15 years for sex, and 11 years for importing heroin

Published: October 27, 2008 at 9:24pm

It’s not like we needed reminding that sex is a bigger crime in Malta than importing heroin.

The Times, Monday, 27th October 2008 – 18:39CET

Drug courier jailed for 11 years

A Libyan man was jailed for 11 years and fined €25,000 today after admitting to conspiring to import and importing more than two kilograms of heroin in 2005. Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono took into consideration Mr Alghrari’s clean police record, the time he had spent under arrest, and the help he had given to police that may result in criminal proceedings against third parties. He also took into consideration that Mr Alghrari had committed the crime for financial gain and if he managed to complete his task, all these drugs would have ended up in the Maltese market. Mr Justice Galea Debono said Maltese society has every right to protect itself from the assault of drug dealers either local or foreign and so the punishment should serve as a general deterrent.




66 Comments Comment

  1. Zizzu says:

    … I don’t know if this is draconian, or whether it is immoral even, but I would make drug dealers eat/snort/inject/whatever … their own drugs. In the above case he’d have to somehow ingest all the 2Kg of the drugs he tried to push.

    I have a feeling my idea verges on revenge rather than justice, though.

    [Daphne – Some of them do that already.]

  2. Zizzu says:

    I meant as a “punishment”. If you get caught importing/selling drugs you snort/eat/inject on the spot whatever you’ve got about your person.

  3. Mario P says:

    Zizzu – in Dubai when I was there many years ago, I noticed that all the newspapers had photos of people holding what looked like bags of flour. After asking around, I found that the law there requires convicted drug dealers to be photographed and their photos splashed on the front pages of all newspapers.

    As to your suggestion, nothing is too draconian with such vermin – I suggest that they spend a few hours with the relatives of their victims who died as assuredly from drugs as having a knife driven through their heart.

    [Daphne – Let’s not forget that there’s an element of will involved in taking dangerous drugs. At the point where you start, you’re as much to blame. And that’s why cigarette companies are not sued any more by the families of those who die of lung cancer. They knew what they were doing – there are warnings on the packet and enough media information. It was different in the past, when people believed, and were told, that cigarettes were actually good for them. And I don’t think we should be holding up the Middle East as a model of democratic thinking, either.]

  4. Mario Debono says:

    Its just not on. Having sex with someone involves one person, even if it was rape. Importing heroin has an effect on hundreds. The two sentences just dont do justice to the crime. Lets ask some more questions here. Who is financing these drug purchases? Do the police investigate cases of sudden enrichment and sudden ostentatious behaviour by those who were hard up?

  5. Kenneth Cassar says:

    I don’t believe that our justice system should include an element of revenge. If reform is impossible, locking up traffickers to prevent them from harming others would be sufficient.

  6. Zizzu says:

    I wouldn’t say that beginning to take drugs is always as black and white as you make it out to be. I’m no expert, but from what I’ve heard it’s a cocktail of pyschological issues …
    Drug peddlers do not play fair because they seek to make their money off other people’s misery, digging them deeper in the process, not to mention the harm they do to society at large.

    (You can counter that with “Rachel Vella and Joseph Chetcuti do just that” and you’d be right up to a point, but I don’t think you can compare the respective outcomes).

    [Daphne – The decision to start is a decision taken with one’s free will, and nobody else can or should be blamed. I draw the line where young teenagers are concerned, because they have little or no commonsense. But if you start taking hard drugs at any age above 17, then it’s your decision and yours alone.]

  7. Drew says:

    I’m not with you on this one Daphne. While I concur that a 15-year prison sentence for a one-time “rape” is harsh, I hardly think we can compare this to drug dealing crimes. A drug pusher is merely providing something which is in demand – there is no coercion no matter how you look at it. Blaming drug dealers for drug-related deaths is like blaming car companies for car accident fatalities.

    [Daphne – I don’t blame drug-dealers for drug-related deaths. Read my earlier remarks. Grown-ups are responsible for their own actions. My observation is that – going by sentencing – importing heroin (11 years and EUR25,000 fine) is more of a crime than repeatedly raping a nine-year-old girl (seven years) or a 10-year-old boy for the video camera (10 years), but less of a crime than forcing a woman to have sex with you once (15 years). You will agree, I trust, that this is ludicrous.]

  8. Drew says:

    I posted the comment before reading your reply to Zizzu. I agree with you 100%, I guess I didn’t take into consideration the fact that drugs are also sold to underage people…

  9. Muad'dib says:

    I agree with Daphne. If you’re 18+, it is your responsibility if you die by drugs. We don’t need a nanny government to take care of dropouts and hippies.

    [Daphne – I disagree that those who only have themselves to blame for their condition should be neglected and not helped. By that same token, we should refuse health care to smokers who develop lung cancer, to those who crash while drunk, and even to those who have diving accidents (who told them to go diving?). Indeed, the justification for the role of the state in banning dangerous substances and even the more common forms of dangerous activity, like driving without wearing a seat-belt or not using a crash-helmet on a bike, is that it is the state which has to bear the financial cost and healthcare logistics of the consequences. The argument backing a state ban is the limitation of the state’s liabilities. If the state didn’t have to pick up the bill, the state would be hard-pressed to justify a ban, which is why the US has such a hard time justifying bans in an environment that draws together strong views on civil liberty and little or no state health care. Dangerous drugs are banned not because people can’t be allowed to make their own decisions, but because other people have to pick up the tab when it all goes haywire. I would rather live in a country which bans dangerous drugs but looks after addicts who seek treatment than in a country which doesn’t ban dangerous drugs but uses the ‘free will’ argument to let its addicts die on the streets.]

  10. Moggy says:

    One’s sense of free will is sometimes obfuscated by other things that are going on in one’s life – mental illnesses including depression, the psychological repercussions of a flawed bringing-up, personality disorders….and on and on the list goes. These people normally need a prop, and some are unenightened or desperate enough to choose the wrong one. You speak about people over 17 as though they are made of high tensile steel and nothing much else, Daphne – what goes on in a pained mind or soul seems to be totally irrelevant to you.

    [Daphne – That’s not the case at all. However unhappy or confused we are, we remain responsible for our actions unless we are certifiably insane or have been diagnosed as being of subnormal intelligence. Misery or mental duress are arguments for sympathy and for lesser penalties in a court of law, but they are not the same thing as saying ‘I didn’t know what I was doing’ or the even less amusing ‘The devil tempted me.’ I draw the line at 17 because that is when commonsense starts coming into play. You make the common mistake of assuming that it is misery that makes people turn to drugs. It isn’t. It is usually lack of intelligence and the inability to take sound decisions. This character trait is present whether the person is miserable or not. When you have a confluence of an inability to take good decisions and misery, that’s when the trouble starts. And that’s why the former drug-addicts who go on to make a success of their lives are so few and far between, though they do exist. It’s because the poor decision-taking abilities that led them to take the drug for the first time are the very same ones causing them to make the wrong decisions in the rest of their life afterwards. Millions of people have been utterly miserable and had terrible childhoods without getting hooked on dangerous drugs. It is almost always because their intelligence stops them from doing it.]

  11. Pat says:

    “Who is financing these drug purchases? Do the police investigate cases of sudden enrichment and sudden ostentatious behaviour by those who were hard up?”

    It did state that his sentence was reduced due to tips received to prosecute further people. I can’t be sure what I feel about the reduced sentence for tips system. Technically it’s a good idea, as criminals tend to know about other criminals, but there is quite a bit of room for abuse.

  12. Mario P says:

    Daphne, evidently you don’t know enough about what goes on in this particular part of the underworld. Dealers/pushers prey on their victims even when the latter are trying hard to rehabilitate. Put it down to weakness in character on the victim’s part but pressure from the pusher is highly likely to result in a reversion. Also there is the financial aspect – most victims are in debt to the pushers and have to do their biding to (maybe) pay off part of their debt.

    NB – thanks for correcting the typo in my previous post.

    [Daphne – On the contrary, I know rather a lot about it because I come from a generation laid waste by heroin addiction, which killed several of my contemporaries and damaged or derailed the lives of many others. Yes, the pushers continue to chase their customers, but make no mistake about it, if this didn’t happen, the customers would be chasing the pushers, just as the ‘smart-but-stupid’ people are now all chasing cocaine. It’s not like the cocaine-dealers are mugging grown men and women in their 30s and 40s, who work in offices and the law courts by day, and forcing them at gun-point to buy cocaine, for heaven’s sake. You don’t stop an alcoholic from drinking by keeping him away from alcohol, because he will only go out and look for some, or drink up the pharmacy’s entire supply of cough medicine.]

  13. Kenneth Cassar says:

    The only excuse for starting to take addictive drugs is ignorance of the consequences of the addiction, although I can make a safe guess that only a few would fall into this category. Another reason could be low self-esteem, which might induce one to not even care about the consequences.

    That said, I believe that free-will plays little part in people’s lives, and if we had any possibility of tracing every person’s actions to their cause (psychological or genetic), we would find little room for free-will. What I mean, in simple terms, is that most of our choices in our life could not have been otherwise (or at the most, we had a limited variety of choices from which to choose).

    It is for this reason that I believe that justice should not include vengeance. If locking up harmful people is sufficient to protect others, that would be sufficient, in my opinion.

  14. Love says:

    Hey Daph, heard anything? Or is it just something they set up?
    http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msrv/msfullart.asp?an=24951

    [Daphne – I must say I was confused at first because the headline says ‘daughter’ while the opening sentence says ‘youth’. Then I saw that this youth is called Julia and so I remembered that Kurt Farrugia at Maltastar.com doesn’t know much English and is unaware that a youth is a young man, as distinct from youth as a generic term which refers to all young people. Anyway, I called the super-helpful Amanda Ciappara, who liaises with media over at the health secretariat, and she tells me that there are a magisterial inquiry and a separate departmental inquiry underway and that no information can be given until it is available – and that Maltastar.com knew this before they published the story. What really grates is that the pipsqueaks at Maltastar.com put perceived political advantage before loyalty to their own country, so when an understandably fraught and hysterical German woman whose daughter has just died – apparently of a tropical illness contracted elsewhere – begins to scream to the German media about how dirty the natives’ hospitals were, and how the natives didn’t know what they were doing, they back her up, even though our state hospital is as good as the best German hospitals and better than the rest, and we know that the real problem here is that some Germans perceive everyone south of Rome to be a filthy and inept tribesman.]

  15. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Mario P “nothing is too draconian with such vermin”

    using your own logic we should be locking up those car dealers who sell fast cars to our young men, this causes much more deaths than drugs do , not only to these young men but also to their passengers and innocent thord parties, not to mention the large cost and burden of treating these trauma patients in our overcrowded hospital.

  16. Zizzu says:

    @ Kenneth Cassar

    Hello again :)

    I agree that my “suggestion” could be interpreted as “revenge” and as you rightly point out, a fair system of judgement should not include revenge.

    On the other hand I can’t see how locking up convicted/known pushers will solve the problem. You’d have to isolate them completely from the outside world. How fair is that? I don’t think that we can use the argument that if they didn’t care why should we? If we did we’d be getting our own back rather than administering justice.

  17. Zizzu says:

    @ Daphne

    I think that you are assuming that everybody experiences and deals with stress in the same way you would.

    You said that “it is usually lack of intelligence and the inability to take sound decisions” that drive people to at least try drugs. Let’s ignore the “lack of intelligence” because that is highly subjective. “The inability to take sound decisions” is a bit of a “dustbin group”, isn’t it?

    Where did the “inability” originate? Obviously not under “normal circumstances”. So what are the “abnormal circumstances”?

    I know a person who had a very unhappy life at home. When she went out she was a “wild one”, always reasoning that “life is now”. She did not look for drugs, but she was game for anything, so it was no big surprise when we learnt that she was on coke. At least this story had a happy ending, because she met a guy who loved her and miraculously managed to pull her out of her situation. She herself admits that “self pity” and “lack of love” pushed her to try “new things” every day.

    Ok, so this is only one case and by no means statistically significant, but my point is that you can never tell how the mind behaves under [subjectively] extreme pressure.

    [Daphne – No, I don’t assume that everybody experiences stress and deals with it in the same way that I do, but I can tell by simple observation that ALMOST EVERYBODY does, which is why there aren’t more alcoholics or drug-addicts around. Everybody goes through major periods of stress, but relatively few people deal with it through self-destructive behaviour. The girl you describe is a classic case of somebody who makes stupid decisions and behaves stupidly – she sounds like a zillion others who were my contemporaries. And they continued to make ‘different’ decisions for the rest of their lives so far, even after they ‘settled down’. Even if this girl didn’t have an unhappy life at home, she would have found another excuse – too happy at home, perhaps, too bored, too much money to spend, too little to spend. One of my childhood friends who died of a heroin overdose came from an extremely happy and comfortable home and had a very close-knit family.]

  18. Kenneth Cassar says:

    @ Zizzu:

    Revenge is a natural feeling, and I don’t take it against anyone who feels a need for revenge. This is one of the reasons why relatives and friends of an accused or a victim cannot be members of the jury.

    Regarding locking people up (if they cannot be rehabilitated), this would be the lesser evil. It would guarantee the safety of the innocent, while harming as little as possible the guilty.

    I know life isn’t fair, but we have to deal with it the best we can.

  19. Drew says:

    “If the state didn’t have to pick up the bill, the state would be hard-pressed to justify a ban, which is why the US has such a hard time justifying bans in an environment that draws together strong views on civil liberty and little or no state health care. Dangerous drugs are banned not because people can’t be allowed to make their own decisions, but because other people have to pick up the tab when it all goes haywire.”

    And that is why I’m against universal health care! But nonetheless, even under the current circumstances, how is it justified to ban certain drugs and not others? Sure the state is doing its utmost to limit tobacco smoking and drinking, but the fact of the matter is they’re still available and legal to consume. Why shouldn’t other drugs also be treated in this manner? Why are we criminalising drug use rather than treating it as a medical issue, as it in fact is?

    The arguments that the illegal drugs are more dangerous and addictive simply don’t hold up as many studies have shown that for example marijuana is less harmful and addictive than cigarettes. And is it really the case that illegal drug use is a bigger burden on state health care than legal drug use?

    [Daphne – You’re against universal health care? And for the decriminalisation of dangerous drugs that are now banned? I’d hate to live in any country you’re running. As for why the state bans some and not others, I imagine that it operates on the sane principle of damage limitation. In other words, there isn’t much it can do about cigarettes at this late stage, though they would have been banned had they been invented today, but anything else that causes addiction and death on a major scale it’s going to ban. The best argument against the liberalisation of drugs is the situation with arms in the US, where you can just go out and buy one, and look at the results.]

  20. Drew says:

    The country in question would be The Netherlands – they still have a universal system as such, however it differs substantially from the “kollox b’xejn u ahli kemm tiflah” Maltese model. Personally I’d rather live in a free country rather than a nanny state – to me, the notion that the government knows what’s best for me is abhorrent. Oh well, I guess I’m a libertarian nut!

  21. Drew says:

    “The best argument against the liberalisation of drugs is the situation with arms in the US, where you can just go out and buy one, and look at the results.”

    Well, what’d you know, I’m also against gun control (although I do think the situation in the US is way out of hand). However, I don’t think you can compare decriminalisation of drugs to the gun culture of the US – I’m not advocating that illegal drugs be legal and easy to purchase, as is the case with guns in America. Decriminalisation simply means not throwing people in jail for using illegal drugs. It doesn’t mean that one would be able to go to the grocery store and purchase a six-pack of heroin or whatever.

    [Daphne – There’s decriminalisation of possession for personal use, and liberalisation/decriminalisation of sale. While I’ll agree to the former, I can never agree to the latter.]

  22. Mariop says:

    @ London Area – it’s not a fair comparision. Fast cars give pleasure to a lot of people. The ones who die from excessive speeding are not ‘victims’ of car dealers but of their own inability to handle the car. Most, however, continue to enjoy the car till the end of it’s life. On the other hand, with drugs, you are only going one way and that’s six feet under.

  23. London Area says:

    @ MarioP

    ” it’s not a fair comparision. Fast cars give pleasure to a lot of people. The ones who die from excessive speeding are not ‘victims’ of car dealers but of their own inability to handle the car. Most, however, continue to enjoy the car till the end of it’s life. On the other hand, with drugs, you are only going one way and that’s six feet under ”

    it’s not a fair comparision. Fast drugs give pleasure to a lot of people. The ones who die from excessive drugs are not ‘victims’ of drug dealers but of their own inability to handle the drug. Most, however, continue to enjoy the drug till the end of their life. On the other hand, with cars, you are only going one way and that’s six feet under.

    [Daphne – ‘Most continue to enjoy the drug to the end of their life,’ you say. Yes, but the point at issue is when that life ends – at 25, 35, 45 or 55, but rarely at, say, 85 – which is the normal lifespan. I also take issue with your use of the word ‘enjoy’ – need and the satisfaction that comes from fulfilling that need are not the same as enjoyment. This is hardly a cigarette afterwards we’re talking about where heroin is concerned. And as for marijuana, which is the banned drug most people bring up when they want to justify legalisation, I agree that it is far from being a killer, and that the case for keeping it banned is weak – but here’s the thing: the people who continue to smoke it right through their adulthood may be enjoying it; what they don’t know is that others have long ceased to enjoy them. My patience with the eroded brains and wandering thought processes of habitual marijuana-smokers my own age has long since worn thin, leaving just the merest smattering of pity mixed with contempt. By the time they are 70, they are going to have to pay people to talk to them.]

  24. Mario P says:

    @ London Area – you’re trivialising the subject. For that matter you can replace drugs with any other object. What I should emphasise is that it is the abuse of drugs which kills people – even ‘good’ drugs. What’s bad about bad drugs is that the craving for another hit turns one into an unreasoning animal.

  25. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne
    “marijuana is the banned drug most people bring up when they want to justify legalisation”

    You got me wrong. I was not trying to justify the legalisation of illegal drugs, I was justifying a ban on fast cars, and the jailing of car dealers.

  26. Sybil says:

    [Daphne – My patience with the eroded brains and wandering thought processes of habitual marijuana-smokers my own age has long since worn thin, leaving just the merest smattering of pity mixed with contempt. By the time they are 70, they are going to have to pay people to talk to them.]
    What makes you think that they will eventually make it to 70 (apart from a few exceptions, that is)?

  27. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Mario P

    I don’t know what circles you mix in , but on Saturday nights I worry more about my teenage kid not returning home after being killed by a speeding driver , then by a drug overdose. Statistically there are far more youths killed or maimed by cars then by drugs, in my area anyway.
    I say extend the minimum driving age to 21 , put speed restrictions up till 25 and have frequent road blocks around Paceville on weekends. That should reduce deaths of young people by at least half.

  28. Sybil says:

    LONDON AREA Wednesday, 29 October 1503hrs
    @ Mario P
    I don’t know what circles you mix in , but on Saturday nights I worry more about my teenage kid not returning home after being killed by a speeding driver, then by a drug overdose………..

    Most people who are parents worry about their kids anyway for all reasons under the sun no matter how old or young their “kids” may be. That is human nature.

    [Daphne – London Area probably doesn’t have kids.]

  29. Mario P says:

    @ Sybil, don’t worry about that. If the drugs don’t get them, the fast cars will !!!

  30. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne

    “Daphne – London Area probably doesn’t have kids”

    I have seven actually ! So there!

    and the elder two are now teenagers and will be of driving age licence within a couple of years. I can envisage many sleepless nights once they get their licence and once their boy- friends start showing off by speeding along the coast road or along the Rabat road with a couple of vodkas in their head.
    Drugs are the least of my problems, I don’t personally know of any youths killed by drugs , the ones I hear of seem to be from the poorer social areas around the harbour, but I can name friends many killed or maimed by cars.

    [Daphne – What are you, a rabbit or something? That aside, you’re nuts not to worry about them taking illegal drugs. They don’t have to die for it to become a problem or to create problems, like a police record or the wrong set of friends.]

  31. NGT says:

    @ LONDON AREA “the ones I hear of seem to be from the poorer social areas around the harbour”. They are the ones who get named in the papers… DCG can tell you a thing or two about some people who never get their names in the papers… she wrote an article about one person in particular a few years back.
    Addicts with bad problems can be found across the class spectrum… and money doesn’t really soften the suffering. Pay Caritas a visit one day to see just how bad the problem is.

    [Daphne – That’s right.]

  32. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne – “What are you, a rabbit or something?”

    I won’t go there except to say we had to spend quite a few cold winters in London while I was studying , with not enough money to afford TV licence.

    @ Daphne – ” That aside, you’re nuts not to worry about them taking illegal drugs. They don’t have to die for it to become a problem or to create problems, like a police record or the wrong set of friends.”

    I think you’re even more nuts than me to even try to compare the finality of tragioally seeing your child to the grave , as compared to problems I would consider as relatively trivial, such as police records, wrong friends or teenage pregnancies. I suppose we all have different priorities in life.
    I would invite you to view the excellant documentary that is currently free for viewing on Channel 4’s internet site that looks at the other side of drug-taking in youths. it is a daring documentary that looks at the way teenagers view drugs, and the positive effects that some teenagers describe such as increased confidence, descreased tension etc. Not that a few don’t end up badly , but these few tend to have other social problems anyway and would likely have ended up badly anyway. Having worked in the emergency department in St Lukes for many years I have seen first hand the death and destruction that teenage driving deaths cause. I will never forget the look on the face of a mother when she was faced with the news that her pretty teenage daughter had just been literally skinned alive after flying through a windscreen of a car driven by her teenage boyfriend , and whose daughter was now was facing an inevitable and agonising death. Now will I forget expression on the face of a father whose wife and four young children were just killed by a 19 year old boy-racer who lost control of his high-powered car and careered into this poor wife’s MPV killing all instantly (this was in London).

    [Daphne – You couldn’t afford a television licence, but seven kids were no problem. Unless you have the sort of mind that prevents you from worrying about 50 things at once – they’re called men, I believe – you can worry about car crashes AND illegal drugs, and most parents of kids that age do unless they have their heads in the sand. I never told myself: ‘Oh don’t worry about drugs. Car crashes are so much worse.’ Using illegal drugs is a more likely scenario than dying or being maimed in a crash. How many teenagers die or are maimed in crashes, and how many get into trouble with drugs? Work out the numbers. The last thing a teenager needs is a father who doesn’t take illegal drug use extremely seriously (“Oh, I’ve smoked a few joints in my time…”). Let’s put it this way, of my contemporaries none died in a car crash, perhaps five almost did – I was one of them, incidentally – but I have lost count of the number who died of heroin overdoses, or had their lives ruined by an addiction to other drugs – yes, even the ‘harmless’ marijuana has fried their brains this far down the line. OK, there were fewer cars then, but there were also fewer drugs.]

  33. Crissy says:

    Mentioning the area around the harbour, I have just read this on the Times

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081029/local/cospicua-school-to-take-unprecedented-action-after-all-pupils-fail-lyceum-exam

    Poor kids, no wonder they end up taking drugs if they felt they are dropouts!

    [Daphne – It’s obvious what has to be done: dispersing them to other schools, instead of grouping them together with a special curriculum for failures. The last thing they need is to stay together in the same classroom, one affecting the other.]

  34. LONDON AREA says:

    @NGT – “Pay Caritas a visit one day to see just how bad the problem is.”
    actually I worked with drug addicts for a couple of years, first in the detox unit and then in the prison in Kordin. Most seemed to be from the Cottonera area, but I agree there was a wide spectrum. I am not saying that drugs are not a problem, but the extent of the problem is grossly exaggerated. There are much bigger problems in Malta, such as driving, alcohol, child abuse and general lawlessness and criminality. My experience of teenage drug addicts is that they are generally spoilt, or come from broken families or have psychiatric problems. I am no expert in this field, I am just sharing my observations. My wife worked in this field for years and she agrees that the main factor seems to be that these kids have been spoilt in some way during their childhood. I don’t want to sound too bullish but if they are anything my kids are definitely not spoilt and i cannot imagine them even ever trying drugs let alone becoming addicts.

    [Daphne – The fact that your children are not spoiled will NOT stop them trying drugs and from then on, it’s a matter of whether they become addicted or habitual users or not. Working with drug addicts makes you miss the other reality: all those who are using drugs without coming into contact with health workers. Please tell me what isn’t dangerous or problematic about a 16-year-old who is experimenting, not least because he hasn’t got the money to do so. The problems are not just those of addiction, but of funding – so you steal, or you sell.]

  35. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne “You couldn’t afford a television licence, but seven kids were no problem”
    to be honest we were given 100 english pounds per child as child benefit, whioh total of 700 english pounds amounted to a salary in those days, Not that I produced babies for money of course (just in case my wife is looking at this blog) but it helped. I am paying the price for it now of course with all of them in private schools in Malta it is costing me much more than 700 pounds a month, but i can well afford it now.

    @Daphne “Let’s put it this way, of my contemporaries none died in a car crash, perhaps five almost did ”
    are you sure about this? because I know of at least three people killed in car-crashes sho were more or less your age and your kind of circles, surely you would remember these. And no, I know of no friends of mine who ended up in big trouble with drugs (and I was no saint when I was a teenager), and yet four of my friends died in car-crashes.

    [Daphne – Yes, I’m sure.]

  36. Drew says:

    “you can worry about car crashes AND illegal drugs, and most parents of kids that age do unless they have their heads in the sand”

    And what about the legal drugs? Getting drunk is acceptable but getting high is not?

    [Daphne – No, getting drunk is not acceptable, though I imagine we all did it. And it leads to all kinds of trouble. But banning alcohol caused even greater trouble when it was tried, because it seems to be a fundamental human need in a way that, say, heroin is not. The biggest problem for girls here in Malta, though – and I hope London Area is listening – is casual sex. Maltese girls have gone from having no sex at all, ever, with nobody until marriage, to what my generation used to call slags. Except that they don’t seem to see it as being a slag.]

  37. LONDON AREA says:

    @Daphne – “You couldn’t afford a television licence, but seven kids were no problem”

    I have heard this comment from friends and family several times and it never fails to annoy me. This is out of topic, but can I ask, what’s all this fuss about how much kids cost to bring up ? I have several friends who have one or two kids, saying they wish for more but can’t afford it. Then you go to their houses and they’ve filled their house with antiques and ghastly expensive paintings on their walls. I’ve seen families who spend more on their bathroom then they could ever spend on their child, and yet they claim they cannot “afford” to have another child that they yearn so much. And whats so expensive about having kids anyway? Practically everything is paid for till they are sixteen, schools are free, kids food is cheap, a mega-pack of chicken nuggets feed my kids for a month. Whats a few years without a flat-panel TV or expensive holidays if this is stopping you having the number of kids you want? I way, if you want to have three kids, or ten, don’t let money stop you, they won’t starve to death for sure and a few less comforts would not be the end of the world. Many friends, now over 40, have confessed to us that they now regret not having the family they wanted because of financial constraints. Of course, if you don’t want kids, or don’t like big families that’s your free choice, but if money is stopping you then think twice, and don’t begrudge those who choose to have as many kids as they please.

    [Daphne – That’s what I mean: the more children you have, the less you can afford to give them. Free schools instead of private schools, cheap food instead of good food (mega-pack of chicken nuggets?), one computer for everyone to fight over instead of one each so that they can get their work done, and we haven’t even started on what happens when they get REALLY expensive – when they’re in tertiary education and still financially dependent on you, but eating 10 times as much and with clothes and shoes that cost so much more, and cars to run because mummy and daddy can’t be ferrying them around day and night until the age of, what, 23. Before you jump down my throat about the cars – have you any idea what it’s like to live in Malta with no proper public transport and no car? One solution to cutting the risk of having your daughter rammed into a lamp-post by some drunken youth is to get her her own set of wheels. And then there’s the bit where they study overseas, in the most expensive countries in Europe, and you’ve got to pay the rent and help out with the food because the part-time job just won’t keep them alive, if they can fit one at all around the lectures and assignments. So what do you tell your kids at 18 – sorry, but you’re on your own? I agree that people make too much of a drama about the cost, and end up having just two kids usually with a gap of four years between them, which means that the kids don’t really have childhood siblings at all. But three or four kids is ideal and after that it’s hopelessly unmanageable whatever you say, because something has to give. My best friend at school was the eldest of eight children and it drove her up the wall. There was always some chore for her to do, some nappy to change, some kid’s bottom to wipe. There were toddlers yelling while she was studying for her O-levels, she got not a jot of privacy because she shared her bedroom with another two sisters. There was always noise, crowding, too many siblings clamouring for attention. Let’s put it this way: when seven kids come home after school or work, even if you talk to each of them personally for just 10 minutes, that’s an hour and 10 minutes gone at the busiest time of the day. You’ve made the right choice for you, clearly, but there are very sound reasons why others don’t do the same. And that’s why people who come from very crowded homes usually end up having no more than one or two children themselves. I agree that having one child is a form of deprivation for the child, because we learn most of our social skills and negotiating skills through interacting with our siblings. And I really have no patience for those Noah’s Ark families with two kids widely spaced out – what’s the point of that? But there is a happy and manageable medium.]

  38. LONDON AREA says:

    @Daphne “The biggest problem for girls here in Malta, though – and I hope London Area is listening – is casual sex”

    Casual sex a major problem? Christ, Daphne what’s wrong with you today? You’re sounding more and more like one of those chest-thumping charismatics you would normally relish bashing. Have you had some miraculous vision last night? Seriously you’re worrying me!

    [Daphne – It is a very serious problem, not least because no protection is used. Philip Carabott, who heads the STD unit at Sir Paul Boffa Hospital, has spoken out about this many, many times. Teenagers as young as 14 are presenting with STDs. That’s just the health-risk aspect. Then there’s the psychological aspect: casual sex, and worse, anonymous sex, is very, very damaging to girls. Girls, like the women they grow up to be, experience sex emotionally far more than they do physically. Most men are capable of having a shag for the physical experience and just forgetting about it the next day. Hardly any girls or women are capable of this, unless they are blind drunk at the time. Even the women who sleep around are hunting for an emotional connection rather than a purely physical one. The more they sleep around the more damaged their self-image becomes, and the more used they feel. Worse, the more they sleep around, the easier it becomes, so they do it more and more, with men they fancy less and less. I had a girlfriend some years ago who once actually spent the night with our host after a party because it saved her having to ring for a taxi. Sex to her had lost all its significance and become no different to using the lavatory or having breakfast. Girls/women understand at some fundamental level that the price they put on their own value is the price others will put, but they don’t connect this with the fact that men are ringing them for a shag but then going out with and eventually marrying anyone but them. There are girls like this among my sons’ generation and they are perceived no differently to the girls who did the same in my generation and for all I know, my parents’ generation though life was very different then. Double standards? No, human nature. If you wouldn’t mind your daughter being the kind of girl who sleeps with any boy who buys her a drink, or the kind of girl that boys ‘get off with’ when they’re feeling horny, only to ignore her the next day, then fine. If I had a daughter I’d tell her this: if you want boys to run after you, put yourself on a pedestal and stay there, occasionally giving them a good kick so that they know their place.]

  39. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne – “Maltese girls have gone from having no sex at all, ever, with nobody until marriage, to what my generation used to call slags”

    You’ve got it right here. I prefer not to think about it but I have no doubt that my daughter is what you call “a slag”. I don’t lose much sleep over it. Certainly my daughter is no more of a slag than her mother was at her age. And I didn’t complain about her mum then so I would be a hypocrite to complain about my daughter now. The other day we picked my daughter up from Paceville. She was wearing a very tight short skirt and I naturally got a bit upset. “Our daughter looks like a slut” I told my wife. “That’s the same skirt I wore when we first went out, when I was 16” answered my wife, “and you didn’t complain then”. Enough said. I shut up. I know my place. So my daughter’s a “slag”. What’s your point?

    [Daphne – Read my previous post. In your wife’s time, as it was in mine, sex was a big deal. Now, it’s not a big deal. I doubt very much that your wife was a slag – you probably just mean that she had sex with you before you married, at a time when this almost never happened, and maybe with a couple of other boys before you. It’s not about the clothes. It’s about the attitude. In my time, the biggest slags dressed like dykes, and a couple of them eventually turned out to be dykes. From what I hear, it’s no different now: one of the notoriously easiest lays wears jeans, T-shirts and no make-up, and occasionally a pair of specs for good measure.]

  40. Moggy says:

    [Daphne – You make the common mistake of assuming that it is misery that makes people turn to drugs. It isn’t. It is usually lack of intelligence and the inability to take sound decisions. This character trait is present whether the person is miserable or not. When you have a confluence of an inability to take good decisions and misery, that’s when the trouble starts. And that’s why the former drug-addicts who go on to make a success of their lives are so few and far between, though they do exist. It’s because the poor decision-taking abilities that led them to take the drug for the first time are the very same ones causing them to make the wrong decisions in the rest of their life afterwards. Millions of people have been utterly miserable and had terrible childhoods without getting hooked on dangerous drugs. It is almost always because their intelligence stops them from doing it.]

    I agree with you. The causes which make a person go for drugs are multiple: misery, character traits (don’t forget that misery can be caused by character traits), family environment etc. When I said that the free-will of a person is obfuscated by certain factors, I was thinking of all these. Our traits are given to us by our genes, as is our intelligence. If we are dealt a raw deal by our genes, we may be less able to deal with stress, more likely to choose using a prop, and more likely to end up taking drugs. In this way, although yes, we remain responsible for whatever it is that we choose, our traits are interfering to a certain extent with our free will – when we begin to see this, we can begin to understand why some people find it much harder to resist drugs, and why they can be somewhat excused for doing what they do. Very sad.

    Apart from this, I agree with much that you have said all through this discussion.

  41. Sybil says:

    “Moggy Wednesday, 29 October 2137hrs

    When I said that the free-will of a person is obfuscated by certain factors, I was thinking of all these. Our traits are given to us by our genes, as is our intelligence. If we are dealt a raw deal by our genes, we may be less able to deal with stress, more likely to choose using a prop, and more likely to end up taking drugs. In this way, although yes, we remain responsible for whatever it is that we choose, our traits are interfering to a certain extent with our free will – when we begin to see this, we can begin to understand why some people find it much harder to resist drugs, and why they can be somewhat excused for doing what they do. Very sad.”

    How very true. ThIs genes business explains why some kids start smoking or occasionally boozing at fourteen and can stop for good any day with no particular hassle whilst others simply cannot throw off the habits for the rest of their lives. The problem with drugs though is that it is a scientific fact that in the vast majority of cases, the habitual use of soft drugs will invariably lead to the craving of harder and harder drugs with the inevitable consequences on the youngster and his nearest and dearest.

  42. Sybil says:

    LONDON AREA Wednesday, 29 October 2034hrs
    @ Daphne – “Maltese girls have gone from having no sex at all, ever, with nobody until marriage, to what my generation used to call slags”

    If you ever watched some of the sit-coms on certain cable tv stations over the last fifteen /twenty years, which sit coms are targetted at youngsters , you would not be all that surprised . As is said in Maltese, “l ezempju ikaxkar”.

  43. Daphne Caruana Galizia says:

    @London Area: my sister has just reminded me of two boys who were our contemporaries and who died in car-crashes. But that’s still fewer than those who died of a heroin overdose, and much fewer than those whose lives have been one long train-wreck because of drug-addiction.

  44. Sybil says:

    An old Maltese saying;
    “Tfal u Bhejjem, ghali dejjem”
    One realises just how true that is when one becomes a parent and all of a sudden realises that parenthood is a life long occupation!

  45. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne – “Philip Carabott, who heads the STD unit at Sir Paul Boffa Hospital, has spoken out about this many, many times”
    Please don’t get me started on Philip Carabott and his endless , boring programmes about these so called “STD epidemics”. I wonder is he trying to justify his own job? If you believe what he, and what other sensationalist chest-thumpers are claiming , our schools are full of girls infested with pubic lice and boys scratching their balls. Where is the evidence for all these STDs? I wonder if all these so called “STD experts” of which we have dozens in Malta, have anything better to do with their time then go around preaching to the converted.

    [Daphne – Philip Carabot – one ‘t’, my mistake earlier – doesn’t receive a salary and never has. He donates his professional services and his time on a voluntary basis. If this situation has changed recently, then I’m unaware of it. He’s ex British Army, if I remember correctly, and receives a pension. He started the STD clinic when he returned to Malta and was astonished to discover that there wasn’t one. When told that there were no resources, he offered to do it himself. As the man who runs Malta’s only dedicated STD clinic, he collates statistics on patients that are actually seen by the clinic: in other words, real, hard facts and not supposition or speculation. One assumes that there are others who are seen by private doctors, so those seen by the Boffa clinic are just some of the total problem and not all of it. Carabot is as far from being a religious chest-thumper as it is possible to be. He is in fact having to cope with the result of years of chest-thumping against condoms and a refusal to discuss sex with teenagers except in terms of ‘religion’. You may consider programmes about STDs to be endless and boring, but before he started them, there was nothing. There are still people around who don’t know the difference between one STD and another, or who think that all STDs’ manifest themselves as boils round the genitals. Undetected and untreated chlamydia, for example, is a significant cause of infertility in women, but the women don’t find out until they’re in their 30s and have begun trying for a baby, by which time the damage is done.]

  46. Sybil says:

    Undetected and untreated chlamydia, for example, is a significant cause of infertility in women, but the women don’t find out until they’re in their 30s and have begun trying for a baby, by which time the damage is done.]

    Worse still, a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy in the Fallopian tubes)resulting from damage caused to the tubes from a long-forgotten STD acquired years in one’s teens.

    @ London Area;
    Its nothing to do with “sensationalist chest-thumpers” but with important and practical issues concerning sexual health, and you are being very unfair re Dr. Carabot.

    [Daphne – I know a few women my age who couldn’t conceive children normally for precisely that reason. It’s not a coincidence that in recent years it has become very difficult for women in their 30s to conceive their first child. It’s not all due to the decline in the body’s fertility. Some of it is due to those damaged tubes.]

  47. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne – Philip Carabot – – doesn’t receive a salary and never has. He donates his professional services and his time on a voluntary basis

    I don’t know Philip Carabot personally so all you say may well be true, if so what he does would be very admirable.
    I never said any gain is necessarily material. In my books, any man who volunteers to work in an STD clinic should be considered with suspicion, and would have to prove otherwise.

    [Daphne – Are you joking? Carabot IS an STD specialist. That’s what he did with the British Army, and why he has so much experience in the field. I have deleted the rest of your comment, because it is completely out of order.The vast majority of patients at the STD clinic are not teenagers but adults. Instead of casting suspicion on those who volunteer their time and professional expertise, you should be making sure your daughters don’t pick up a couple of diseases themselves.]

  48. Moggy says:

    @ London Area – So you think that STDs are a myth, a figment of Dr Carabot’s imagination? Boy, are you out of touch with reality! You do not know what you are saying.

  49. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne – Are you joking? Carabot IS an STD specialist.

    Once again I repeat, I don’t know Dr Carabot personally and from what you say his voluntary work is exemplary. I am not challenging that. I don’t know why you keep bringing him up. Unfortunately though it is the few bad volunteers who ruin it for the rest. And I have had experience with a few bad ones. That is why anyone working in areas where they may be in contact with children or vulnerable adults should be vetted, even if they are volunteers. Or should I say ESPECIALLY if they are volunteers.

    [Daphne – Why would anyone volunteer if this is how they are perceived?]

  50. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne – Are you joking? Carabot IS an STD specialist

    For good measure I checked the Maltese specialist register http://www.sahha.gov.mt/showdoc.aspx?id=87&filesource=4&file=List_Specialists.pdf , paranoid person that I am.
    There are nine specialists listed under venereology and lo and behold , Dr Carabot is not listed as a specialist on this register. So either you have got your information wrong or Dr Carabot is wrongly claiming that he is a venereology specialist. Your call.

  51. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Daphne
    Actually you were right after all. I found Dr Carabot listed alone under the Genito-urinary specialist register on Carabott http://www.sahha.gov.mt/showdoc.aspx?id=87&filesource=4&file=List_Specialists.pdf , so you are right, he is a specialist, though not under venereology, but as a genito-urinary specialist. I wasn’t even aware that there was such a speciality. Sorry I doubted you.

  52. LONDON AREA says:

    Daphne, seeing that you were right, and I was wrong ,

    and sometimes I have to admit I was wrong, perhaps you would care to delete my posts starting from 29 October 2247hrs since they may be taken as unfair comments on Dr Carabot’s specialisation and motives. It is your blog and therefore your call, I still believe it was a fair comment to pass, but as it tunred out I was wrong it may be unfair to Dr Carabot. I know you rightly defended Dr Carabot, but perhaps the comments should be deleted just in case they get misinterpreted. Once again I apologise for throwing such suspicion.

    [Daphne – I don’t think that’s necessary, and this exchange is actually useful in clearing up the misconceptions of others who might have thought as you did. Your apology here more than suffices in making good for any offence caused, and now you see it’s a good thing I deleted that part of an earlier comment you made. It would have been so much better had you looked him up round about that time you were complaining about ‘all his programmes about STDs’ and bothered to find out more. You give the impression that you work in the health sector, and what’s more, you’re a man – so how come you didn’t know there’s such a thing as a genito-urinary specialist? It’s almost like a woman not knowing about gynaecologists.]

  53. Pat says:

    London Area:
    Looking at what you said about how Maltese girl have gone from having no sex at all until marriage and then about chest thumping about std’s I can make no other conclusions than that people like you are what have caused the unbearable situation in regards to sex, contraceptives and STDs. Speaking with older Maltese men you hear endless stories about their escapades with girls in younger days and these girls are fellow Maltese. Now obviously I’m aware that men like to spice stories up a bit, but with only a fraction of it true it would still be clear and evident that Maltese girls “sleeping around”, is not an MTV invention.

    Perhaps it is about time someone starts explaining the dangers of STDs to make people realise that it is a) not a new problem, and b) a problem which, left unsolved, will have severe consequences for a lot of people. Open up your eyes and see for yourself what is going on and you will soon realise that your blindness to these problems is a danger to other people.

    Also, going from that position to actually slander a man who seems to be doing a great service to the nation, is just pitiful and shows what a small man you are.

    [Daphne – He apologised for that last bit.]

  54. Amanda Mallia says:

    London Area – “I never said any gain is necessarily material. In my books, any man who volunteers to work in an STD clinic should be considered with suspicion, and would have to prove otherwise.”

    By your reasoning, then I’d hate to know what you think about male (or female, for that matter) gynaecologists

  55. Amanda Mallia says:

    London Area – It is shocking, to say the least, that people still think that STDs all manifest themselves in obvious ways. Two of the most common ones (gonorrhea and chlamydia) are symptomless, and may go undetected – and thus untreated – for years. (Take a look at this, though I’m sure that with a little bit of research you will find information closer to home: http://www.thebody.com/content/art21653.html )

    The most notorious of all STDs – HIV/AIDS – has a rather long incubation period, and may sometimes not show up for years after a person has been infected.

    Since you say that you are a father of teenage daughters, I suggest that you do a bit of reading on the subject. Ignorance is not always bliss.

  56. Pat says:

    [Daphne – He apologised for that last bit.]

    Yes, but it was published after I wrote my piece. I retract my comment.

  57. Pepprina says:

    @London Area.

    I am a teacher at a girls’ lyceum. You have no idea how rampant casual sex amongst teenage girls has become. It is the norm not the exception. Girls as young as 11 and 12 think nothing of sleeping around. They have no idea what STDs are all about despite numerous PSD lessons on the subject and couldn’t care less. A relative of mine who happens to be a medical doctor posted at the Gynae/Obstetric ward at Mater Dei frequently has a story to tell about this or that 16/17 year old who is so badly infected she will never be able to have any children at all.

  58. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Pepprina, Pat, Amanda

    Look I was wrong, I admit it. I was ignorant. What else can I say but sorry? I have researched the field and there is actualy a full training curriculum for doctors wanting to specialise in genito-urinary medicine.
    It’s on http://www.jrcptb.org.uk/Specialty/Documents/Genitourinary%20Medicine%20Specialty%20Training%20Curriculum%20May%202007.pdf
    I certainly have no problem with male gynaecologists. Or male pediatricians for that matter. Or male sexual psychologists. As long as practitioners are registered and abide by the ethics of their profession I see no problem at all.
    I sincerely apologise for my previous ignorance on this matter and fully support the work done by Dr Carabot and any other such professionals in this field.

    [Daphne – Relax. You’re forgiven.]

  59. Moggy says:

    @ London Area: I am amazed. Of course there is a training curriculum for doctors who wish to specialise in GU medicine. What on Earth did you think – that anyone could become a specialist in any area (including GU) by lying tummy up twiddling one’s thumbs for a few years? And all this after you yourself were actually in London (was it?) studying for years to specialise in some other area? I’m almost lost for words. Wonders never cease.

  60. Moggy says:

    @ Pepprina: Yes that’s right. Also think of this. Another virus which is transmitted sexually are certain subtypes of the Human Papillomavirus, which cause cervical cancer….. making cervical cancer a cancer which comes about as a direct result of sexual activity. Something to think about.

  61. Moggy says:

    Correction:

    @ Pepprina: Yes, that’s right. Another virus which is transmitted sexually is the Human Pappilomavirus (HPV). Certain subtypes of this virus give rise to cervical cancer, which makes this type of cancer one which comes about as a direct result of sexual activity. Something to think about.

  62. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Moggy
    “Of course there is a training curriculum for doctors who wish to specialise in GU medicine ”

    I was suprised yes. And I asked several of my friends and they have never heard of such a speciality either. I have worked in a major Urology center in London , and there was not a single Genito-urinary specialist in the hospital, and I have never heard of one in any of the large hospitals or clinics I worked in. It was the Urologists who did the urinary part, and the Venereologists/Dermatologists who did the STD part, helped by the Physicians specialised in infective diseases , while Public Health Specialists did the prevention bit. And it was the Urology surgeons who , of course did the surgery, but I never heard of Genito_urinary specialists. In fact Dr Carabot is the only such specialist listed in the Maltese Medical Register. And according to Daphne he is retired. Which means that there is not even a single Genito-urinary specialist in Mater Dei. So yes, I’m surprised, not that there is a training curriculum , but that the speciality exists at all. But like I said, I am glad it does exist so I don’t know what you mean to say by your sarcasm, what’s your point?

  63. Moggy says:

    I am more and more amazed with every comment you post. Yes, twenty years ago the dermatologists used to see to the STD cases at Boffa hospital, but that was before we had a specialist in genitourinary medicine (GUM) or a proper genitourinary clinic (have you ever heard of them?).

    And now to prove that this speciality is not a figment of anyone’s imagination, and the specialists in the area not the rarity which you seem to be suggesting, I think that you should have a look at the following:

    http://www.embarrassingproblems.co.uk/visiting_the_clinic.htm

    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=177&action=archive

    http://www.doctoralia.co.uk/consultants/speciality/Genito+urinary+Medicine-22/London-822-1

    http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/details/Default.aspx?Id=574

    http://medicine.severndeanery.org/genito-urinary_medicine

    http://www.medic8.com/GenitourinaryMedicine.htm

    http://www.addenbrookes.org.uk/serv/clin/med/gum1.html

    http://sti.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/84/1/67

    http://www.liv.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught_courses/gu_medicine_and_venereology_diploma.htm

    Anyway….there are hundreds more where those came from. Happy reading.

  64. LONDON AREA says:

    @Moggy
    are you even reading my posts, I repeat, there’s just ONE GU specialist in Malta on the register, JUST ONE, versus ten dermatologists so of course it’s rare, that’s a fact. What’s your point? Are you denying that? And I never heard of that speciality. I am sorry, but I never did. None of my friends did either. So what? Now we know. In any case, GU clinics don’t function on their own, they need other specialists, psychiatrists, urology surgeons, microbiologists, radiologists ,pharmacists, public health doctors, nurses, pschycologists etc. , in other words it is a multidisciplinary problem. A GU clinic is a good idea, a one-stop shop, where the GU specialist can rope in the other disciplines and c-ordinate treatment.
    I may be at some fault for not knowing about this clinic but I am aslo not aware of any information from the departmenbt of Health to all medical people in Malta advertising this service, apart from the monthly magazine which has a limited distribution. It may be time for a proper Department of Health Website that gives more information on these clinics.
    Moggy , I may have been ignorant about these clinics but at least I admitted it, by your comments you are showing you are not only ignorant but stupid as well.

  65. LONDON AREA says:

    @ Moggy
    I just had an idea, maybe the GU clinic should have a mobile unit, where a one-stop mobile unit can tour Paceville, large concerts etc, offering on-site advice and treatment etc, because I cannot imagine teenagers visiting the clinic in Floriana unless they were symptomatic. Can I add that the press gagging of Dr Carabot by the Health Department is deplorable and that Specialists in the Medical Profession should be allowed to talk to the press since their first obligation is to their patients and not their employer.

  66. Moggy says:

    @ London Area: There may be one GU specialist in Malta, but there seem to be hundreds abroad. The links I have posted mainly refer to NHS/ British specialists.

    Only one person has made seriously stupid comments on this thread, and it isn’t me.

    [Daphne – Correspondence on this subject is now closed.]

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