility?
Incidentally, over the years, when occasionally faced with a wavering PN voter, I have suggested that he/she read the labour papers, and the result has always been something along the lines of ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, thanks for the tip’. I wonder if it was your articles that did it!
Following that logic, I suppose I could just shut up and let you continue to make my point for me. And then again maybe not.
The fact that you continue to stick up for a man who led a police force (by example) with such a completely abysmal record, supervising frame-ups, planted evidence, torture and victimization, speaks volumes both about you and regime you attempt to defend. Because let us be clear, its not really the man you’re sticking up for, but the regime. And that is the reason why I don’t post with my full name. I don’t believe the labour party has changed and I don’t fancy being victimized or worse when the PN eventually gets it so completely wrong that the MLP HAS to get into government. But you have apparently been writing under a pseudonym for years, irrespective of who was in government, so what’s YOUR excuse?
With respect to your comment about manslaughter, in Maltese we call it involuntary homicide, so perhaps you can explain to me why complicity in causing an injury leading to death is any different from complicity in involuntary homicide? Or maybe it IS different? Maybe its actually worse, because it is not necessarily involuntary?
Anyway, to be frank, although it should have been clear that I was not claiming you WERE outside Kordin but just suggesting your tone implied your presence, I have to say that your post simply reinforces the idea. Suggesting I am dishonest because your post convinces me of something is a little unfair, although in keeping with the MLP pattern of feigning offence and claiming victimisation. And then you go on and strengthen my conviction. At this point, I have to conclude that if you weren’t there then you must have had a REALLY pressing prior engagement.
As to the facts, as far as I am concerned the facts are the sworn testimony and the judgement. But the MLP is notorious for ignoring legal judgements and preferring speculation and conspiracy theories, not to mention klikek, as long, of course, as the judgements do not support its claims.
I cannot remember one single occasion when the MLP has accepted a judgment of a court, a board, a commission etc etc that found against it or in contradiction of its accusations. As far as the MLP is concerned, if it loses, the referee MUST be corrupt or biased. The same applies to statistics. You do the same with your speculation and propaganda, and then think that because you dignify it with pompous statements about the truth being sacred, it makes it any less speculative. When the national enquirer (or the orizzont) claims that elvis is alive and well and living on Mars, well, you take it with a pinch of salt.
Interestingly, during the trial Pullicino never claimed the authorities were out to get him, as you suggest, but he DID claim that Anglu Farrugia was. What, ANOTHER labour vs labour xenata?
Your comment about the jury is also completely upside down. It is labour who has a history of violence and intimidation, so if anything it would have been the other way round. After all, it was only a couple of years at most after the law courts were ransacked by a labour mob. A ransacking, incidentally, which also led to evidence in other cases going missing. Whilst on the subject of stuff going missing, its interesting that after the MLP came to power again in 1996, the recently concluded and ready to be published magisterial report about the police force under labour vanished into thin air. All copies disappeared without trace.
I notice that in a comment to someone else that you somehow imply that free education in church schools is a labour achievement. If anything, Labour POSTPONED it, NOT brought it about. It was the PN which started a gradually increasing subsidy with the aim of making them completely free and Labour, as part of its regime creation plan, which stopped the subsidy and tried to close the schools. It was the PN, which in 1987 repealed the law passed by labour confiscating church property, and instead reached an agreement with the church to manage the property (which the church was clearly in no position to do) and use the income to finance the church schools.
Finally, on the colony question. I’m almost afraid to correct you with respect to the colony shedding in the sixties, just in case it was a typo and you use the usual labour pot/kettle whining trick and accuse me of taking advantage of a spelling mistake or something. It was the 50’s not the 60’s when the British started shedding colonies, and we would probably have gotten independence much earlier if it wasn’t for Mintoff’s harebrained integration scheme, subsequently followed by one of the u-turns for which labour has since become famous.
The NATO strategic picture is in part a megalomaniac exaggeration of our importance, but my point was that the whole thing was handled badly and the result was that we got a worse deal than we could have got with patient negotiation as opposed to threats and tantrums, ie the usual labour way. And then we went on to do untold damage to our relationship with western Europe (ie the ones who weren’t busy slaughtering their own citizens, unlike your friends behind the iron curtain, and yet we called them the Europe of Cain) and put off our EU accession by 20 years, instead of joining at a time when they were throwing money round like there was no tomorrow.
But to conclude that I am hankering for a return to British rule is the biggest joke of them all. Anyone who knows me and read your comment will be laughing fit to split his sides. So I can only conclude that you must either be joking or that your environment is so devoid of objectivity that you cannot recognize it when its staring at you in the face.
Finally, the PN has been in government for 20 years for a number of reasons, in part due to good policies, irrespective of the speed or quality of their execution, in part as a legacy of the MLP’s disastrous history which you are so eager to defend, and also in good measure because the MLP is such an incompetent joke its not even funny anymore. But then you know that. It DOES sting, doesn’t it?
MikeC – You told Ganni Borg “Interestingly, I’ve never come across your articles”. Try looking up “Victor Laiviera”.
@Ganni Borg/Victor Laviera,
You still haven’t even attempted to answer why I was barred from going to school, a PRIVATE non church school, by the labour regime!
@Ganni Borg/Victor ‘didn’t show up at Castille’ Laviera,
Not that you have answered anything else :)
@David
Many of us suffered during that period. They were crazy times.
Luckily, we then had the opportunity to keep studying, thanks to the innovations, or rather normalizations, introduced by the Fenech Adami Administrations.
David, may I ask you whether you did continue your studies? I hope you did, despite the efforts of the Mintoff/KMB regime to stop you, and many of us, actually.
Readers will remember how the Mintoff/KMB regime had made it impossible for many people to pursue tertiary studies. They will also remember the sponsor system, which was the apogee of sheer stupidity.
Luckily, those days are behind us, now. But many of us, still carry the scar. I still do.
MikeC, you said that something I said about you would make those who know you laugh. I can assure you they would not laugh half as hard as those who know me would laugh at your ridiculous and – yes – dishonest allegation that I am defending Lawrence Pullicino. I have said at least three times that if (rhetorical “if”, remember?) he knew about the Debono case and failed to stop it, he deserved to be booted out of the corps with ignominy and be punished. But not 15 years when the man who actually did the deed walked free. That was revenge, not justice and I am not afraid to say it, even though it may not be considered politically correct on both sides of the spectrum. You persist in ignoring this, because it does not fit in with your preformed ideas.
Given that fact, the rest of your ramble falls down like a house of cards. Life is just to short to bother replying to each and every exageration, haf truth and unwarranted assumption.
As for the rest of the posts, I have to admit feeling both amused and disturbed by the way the owner and administrators of this forum busy themselves to try (not very successfully) to ferret out the real identity of those who prefer to write under a nom de plume. Naturally, only those who hold opposing views. The members of the ooh-ahh chorus are exempt from this amateur sleuthing.
Besides being grossly unethical and a breach of trust with those who contribute to this forum, it is clearly an attempt at intimidation – “Be careful what you say cos we know who you are…”.
It would seem that the owners/administrators of this blog want only assenting views.
@John PH. Borg
“David, may I ask you whether you did continue your studies? I hope you did, despite the efforts of the Mintoff/KMB regime to stop you, and many of us, actually.”
Yes, I was only 10 at the time and the school (St Edwards) opened for the last 2 weeks of the first term.
Luckily by the time I got to university age KMB had been soundly eliminated from trying to screw up peoples’ futures.
@Ganni Borg
No answer I see
@David
Yeah, I understand.
But bloggers should also remember that not only access to University was made difficult by the Mintoff/KMB regime, but also the choice of courses. The Socialist regime had thought it fit to exclude certain courses “from the menu”. I, for one, would have never studied my course of choice, if the Socialists had their way.
Dave, did you in fact study what you wished for? Would you have had the same opportunity had the Socialist regime remained in power?
What really left me speechless was that the new Labour leader claimed – during his leadership campaign – that he owed his tertiary education to the Socialist government! It is incredible…
It seems like you knocked out Frans Sammut with one punch Daphne – the little man is still running squealing with his tail well and truly between his legs :)
Run RUN little man!
@Ganni Borg
Your comment about your usage of the word ‘if’ etc etc is not only completely ridiculously non-credible – there is no doubt he did not know about it – it is simply another convenient cop-out variant of phrases such as:
I’m not a racist but….. blah blah blah
It can only be interpreted as a defense and nothing else, unless you are a six year old who believes in the tooth fairy and I think we have established that it is not the case.
You are being exceedingly disingenous. But then again thats all the apologists for a regime can do, apart from sending in the thugs?
Also, it intentionally detracts from the original point that the MLP was well on the way to creating a police state by increments, and he was the head of that police state’s police force, and there is a weight of evidence and court judgments that show that not only could he not have not known about it but as head of the police force he was responsible for it.
So please don’t insult my intelligence. As to describing my post as a ramble, oh well, I suppose I’ll have to live with it. But just remember my comment about your credibility as a progagandist for a regime.
The rest of your comment is presumably addressed to the owner of the blog, although I do note that you must be implying that I am part of an ooh-ahh chorus, whatever it is, assuming it exists, and I have to correct this.
I am simply someone who thinks the MLP post Boffa is the biggest ever blot on our political history by far and attempts at minimising or revising this must be countered.
This blog is simply a convenient place to do that.
After the 1987 election I told myself that I would wait 20 years before assessing whether or not I could vote for the labour party. Those 20 years have passed, and the last election, as well as the fact that there are still people like you around, and presumably also within the party leads me to believe that it is a decision I will have to postpone for another 20 years, assuming I am still around.
David, or maybe Frans Sammut used his son’s get-away car. See here:
You know, I’m actually missing Frans Sammut. Victor Laiviera disguised as Ganni Borg is a poor substitute. Strange how he used his real name before the election, when he thought he was on to a winner, but is wearing dark glasses and a false moustache now.
@Daphne
That was hilarious :)
I miss Frans too :( I’m going to end up buying one of his books to remember him….
“The Socialist regime had thought it fit to exclude certain courses “from the menu”.
Correction : even if you entered a coarse in my case at MCAST {Msida} , in my case I was not sure wether my coarse was going to continue , and we were not sure about recognition of our Diploma from the UK.
I’m not sure what’s most hilarious – A man in his 40s or 50s playing around with a toy, the sight of the man himself, or the awful, put-on accent.
PS – Daph, you’re becoming like Meerkat
Re 0212hrs: I’d market it as a mobile podium for speakers who’d want to make a quick get-a-way after announcing the bad news
MikeC, I can seee where I went wrong now – I failed to realise you are the kind of person who needs to have things spelled out. So here goes.
– Yes Pullicini knew what was going on (no “ifs” – not even theoretical ones if it makes you happy).
– Yes he deserved to be drummed out of the corps and punished
Now do YOU have the guts, and are you man enough to tell us what you think of the fact that the man who actually did the deed walked free as a bird with a presidential pardon (from the same man who freed Queiroz and Zeppi l-Hafi) while the accomplice got 15 years?
What about the fact that the police officer who removed the body and dumped it was retained in the force and promoted under the PN? Straight answers would be appreciated, though there is little hope of that from someone who is as blinkered as you seem to be.
You don’t have to hurry to reply – I will be away for a while.
In the meantime, enjoy your Groupthink.
“Ganni Borg” says he will be away for a while. Time for another of our regular ‘groupthink’ pow wows to make sure that we’re on the same track when he returns.
Ganni Borg: Here’s something to chew on while you’re away. What is it you’ve ever said here that you’re afraid of owning up to in public?
You just caught me – but I don’t really understand what you mean.
If you are referting to the fact that I use s nickname, why are you asking me and not the others who use a nickname as well?
Calling MikeC, calling MikeC … cone in please.
Any thoughtd aboput the following?
——————————————
From human rights abuses to Group 4 – Joe Psaila
The former assistant commissioner indicted on human rights breaches is head of Group 4 security at Mater Dei
Joe Psaila’s insalubrious reputation seems to have done little to stop him from taking on the role of head of security at Group 4. After he was first employed by Skanska to act as their security liaison with Group 4, he was taken on by the private security firm as a director of security following the handover of the hospital to Mater Dei. Joe Psaila was employed by the new Managing Director of Group 4 Kenneth DeMartino.
Psaila was notorious in his role as a police inspector during the 1980s in various human rights breaches. But soon after the election of 1987, the new Nationalist government strangely promoted him to assistant commissioner and director of prisons.
————————————
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/08/03/t2.html
More grist for MikeC’s mill- if he has the stomach for it.
———————————————
Opinion makers absolve Joe Psaila
David Darmanin
After they had stepped up the pressure against Joe Psaila when he was still in the police force, Where’s Everybody directors Lou Bondì and Peppi Azzopardi have now absolved the former assistant commissioner indicted on human rights breaches.
The beneficiary of a direct order received for security at Mater Dei, Group 4 Securitas Managing Director Kenneth DeMartino was not deterred by Psaila’s far from good reputation when it came to employing him as security chief at the new hospital.
Irrespective of whether or not he is paid from taxpayers’ money, Bondi now considers Psaila to be a private individual, and has therefore no opinion on his appointment at Mater Dei.
Asked on whether he had a change of heart on Psaila, seeing that he had often written about his wrongdoings at the police force, Bondi said: “Back then I had an opinion on Joe Psaila because he was a public figure. Nowadays he occupies a private position and I don’t have an opinion on private persons.”
Peppi Azzopardi, who in 1994, was awarded Lm500 compensation for his illegal arrest that had taken place 10 years before under Psaila, opted for the magnanimous approach when confronted with the same question.
“I genuinely think that everyone can make mistakes. Joe Psaila has made mistakes from which I suffered. But this does not mean that he is to be condemned for the rest of his life. I think they have damaged Joe Psaila enough and that he got punished for what he did. I don’t know Joe Psaila and I never met him,” he said.
Daphne Caruana Gailzia had also been very outspoken on the Nationalist government’s decision to retain Psaila’s as Assistant Commissioner. She now says she would write on the matter if she had an opinion.
In her curt reply, Caruana Gailiza said: “When I have opinions I usually write about them in my columns. I don’t give quotes.”
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/08/10/t17.html
I see that MikeC has chickened out.
[Moderator – Comments beneath older posts are closed. We can’t keep going back to them ad infinitum. Get up to date with the newer threads.]