Fine, upstanding, handsome and intelligent – that's right, we're not talking about Saviour Balzan
Saviour Balzan, the holier-than-thou newspaper editor who began dating another woman when his wife was not yet cold in her coffin and people were still writing her obituaries and eulogies and giving him their condolences, has written today that there are things which he “shuns with a passion” – as opposed, one imagines, to shunning them with torpor. These things clearly don’t include according your wife the appropriate mourning period before taking up with another woman who was her friend, and whose husband was yours. But so what, given that it’s not against the law? But then it wasn’t against the law for the former police commissioner to have sex with a woman who wasn’t his wife, and it didn’t spare him from moral persecution by Savonarola Balzan.
These things which Balzan shuns with a passion are “the other English language newspapers to start with, and most important of all, the blogs of witches and obese columnists”. He’s not much of an editor if out of pique all he reads is his own newspaper and It-Torca or Il-Mument. Maybe that’s why Malta Today is rapidly becoming not a newspaper but a whetstone on which this man grinds his axes.
So Balzan doesn’t read my blog or Bocca’s. Funny how he insists on calling me a witch when he is an extremely ugly man and I am anything but, but it shows that he hasn’t evolved beyond medieval sexism, when the women men didn’t like were called witches and burned at the stake. You can take a man to the waters of modern thought, but you can’t make his inner Black Death peasant drink.
It’s a crying shame he doesn’t read this blog, because he’s not going to find out what I have to say next unless one of his colleagues tells him about it: Saviour Balzan was the third party and go-between who in the midst of the Lorry Sant/Mintoff photos saga rang me and said he was going to bring Wenzu Mintoff over to speak to me about what was in that envelope, and why I should, pretty please, collude in keeping it under wraps to save Wenzu Mintoff’s dignity and protect his privacy. He was the third party who sat in my kitchen and went through the details. He knows every last detail of that sorry tale, but his trail-blazing newspaper has never so much as alluded to it.
So there you have it. Saviour Balzan has known all along that Dom Mintoff cavorted with his brother’s wife, Wenzu’s mother, and that Lorry Sant was using naked photographs of the woman taken at L-Gharix to threaten Wenzu in parliament and possibly, Dom Mintoff in private. But did he say anything about it? Did he publish a block-busting epic series in soap opera style? No, he did not – because Wenzu is his mate. He can argue that it is not topical, but that just shows what a lousy editor he is: it is highly newsworthy because only a small number of people knew about it, which is why it was the most active post on my blog this past week. And then Balzan has the gall to talk about friends of friends. While he was persecuting the then police commissioner for extra-marital sex and ‘hypocrisy’, he was keeping this little story under wraps. And he’s still keeping it under wraps today.
Saviour Balzan has long used his newspaper as an instrument with which to torture others for largely personal reasons. Malta Today runs the occasional good story and interview, like the piece with Vanni Bonello today, but the rest is a hotch-potch of its editor’s pet peeves and obsessing about those against whom he bears a grudge. He has conditioned his writers to do the same: I never had a problem with any of them before they joined Malta Today and decided, in true Soviet fashion, that I was Public Enemy No. 1.
For years and years, I have had the lot thrown at me by Malta Today – spiteful cartoons, slanderous letters, vicious articles, blatant untruths. And this when I am not a politician or seeking to hold public office, but somebody who works in private business, is paid by private business and writes newspaper pieces just as they do. The worst such incident occurred when I discovered, through a friend who then worked there, that Malta Today planned to publish the insane ravings of a certifiable nut-case who had been stalking me for years (a woman, believe it or not) and who even tried to follow me into the lavatory on one occasion at a drinks party, after I ended our friendship because she had begun to give me the creeps, turning up on my doorstep and calling at all hours. My husband then acted for hers when he divorced her, and so this crack-pot had it in for us both.
The reason why Malta Today goes after me with all guns firing (in one edition just before the election, it dedicated more space to running me down than it did to the electoral campaign that would decide Malta’s future) is that I was – and still am – its competition’s competitive edge. First Malta Today asked me to leave The Malta Independent and write for it instead, and when that failed, it tried to undermine my influence by attacking my credibility and trying to rubbish me, in exactly the same manner used by the Labour Party and its media.
When even that failed, I was again asked – unbelievably – to leave The Malta Independent and to write for Malta Today. The last such attempt was made December before last, when I met Balzan at the counter of a shop where we were both queuing to pay. I was told that I don’t belong with The Malta Independent. I belong with Malta Today. I politely told him – my manners desert me only under the most extreme duress, and sometimes not even then – that I am happy where I am. While walking out of the shop, I had just one thought: that the full extent of Malta Today’s utter hypocrisy lies in the fact that it will continue to attack me and my husband under some pretext or other, but will stop the day I lose my mind and join its ranks of writers. Overnight, I will cease to be a witch, bitch, and Nationalist pig who lives off party hand-outs (ha! chance would be a fine thing) and become Malta’s star columnist.
Now Malta Today have started on at my husband once more. Last week’s Sunday edition had him down as the Pawlu Lia of the Nationalist Party – Pawlu Lia being an ahdar lawyer who fights all of the Labour Party’s law suits – and this when my husband has no contact with the Nationalist Party at all. “Expect it,” I told him. “The sad little (and ugly) man is never going to forgive you for the fact that his inamorata was once your girlfriend, even if it was almost 30 years ago.” Being a man, he couldn’t see the psychology at work here. To him, that’s all done, dusted and ancient history that took place in another lifetime. And being a man, Balzan probably can’t see it either, thinking instead that he’s on some kind of justifiable moral crusade.
But being a woman, I can see the dynamics at work here, clear as day. What a shame Balzan totally lacks self-awareness. His working-day isn’t so much a case of nose to the grindstone as axe to the whetsone. Grow up, Saviour. You’re 46, and it’s about time. And you’re no man of principle given that you were prepared to torture the ex police commissioner’s wife and family with public revelations about what their husband and father did in bed in his spare time, but then failed to do the same with the Mintoff affair because Wenzu is your buddy. Hypocrite: but then, why am I bothering? You’re not reading this. Or so you say.
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How pitiable this guy is!!! A real “miskin” in all it’s negative connotations…
By the way, is Ms. Hansen writing on his paper? I heard it somewhere, but I never read that paper, so I can’t tell.
[Daphne – Yes.]
Hi Daphne, please read this poem. I’m sure it will make you laugh. It’s really funny!! It has nothing to do with this story, but wanted to share it.
Il-Malti …
L-ghalliem jghidilna dejjem
Li l-Malti hu hafif,
‘Mma jien nipprova niktbu
U lanqas biss naf kif.
Jista’jkun illi mohhi
Ikun mitluf, kultant,
Jew forsi, kif tghid ommi,
Jien hrigt ftit injorant.
Ghax l-aktar li nithawwad,
U naghmel salt caflis,
Hu meta nkun se nikteb
Xi kliem gej mil-Ingliz.
L-ghalliem qalilna niktbu
Dal-kliem, kif inhossuh,
isda…mhux in-nies kollha
L-istess preciz jghiduh!
Missieri jghidlu telefon
In-nannu: teleforn
Il-Mummy (jew Mami): telefown
L-ghalliem jghidilna blekbord
Iz-zija tghidlu blakbord
Mark Xuereb jghidlu blekbort.
Jien tghidx kemm ili nara:
Jeans u mobile miktubin, Narahom fuq it-television (Sorry: televixin…) (Sori: sori)
Imm’issa suppost nikteb:
gins, mowbajl, tenkju, plis,
guddej, gudnajt u hendawt,
‘Gej fowtow, ghidu cis!’
L-ghalliem jibqa’ jghidilna
Li l-Malti hu hafif,
‘Mma n-nannu l-bierah qalli:
‘Dan Malti tat-teftif!’
Tu rajt diss moltis properli
Jess, ju mast hev samm gazz,
Plis, gimi e brejk, ticers:
Jur gona drajv mi nazz!
Trevor Zahra
So Saint Saviour has feet of clay, does he?
This makes Savonarola look like Thumbelina.
By the way, as to what this piece of yours. Well, I can imagine why he wants you to join his paper…to give it some substance! Sometimes I tend to confuse it with Hello magazine. No, wait, I bet that’s much better!
Just curiosity, but is Karl Schembri the sub-editor of the paper?
[Daphne – It’s nothing like Hello magazine. Hello magazine is packed with attractive and glamorous people.]
Yeah, granted. What I meant, however, is that it is not really a “news” paper but more of gossip paper. But wait Daphne, there are photos of glamorous people…like Saviour.
You don’t know re the Schembri guy, Daphne? It’s just a curiosity of mine.
[Daphne – I know that he’s definitely not a sub-editor. The sub-editor on a newspaper is the person who lays out the pages, trims the stories to fit, gives a cursory glance at spelling and grammar, and briefly checks for obvious libel. Karl is a writer, maybe also some kind of editor, but not a sub-editor.]
Oh, thanks a million.
Witch? Maybe he was referring to his sister who works with a known Church-run Drug rehab facility? Her tactics there match her brother’s. Some family.
What an excellent blog site. Just discovered it by accident. Keep up the great work.
Paul Borg…were you living on another planet since February?!
Dear Daphne, I know Salvu Balzan probably much better than you do. He’s definitely not worth your attention, given his narrow-minded approach to life in general. His MALTA TODAY just reflects his ‘nothingness’. Go through his articles and you see absolutely nothing. Read the contributions of his writers and you find even less. See how he treated the MCAST-focused allegations about doctored results…and the ‘bloke’ who reported on it…birds of a feather flock together…both ex Alternattiva (or they’re still attached to this chaotic party?). How I wish Salvu would reveal to the public his rapport with Wenzu Mintoff in the past…when there were heated arguments between them…some advice to Salvu…better be careful.
Darn, Salvu thinks I’m obese. How am I going to live this down? And there I was, giving up reading his bi-weekly rag. I’ll have to start reading it again. Not.
[Daphne – And here I wish to point out that Bocca is no longer obese, but has lost a great deal of weight. Sadly, Balzan will never be able to gain looks or personality.]
That newspaper (MaltaToday) is just a hobby anyway. He’s a rebel without a cause.
[Daphne – I find it odd that some people retain their adolescent anger into middle age. It’s like they’ve been frozen psychologically and prevented from developing further. I don’t know, but it strikes me that men find it much more difficult than women to grow up, and this is especially the case when they don’t have children to propel them into the adult world.]
The guy is a self-obsessed pompous prick full of hot air and self importance. Doesn’t he realise that nobody in this island gives him any importance except his band of cohorts and “journalists” who write for his rag!
[Daphne – Ordinarily, I would have put strategic asterisks in prick, but seeing that it’s Saviour….]
There is nothing worse than a cynical, embittered man with issues heavy enough to sink his own newspaper, but sadly, dangerous enough to break up families. Perhaps he should conduct some investigative journalism on his own family members ! That would make interesting reading………….or would it? do we really care?
[Daphne – I know all I need to know about his family members. His mother used to teach me and my sisters at St Dorothy’s. His father is actually a very nice man. And his only sibling was in my class at school from the age of 4 to the age of 15. One of her best friends was, and still is, Arlette Baldacchino, Norman Lowell’s ‘friend’ – which is why scandal-digging Malta Today never has a word to say about her either. So much for his independence and his criticism of friends of friends. I’d always tolerated Saviour, but couldn’t take what he did to the Grechs: forget the police commissioner; he brought it on himself. But the inflicted suffering of his wife and children was so horrible. I think it degraded the newspaper more than the family being persecuted. And the very idea of championing a slag who was seeking vengeance!]
and by the way Daphne, you ain’t gonna lose no sleep on this I trust …. Don’t give him the pleasure, although I suspect he will, after he reads your excellent article.
[Daphne – I never lose sleep over Saviour. He’s not my type. Too ugly and angry.]
Mhux sew, miskin, lil Salvu Balzam taghmlulu hekk. After all, was it not kind of him to leave the Mintoff-shag scoop to you, Daphne? This proves it’s not a grudge that Salvu bears. You could be his secret flame and silly-you don’t even know it. All that disguised publicity he affords you on Mal Tadeum, camouflaging his flaming heart’s desires with witches’ brew and snotty poo! I’m not so sure it’s just one inamorata your dashing husband stole away from him.
And when, heartbroken and ostensibly as a go-between, he crawls up to you with shaggy-talk you receive him where? In the kitchen?! And now you call him sad and ugly, while reminding him what a pretty Starr Kolamnist you’ve becum, na-ni-na-naa-na?!
Nobody in their right mind would leave Malta’s second most read English newspaper to join Malta Today. I mean, who the hell reads Malta Today? Well I do, but I read too many newspapers and not enough books.
Oh, I noticed you wrote “…will continue to attack me and my husband under some pretext or other…” – shouldn’t that read “my husband and I”, or is that an archaic rule?
[Daphne – The rule is actually quite simple: use me where you would do so ordinarily, and then add on the third parties. So, for example, the correct grammar is ‘he will continue to attack me’ and not ‘he will continue to attack I’. Therefore the correct sentence is ‘he will continue to attack me and my husband’ and not ‘he will continue to attack my husband and I.’ Another example is ‘I am going to the circus’, hence ‘Tony and I are going to the circus’ and not ‘Me and Tony are going to the circus,’ because you can’t say ‘me is going to the circus.’ Once you have understood this rule, you won’t make any more mistakes with I, like ‘They gave a nice present to my husband and I.’ Shudder.]
Actually Queen Elizabeth II herself uses “My husband and I” in public speeches!
[Daphne – Ho-hum. I’ll have another go at teaching basic grammar without referring to subject and object. Take these two sentences: (1) My husband and I gave Tony a present; (2) Tony gave a present to my husband and me NOT TO MY HUSBAND AND I. This is because, had I been alone and without a husband, Tony would have given that damned present to ME and not to I. Do you understand the difference now? The fact that you have included another person in the equation doesn’t suddenly make you ‘I’ instead of ‘me’. I don’t know why people find this so difficult to understand: it’s the difference between the use of ‘io’ and ‘me’ in Italian, and even with my rubbish Italian I know the difference: ‘io e il mio marito siamo a casa’; ‘Tony ha dato un regalo a ME E IL MIO MARITO’ and not ‘Tony ha dato un regalo a IO E IL MIO MARITO.’ You can bet your last euro-cent that the Queen will never be heard saying ‘my husband and I’ preceded by ‘to’ or ‘for’. SIIIIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHH.]
Daphne is an ugly witch? In fouth and fifth form at College we used to watch out for Daphne and her even more faboulous looking sister coming out of sixth form. They were sort of pin ups at that time. we even had a pet name for them, not to be repeated, but rather telling at the time….. I Think Saver must have the same taste as Verhuegen in pretty women.
Malta Today will print whatever you pay for it to print. End of story.
[Daphne – Istja Mario, kemm int najs illum. Actually, I was routinely confused with Saviour’s current lady by people on the street some 25 years ago, because we looked similar in those days, except that I’m taller – which is amusing. Good thing he doesn’t read this blog, or he’ll find it imperative to hunt down somebody with frizzy red hair, freckles, blue eyes and a moon-face. I don’t think your last sentence is right, though – I think it’s mostly a case of using the newspaper to further personal agendas, wreak vengeance and punish people. What I just don’t get is how they don’t understand basic psychology: in the short run, people enjoy negative, humourless coverage and seeing other people targeted, because that’s the Schadenfreude in us. But in the long run, we buy and read the things that make us feel good, or at least raise the occasional smile. We don’t have to be given a repeated downer by those who keep us informed. It spoils our day.]
“forget the police commissioner; he brought it on himself. But the inflicted suffering of his wife and children was so horrible”. Forget W. Mintoff’s mother; she brought it on herself. But the inflicted suffering on her son is so horrible.
[Daphne – Yes, that’s why we all kept his dirty secret under wraps for what – 17 years? But the ugly bastard didn’t even have the decency to behave civilly towards those he begged to keep his secret, and who obliged for almost two decades. Saviour’s kept his secret, but I don’t read any spiteful articles that Wenzu’s written about Saviour. Oh no. He probably imagined that I would hold my peace for the rest of my life, but didn’t trust Saviour to do so. What do you think it was like for me, reading one poisonous article after another that Wenzu Mintoff wrote about me for L-orizzont, exposing me to the hatred and bile of the typical L-orizzont reader who doesn’t know me and who believes Wenzu, when all along I knew such a big, damning secret about him – a big. damning secret which he himself had told me? The man has no honour. Had he behaved decently towards me, I would have continued to behave decently towards him, and never breathed a word. But it takes two…I was never bullied at school, and I’m not about to be bullied in adulthood by somebody like Wenzu Mintoff. He must have thought I was some kind of haxxa pushover.]
‘And here I wish to point out that Bocca is no longer obese, but has lost a great deal of weight. Sadly, Balzan will never be able to gain looks or personality’.
Reminds me of that famous incident when Churchill was at a party – as ‘lit’ as a Christmas tree.
A lady took exception to the fact that he was stone drunk.
“Sir”, she said. “You are drunk!”
“Yes”,the statesman replied, “but tomorrow I will be sober but you”ll still be ugly!”
[Daphne – My feelings exactly: whenever I read or listen to the spite or bile about me on L-orizzont, KullHadd and Super One, the first and lasting thought that comes into my head is ‘That’s as may be, but I will always be X and you will always be Y. And nothing can change that.’ To be honest, it’s what probably gets up their nose so much.]
I only bought Malta Today once and it was too much like some of the UK rags. Threw it in the dustbin. His interviews on TV are not exactly enlightening either.Thanks Daphne for uncovering the Mintoffgate.
I read Malta Today because I find the STOM to be nothing more than a history book on Sundays ( although it has improved lately) and the Independent is so bloody boring as it tries not to ruffle too many advertisers’ feathers. In a way I feel Saviour and yourself to be one of a kind. You receive a prick (as in with a needle) and reply with a double broadside. I suppose that the fact that he chose you to confide in when he had this big secret to share does reveal that he considers you trustworthy (although the phrase ‘a trustworthy journalist’ is always a bit of an oxymoron). Some of your writings are highly interesting and to the point while others are…. well…a bit too gutterish for my liking. Just like Saviour in fact. As to personal attacks, I feel you both do the profession a disservice when you indulge in attcaking each other on private issues.
[Daphne – To say that all outspoken people are one of a kind is like saying that all fat people are one of a kind. They’re not. Saviour and I are as different from each other as night from day, as those who know us both will attest. We couldn’t be less alike, in any respect. And I find it insulting when my writing is compared to his, because his is seriously substandard – not carefully crafted, and replete with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and malapropisms.]
well Salvu the Axe Grinder is not such a bad man : http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/06/29/culture.html
[Daphne – What you don’t know, sugar, is that this ‘exhibition in memory of my wife’ was curated by none other than his girlfriend’s daughter. I remember telling my husband at the time: “If I die tomorrow and you start seeing one of my friends while I’m still warm in my coffin, and then get her daughter to curate an exhibition of my work or edit a book of my articles, I will haunt all three of you with chains and an axe.”]
I don’t see what Saviour’s family have got to do with all this. Why don’t you leave them in peace. If the Grechs should have been left in peace why not the Balzans, the Sants, the Mintoffs, the Fenech Adamis etc, etc. I believe we can attack anyone who is in the public eye but we should leave his/her family alone.
[Daphne – I have left Saviour’s family in peace. The only thing I said is that his father is a very nice man, which hardly constitutes an offence. You may not have noticed, Grace, but it’s the Labour Party and its related media which target the family members of people who are regarded as Enemies of Labour. Everyone on the island knows my son’s name and what he looks like, thanks to the Labour Party, Super One and L-orizzont. He was targeted for no reason other than that he is my son. The rather large consolation is that this disgusting victimisation of a 19-year-old to get at his mother marked a turning-point in the campaign: it made many people’s minds up. It is a sign of how pathetically unable to read the public mind the Labour Party is that it imagined people would say ‘Oh my god, look at Daphne’s son. I’ll vote Labour.’ Instead they said: ‘Oh my god, look what they’re doing to Daphne’s son. I’ll vote Nationalist.’ And you can’t attack anyone in the public eye, either – you need to have a reason to do so, and that reason isn’t: she writes against the Labour Party therefore we will vilify her.]
On my way from BBC World to Sky News I occasionally stumble and fall into his ‘Reporter’ interviews and shed tears of anguish that both Larry King and David Frost don’t realise what kind of competition they have from Mr. Balzan.
This man is all beard and no spine. He’s also welcome to Mrs. Hansen since she also made me want to throw up when she was with the S.T.O.M.
[Daphne – The trouble with Pamela Hansen is that she isn’t bright but thinks she is. I hate to say it, but Sacred Heart ‘girls’ of that generation received a poor education: they were deliberately trained not to think and not to be analytical. The ethos of the school was to produce good wives and mothers, and the approach to building good wives and mothers in the 1950s and 1960s, and even 1970s, was that they must never step outside the box, let alone think outside it. So a form of ‘foot-binding of the mind’ was practised, and reinforced through peer-policing and pressure to conform. The result is that you have grown women whose rational powers are not much better than those of children, or at a push, teenagers. It’s very unfortunate. Women have been abused in all sorts of ways, not necessarily violence. An inadequate education, the result of a belief that a woman need never have to earn a living if she is good wife material, was just one of them. The situation had improved with my generation, though not terribly much and that dreadful peer-policing stayed, though some individuals fought it and won by doing their own thing – and now I have no idea what it’s like. Marie Benoit’s problems with rational thought and socio-political analysis have precisely the same root cause.]
[…] and DCG. It seems that Hogan drew three hundred and thirty first blood and Daffers replied with a rather vitriolic repartee. Lovely stuff for the net oglers as the battle seems to be hyping […]
[Daphne – X’minnek? Are you going to be finding anything under a cabbage or not?]
I have always enjoyed reading this blog, but I find the opening line extremely distasteful.
If the point being made is that Mr. Balzan is hypocritical in his approach towards sex and morality, I find there are more subtle ways to drive the point home. Portraying Mr. Balzan as a cold-blooded lustful monster by casting doubt on his loss is simply odious. No attack on your husband – no matter how scathing, vile, personal or unfounded can justify this article.
[Daphne – This article, my dear, is more than justified. It’s about time this horrible little man learned what it’s like to be on the receiving end. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m surprised nobody’s sat on him hard before now. But then maybe they didn’t have the information. Of course, I had to be the first one, as per damned usual.]
QUOTE
Daphne – The rule is actually quite simple: use me where you would do so ordinarily, and then add on the third parties.
UNQUOTE
Going back to basics, “I” is a “subject” or the “agent of an action. “Me” is an “object” or the “receiver of the action”.
E.g. Spiru and I went to Timbuctoo (because Tony and I are the subjects).
The Mayor of Timbuctoo gave me and Spiru (or Tony and me, whichever you prefer)the Freedom of the City (because Spiru and I are the objects)
Fairly simple.
[Daphne – Lots of people find it hard to differentiate between subject and object, which actually requires a pause for thought. That’s why I usually explain it in the far more simple terms of never putting ‘I’ where you would put ‘me’ if you were on your own in the sentence. Much easier that way…I, for one, never had an English grammar lesson in my life, and to this day I haven’t a clue about subject, object, or tenses. I learned the language by osmosis and figured out the rules on my own. I only know that something is wrong because it sounds wrong.]
Kevin Ellul Bonici: Is it raining in Brussels or have you spilt the bleach?
[Daphne – U le, miskin – he told us he’s not a housewife any more. He has a well-paid job on his wife’s gravy-train. Ooops, that sounds terribly sexist.]
“But being a woman, I can see the dynamics at work here, clear as day.”
What is more important here, your being a woman, or being somehow into anthropology? Not being a woman myself, I don’t really know much about women’s abilities, but I do not believe all women see these dynamics clear as day.
[Daphne – Women are generally more perceptive and observant than men when it comes to ‘human’ situations and other people’s behaviour. I suppose it’s some kind of evolutionary survival mechanism. Then you get some women who are not perceptive at all, but in my experience this is usually because they are not bright to start with and tend to have poor judgement overall, and some men who are very sharp in picking up on things, and here too it’s generally related to brains. The more intelligent a man is, the more perceptive he is likely to be. But while I’ve noticed that a man is really, really, extremely intelligent when he is also perceptive, women are perceptive with only middling or average intelligence. Anthropology really has nothing to do with it.]
Daphne -I am sure you read The Times today. After what you wrote about the incident of the five year old boy who shoved a crayon in his teacher’s eye, it seems that everybody is retracting what they said before. Fine way of doing things. First they rush to print with accusations and create a fuss and then they start having doubts as to what exactly happened.
And to think that these people are entrusted with our kids. Since Mr Bencini is head of MUT, things are being done very very differently of how they were done before.
[Daphne – As I commented before, no teacher worthy of respect has ever been disrespected by his or her pupils. A good teacher is loved and admired. You should have seen the funeral of one San Anton School teacher, Maggie Borg, who taught all my sons environmental studies. The church was packed with her pupils, who actually insisted that their parents take them there. Imagine that, teenagers insisting on going to church, and to a funeral, what’s more. There wasn’t a single one of her pupils with whom she didn’t have a very positive rapport, and she elicited the best performance from them. Her methods were considered unorthodox until her pupils began scoring 1s and 2s in their MATSEC exams. But the biggest factor, I suspect, was that she liked her kids and was genuinely interested in them, and they responded hugely to that. If teachers are being dissed by their pupils, what the school head should be asking is what’s wrong with the teacher, and not necessarily what’s wrong with the pupils.]
Saviour Balzan or Wenzu Mintoff may be public figures, but to bring in someone’s mother … that’s really hitting the pits. How does it smell down there?
[Daphne -I find it strange, Dominic, that you never wrote a similar letter to Malta Today to point out that Mrs Grech wasn’t a public figure. When a public figure has illicit sex with somebody who is not a public figure, that person is drawn into the limelight. If this were not the case, then all public figures would have automatic immunity from exposure by choosing to play away with private persons. Using your reasoning, the media would only be permitted to expose the fact that Dom Mintoff, who – and I stress this fact – was prime minister at the time, was having a sexual relationship with his brother’s wife if the woman had been, say, a member of parliament or chairman of a state corporation. As an intelligent person, you can see that this makes no sense at all, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that you are a fervent admirer of Dom Mintoff and that this fact has clouded your judgement. I am quite sure that in the highly unlikely event that our current prime minister were discovered to be having a sexual relationship with his brother’s wife, had there been such a person, you would not be writing a similar letter to any journalist who exposed the fact. The tragedy is that, thanks to the ineptitude of our media back in the 1970s, the well-documented absence of freedom of speech, and the dangers posed to those who criticised or exposed the shortcomings of our government politicians, our then prime minister’s avid supporters were not told that their hero was cuckolding his own brother. They might have thought less of him then, and we would have been spared the second term he got in 1976, changing the course of history for the better. May I point out, also, that it makes no sense at all for you to be rude to me so as to defend Wenzu Mintoff and his mother, who presumably wasn’t clubbed over the head and dragged to Dom’s cave but went of her own free will. You probably have more in common with me than you do with him, but your political prejudice has blurred rational reason – temporarily, I trust. Unlike Wenzu and Saviour, you are neither a nasty nor a spiteful man, but are actually quite nice and reasonable, so do yourself a favour and don’t rank yourself with their kind. Mrs Mintoff may not have been a public figure before she slept with her brother-in-law, but by choosing to have a sexual relationship with the prime minister she made herself one, and that would have been the case even if she hadn’t also been married to his brother. It is a scandal of epic proportions – but as we say, only in Malta, and until recently in France, can a prime minister get away with something like that. Had this woman lived anywhere else, there would be an army of journalists outside her door, but she is being left alone in the same way and for the same reasons that the paedophile priest Mercieca in Gozo was left alone. Journalists flew across the Atlantic to doorstep him, but our journalists didn’t even bother taking the ferry from Cirkewwa. And I haven’t even begun on the fact that, when Alfred Sant was prime minister, he kept a woman for casual sex while ignoring her at parties and receptions, refusing to be seen with her in public, and getting mad at her if she tried to contact him outside their designated sex hours. Call that normal? I don’t. Yet it chimes perfectly with the rest of his weirdness, and I am sure that even you will agree with that observation. Tal-ghageb.]
Hey Daph
The reason why Saviour is sooooooo angry at you is rejection. It’s not actually your rejection (twice) to his offer as a columnist for MaltaToday. Earlier this year he had invited you to enjoy some vongole in Sicily on election day, and you never cared to acknowledge his offer in any of your articles. Then, he had figured out that he’s too rough for you and from that moment in time, he couldn’t bear that kind of rejection.
It reminds me of the playground bully rubbishing a girl (he had a crush on) after she rejected him!
It’s a pity that you didn’t take up his offer to write in MaltaToday, as that would save me buying the Independent on Sundays and Thursdays. By now, I would have saved enough money to take a well deserved holiday in Sicily . . . and enjoy some vongole by the seaside!
That boy would should be whipped in the back in front of other schoolmates for doing such a thing. He’d learn his lesson for sure. The scars would remind him. Today teachers are afraid to employ discipline as they used to in the old days “ghax ma tmurx tigi il-mummy b’xi sikkina ghalihom”. If need be teachers should be given basic hand-to-hand combat training to temporarily disable attacking parents and children. Discipline makes loyal, hardworking and respectable citizens.
[Daphne – Nice one, whipping a five-year-old boy’s back. Supporter of Josie’s, are you? There’s a blog on which unsavoury types congregate. Do go there, please.]
Daphne: Are you the CIA, FBI, KGB, MI5 combined? Meanwhile off to watch the budget speech. Nispera jrahhas l-incova llejla.
[Daphne – No, I just get around.]
Daphne – nothing to do with the subject, but well done for the FLAIR publication. Some really fantastic pics. WELL DONE AGAIN.
[Daphne – Always happen to put a smile on someone’s face, so it’s my pleasure.]
This is mainly red herrings. What you have done is on the same moral plane as what Lorry Sant did when he dragged the same third party into the mire in order to intimidate Wenzu Mintoff.
[Daphne – Not quite. Lorry Sant was blackmailing Wenzu Mintoff. I’m not blackmailing him. Rather the opposite – I have no doubt his invective will be even more venomous now. If Dom Mintoff didn’t want a third party dragged into the equation, he should have had sex with a hole in the wall. I apologise for the vulgarity, but I doubt that any public figure was available. Agatha Barbara, perhaps? And Mrs Mintoff was not a third party in any case. She was an active participant. The third party would have been, God rest her soul, Moyra Mintoff – the real reason people held off from saying anything for so long. We respected her.]
Dominic, I’m glad you’re reading this blog as I’ve always had a question at the back of my mind that I wanted to ask you if I ever got the chance. How can a reasonable individual like yourself continue to support and befriend Duminku Mintoff? Surely no one can dispute that Mintoff was directly or indirectly responsible for the culture of violence that poisoned Maltese politics in the 1980s? Surely one can belong to the Left or embrace a Leftist ideology without also being Mintoffjan?
[Daphne – Yes, I have a lot of respect for him too, and could never wrap my mind around this particular apparent aberration.]
Go on dish the dirt daphne! This is such an enlightening read! Who was sant’s mistress? What where her likes/dislikes (a la playboy bunnies)? Oh yes,oh yes quote me Goethe, quote me Freud, spank me spank me…..
[Daphne – I swore I wouldn’t tell and I won’t. The woman has never been anything other than decent, friendly and polite with me – and that was even before her revelation. I wouldn’t have said anything about Wenzu either, had he not spent the last 15 years or so vilifying me while expecting me to guard his secret. But I stress the fact that I kept quiet only because I said I would, and not because I think the public does not have a right to know that Dom Mintoff was cuckolding his own brother when he was prime minister and destroying this country. After 15 years, my patience snapped. Maybe the man doesn’t reason like a normal person, who knows? And this is not ‘dishing dirt’ but stating the stark facts. I really don’t give a damn about other people’s sex lives. They’re generally just a big yawn – as they say, same old, same old. How many permutations can there possibly be in the history of humanity? This country has at least a hundred full-time journalists whose job it is to research and report stories. They can find out for themselves. All I can say is that Sant, his never-was-a-wife and daughter are damned lucky she’s a decent woman and not an attention-seeking Polish slag who took her story to Saviour Balzan, like another woman I could mention. Mrs Grech and her children, then at a vulnerable age, were not so lucky. But then maybe Balzan wouldn’t have had an axe to grind about Sant, like he did about George Grech, and might have spared him.]
Muad’dib: You don’t say whether you have any children of your own. If you do, I hope for their sake that what you say here is just for show and that you don’t practise what you preach. Basic hand-to-hand combat training for teachers to disable a five-year-old with a crayon? I think our training resources would be better employed teaching children to read and write properly.
[Daphne – I say basic hand-to-hand combat to protect children against their teachers. That’s more like it, given all the abuse that goes on.]
spoilsport :(
Dear Muaddib: are you nuts or just a member of AN?
Dasphne – Pamela Pace (Hansen) did not come to the Sacred
Heart. I think (in my case at least) the nuns did give us
a permanent (or till the age of 40 or so) guilt complex
but otherwise I don’t agree with what you wrote about
the upbringing of the Sacred Heart girs. It definitely
doesn’t apply to the class of ’64.
[Daphne – Cik, it was the same with ALL girls’ schools in those days. They were geared to producing wives and mothers and those who broke away were the exception. As I said, it was the same in my generation, too – completely different to today. I think you’re different because you ‘got away’ – and yes, you are different to your contemporaries, in a very good way. Hansen and Benoit got away too, but it doesn’t seem to have done them much good. They still reason in that whining way.]
@Corrine
Trust me, today’s idea of parenting is a sick joke. Children going off to Paceville after 2300hrs when they should be playing football or engaging in some intellectual activity (even fun intellectual games). That kid with a crayon maybe has a cute little face but he’s already showing criminal tendencies from such a young age. In my day, if you did such a thing the teacher would have hanged you on the ceiling fan and turned it on to full speed.
I do have children. Doesn’t mean I punish them for every goddamn thing. When I punish it is always for a reason and I make sure it will last. Doesn’t mean that the kids are frightened of me. They rather know the definition of RESPECT. For that, I buy them toys, ice creams and whatever they need.
@Marku
Maybe Muad’dib is ‘nuts’ to YOU. Usually history proves ‘mad’ people to be right.
Muad’dib is not affiliated with any political party or entity whatsoever unlike most bloggers here. I believe that discipline is the way for a country to go forward. Shall we let our children become criminals and hippies? They need to be taught obedience to their elders, because before you can command you have to obey.
[Daphne – Madonna, his poor kids.]
What the hell should people care who is Balzan’s sister. Why should I care who your son is. It did look funny on TV, knowing that 90% of youths use that sort of language daily. Although I’m sure both my sons use such language, I wouldn’t be proud of my son if he was unlucky enough to be caught on camera being rude.
I don’t care is happening behind Public people’s closed doors, unless of course their private lives lead to corruption.
Mintoff was not the only Maltese politician with a lover, I’m sure he will not be the last. Hopefully we will not all go on witch hunts, to find out about the sex life of our politicians. Why worry let them enjoy life, as long as things happen between consenting adults. In the late 60s and early 70s there was a juicier story going on on the other side of the political spectrum. I’m sure if PN knew about this they would have published it. As far as I know this story came out in the late 80’s when Wenzu Mintoff left the MLP to start AD. That’s when Lorry Sant brought the Photo in Parliament and it was rejected both by the MLP (then in opposition) and the PN (then in government),and rightly so.
Please don’t insult people for not having children, after all we both know that having children is just a matter of luck.
As for the teacher who was hurt with a crayon, I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss. That accident happened, and she had to report it to the police, to safeguard her rights. I hope you agree that she can sue her employer especially if she suffered a permanent disability, since the Education division should have assessed the child, who apparently had been referred for assessment because of his misbehaviour.
[Daphne – Grace, unlike you I grew up round the corner from George Borg Oliver, who had a very public affair with an English actress while he was prime minister. Meanwhile, his wife had an equally public affair with a priest, and bore him a son. Nobody made any attempt to hide any of this. Everybody took it in their stride, and that was the 1960s. You know why? Because it’s hypocrisy that people can’t stand, and not adultery – though I have to say most would probably draw the line at shagging your brother’s wife. Even members of the Mafia have rules about that kind of thing. It was all public, out in the open, so much so that the first time I saw a bull in my town-reared life was at the age of six. It was being raced up and down Victoria Avenue by Labour supporters in the run-up to the 1971 election. That was also the first time in my life that I saw really ugly men who seemed to come from a completely different species to all the men of my childhood experience. They looked more like animals than people. I was six years old and had no political prejudice. I didn’t even know what political parties or elections were. I just noticed that these people were very different in a frightening way, like cave-men (and I knew what cave-men were). There were more bulls, this time on lorries, in the run-up to the 1976 election, but I don’t remember them as clearly as I do an extremely ugly gorilla-like man wearing very small leopardskin briefs, a large gold medallion and nothing else. He had a big Jimi Hendrix afro which was already way out of style in the rest of Europe, and he was on the back of a lorry jumping up and down like an ape. The lorry stopped right beneath our balcony and I called my mother to look, still unaware at that time of the significance of what was going on – bulls, lemons, men in animal-print trunks: “Look, ma – there’s a man there who looks just like an ape.” That’s because he is an ape, she said. I don’t insult people who don’t have children. Several people in my family don’t have children. I merely pointed out that some men who don’t have children stay infantile indefinitely – and I sometimes suspect that they choose not to have children to prolong that state of affairs, because then they will have to stop being the child in the household. I don’t think you meant ‘funny’ as in ha-ha amusing re. my son being abused by Super One. I think you meant odd, or not right. So I’ll let it pass.]
Muad’dib – “They rather know the definition of RESPECT. For that, I buy them toys, ice creams and whatever they need.”
For children to respect you, you have got to EARN their respect, as opposed to what you have bullied them into: earning “toys, ice-creams and whatever they need”, simply because you COMMAND respect from them.
Do you even realise what you said – “whatever they need”, as opposed to “whatever they want”. Do they have to “earn” things they need? Incidentally, there are some things that no amount of money can buy; love, affection and reciprocal respect being first on the list.
If most other parents are like you, then it comes as no surprise that children rebel at school. The bulk of the children who are most badly behaved at my children’s school are almost invariably the ones who act like angels in front of their parents, simply because they are terrified of the consequences if they dare to behave otherwise.
“They need to be taught obedience to their elders, because before you can command you have to obey.”
Please tell me, Muad’dib, why anyone should “command” anyone else – less so “obey” them – unless they are in the army, for example.
You seem to forget that children are huma beings too. They deserve your respect; whether or not you deserve theirs is an entirely different matter.
I sincerely hope that you are not a teacher. It’s bad enough that, with your attitude and ideas on bringing children up, you are a parent.
[Daphne – Well, Mand, I suppose he – why are we assuming it’s a he? – doesn’t know the risks involved in bringing up children the way he does: they might turn out to be hodor full of resentment, with a grudge against everyone and everything. One day I will understand why some people get a kick out of depriving children of things just for the sheer hell of it. As I told one such parent the other day, when you can afford to give your children things and deliberately deprive them ‘for the sake of their character’ what you are actually doing is damaging their character. It’s not ‘things’ that spoil children, but parents with a materialistic attitude which they emulate: daddy sucking up to business contacts while privately despising them, mummy sucking up to daddy for another Bulgari pendant, daddy sucking up to mummy so that she won’t say anything about his ‘weekend away with the boys’….I’ve seen it all.]
Dear Muaddib: I think you are living in the wrong century. And I still think you’re nuts.
Yes, Daph, we’ve seen it all. Worse still are the spoilt, narcissistic adults who think that the world and his wife owe them everything – respect included – when they don’t respect others themselves.
[Daphne – Cik, it was the same with ALL girls’ schools in those days. They were geared to producing wives and mothers and those who broke away were the exception]
With all due respect, but you are so wrong.
[Daphne – Look, I was just being polite. In reality, Sacred Heart was the worst, St Dorothy’s the second worst, and then the rest came in tiers. If you know of one girls’ school in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s which gave girls the ‘you can achieve something outside of a husband, children and charity work’ mentality, tell me about it. I am genuinely curious. The strange thing is that Old Girls feel the need to defend their schools. I see my school exactly for what it was, and the girl’s educational system, too. Boys became something, girls got married and never worked again. Disaster.]
Il-lummy what a read… im off to bed with a glass of super ultra skimmed benna milk. Good night to all, tomorrow’s dawn is close.
Muad’dib: Are you for real? Maybe we should ask your children whether they’re frightened of you, but then we might find out that their definition of respect is fear. You sound more like a dog trainer than a parent – and I have reservations about people who train dogs to ‘respect’ them by inducing fear and maintaining tight control. You’re an odd sort of parent if you feel that respect is bought by ice cream and toys and withholding what they need just so you show them who’s boss.
Maybe you’re *not* for real and are just making wild claims just to wind everyone up.
“Daphne – Look, I was just being polite. In reality, Sacred Heart was the worst, St Dorothy’s the second worst, and then the rest came in tiers. If you know of one girls’ school in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s which gave girls the ‘you can achieve something outside of a husband, children and charity work’ mentality, tell me about it. I am genuinely curious. The strange thing is that Old Girls feel the need to defend their schools. I see my school exactly for what it was, and the girl’s educational system, too. Boys became something, girls got married and never worked again. Disaster.]”
Check the lists(if such still exist) of female students attending the tertiary education institutionsavailable in the fifties sixties and seventies and you will see what I mean. The very first female libbers I met in an era that preceeded the bra burning lot were teaching nuns who taught us that the world is our oyster and that woe betide any one who dared not to use the intellectual talents God gave us to their full use.
[Daphne – Yes, that’s why the university was humming with women in the 1960s, and why more than half of Maltese women over the age of 30 today are non-productive, I imagine.]
@Corinne
I am real as the rocks that hold the foundations of your house. Why should they be frightened if I give them what they need? Children need to be shown who is boss because when they grow up they’ll have a real boss over them, giving them instructions and work. If they fail to grasp that fact from an early age, their career is bound to be a short one. What do you propose that we leave children do anything they want 24/7, without learning their duties? Rights are not earned without performing duties you know. But of course, most people are concerned only with children’s rights, and not their duties.
Their duty to respect their elders for instance. The duty of helping people in need. The duty of keeping your country tidy. The duty of not eating junk food and ending up as a fatass by the age of 10. And so on. Children need to be controlled just as sapling needs to be controlled by a stick to guide it in the proper direction.
[Daphne – You know nothing about raising children, and are setting yours up for psychological and emotional problems. You’re not raising them, you’re bullying them. I would imagine that they are all still under 16. Wait until they get to that age, and you’re going to have some really serious problems, unless you have cowed your kids so badly they’re too terrified to cross you. All the ‘duties’ you describe come as second nature, rather than being perceived as duties, to those who are properly raised. You don’t seem to understand that your approach to childcare is as dreadful as the approach at the other extreme – ‘being a friend to your child’ or neglecting them entirely. What you are doing, in effect, is raising children the traditional Maltese way, which involves squashing their personality so that they end up without one, too scared to question things, to stand up for what is right, or to raise their heads above the parapet. The hopelessly inadequate Maltese adults we see around us – including, I might add, the paedophiles and wife-beaters – are the products of an overly strict and bullying upbringing. Not all children grow up to have a boss giving them instructions and work, anyway. But again, the sort of upbringing you are giving your children is a contributing factor to the dearth of entrepreneurial thinking in Maltese culture. Bossed by their parents for 18 years and beyond, young adults leave the nest and seek to recreate the same environment in the workplace, too cowed and terrified to do their own thing.]
‘edit a book of my articles’…
Now that’s an idea. I hope we won’t have to wait that long!!
first of all there is something to say if you can achieve ‘a husband, children and charity work’! housewives and mothers have a thankless job and it goes unrecognised by know-it-alls like you. secondly i left a girls’ church school in the early 70’s and at least half of my classmates are practising professionals. so don’t generalise!
[Daphne – I love the way people with your backward mentality speak to me as though I haven’t had a home, husband and three children born a year apart for the last 23 years. I suppose you imagine that my house is a pig-sty, everyone goes hungry and my sons are drop-outs. Women like you prefer to believe that your services in the home are indispensable. They are not. I have worked all my married life, my home is better kept than that of many women who are housewives – this is because somebody is paid to do it professionally – we eat rather well because two incomes make for a much bigger food budget (and after all, I do produce a food magazine), and two of my sons are in postgraduate education while the third is completing an an honours degree. All three are accomplished and very well-informed, and have been able to make real conversation from an early age, the result of being raised by a mother active in the world outside the home, rather than by one with little contact beyond her immediate circle of familiars and the four walls of her home, and consequently with poor knowledge of current affairs and social issues.
A husband and children are not achievements, but life choices and things that happen to you. Your real achievements are what you are left with once your children have flown the nest and, more particularly, should your husband leave you, or you leave him. There is no way on earth that you left a convent school in the early 1970s and half your former classmates are practising professionals. I don’t think I know 15 women aged 50 who even work, let alone practise a profession. After thinking hard, I am sure I’ll come up with quite a few women of that age who work, but they probably won’t have gone to the same school, let alone have been in the same class. You don’t need to be defensive about your choice not to work. I am not defensive about having worked. I have never invited anyone round to check the surfaces of my furniture for dust.]
“What do you think it was like for me, reading one poisonous article after another that Wenzu Mintoff wrote about me for L-orizzont, exposing me to the hatred and bile of the typical L-orizzont reader who doesn’t know me and who believes Wenzu”
In this case I don’t see where his mother comes in; did Wenzu Mintoff bring in yor family when exposing you to the hatred and bile of the readers? If yes, you paid him back; if not his mother shouldn’t have featured.
[Daphne – My mother never slept with Dom Mintoff. As a consequence, I do not have to live with the suspicion that Dom Mintoff was my father, working out this grudge on the rest of society.]
Muad’dib: Your children might be frightened because you *withold* what they need to show them who’s boss, not because you give it to them as a matter of course, which is a parent’s duty.
Your theory about ensuring a good career for your children is only so much rubbish. If that’s the justification for your methodology, then you’re planning on them being obedient to a tyrannical and unreasonable boss without allowing them any choice in the matter. Have you ever thought about whether they *would* want to work for such a person? Or whether they might want to be the boss themselves? Indeed, have you ever thought at all about the children themselves rather than about yourself?
It isn’t necessary to adopt such a pompous tone to make your point. Nor is it essential to take such a draconian attitude towards ensuring there’s no litter on the ground.
There’s a lot to be said for respecting people who deserve it. Not all elders do. There’s lots to be said for respecting children. It seems you haven’t heard any of it.
Muad’dib: It’s just occurred to me that you say nothing about what your children’s other parent thinks. Perhaps there’s no room for that, given the size of your ego.
With regards your son I did mean funny, but in no way was I insulting your son. We did laugh ha ha, not at your son, but at the way the incident was blown out of proportion. Let me tell you it neither made me vote MLP nor PN. When I voted there were more serious issues which helped me decide.
Muad’dib:
‘Children need to be controlled just as sapling needs to be controlled by a stick to guide it in the proper direction.’
I think your metaphor is trite, but anyway, here goes: saplings only need the support of a stick when they grow outside the shadow of other trees. This is because they receive light from all directions, and grow crooked. Trees in a forest which only receive light from above end up growing straight upwards.
Besides, if you think of your child as a sapling, you’ll inevitably end up with a sap.
Muad’dib: did you ever question why the word discipline is so close to the word disciple (or follower)? I once heard that to really raise your children into worthwhile adults, you should give them good examples and encourage them to follow such examples. If you want your children to learn about “Their duty to respect their elders for instance. The duty of helping people in need. The duty of keeping your country tidy. The duty of not eating junk food and ending up as a fatass by the age of 10. And so on,” all you have to do is lead them by your lifestyle. As the saying goes pratice what you preach.
Grace: It was a non-incident, actually.
Muad’dib – many violent “criminals” had fathers just like you. Alternatively, your tyrannical methods could break them into submissive inferiors who fear the world.
@Grace
Exactly my point. Followers follow orders from their master. Simple as that. Otherwise they’re not followers at all. Leading by example can only lead you so far. Sometimes children tend to be resistant to the ‘good examples’ (such as not shouting when you speak), so you have to resort to more, ‘persuasive’ measures my dear.
@ Matthew
The son is always shaped by the father.
@Corrine Vella
I don’t you think understand. At home, my children are free to speak their mind. I only administer consequences to their inappropriate actions, thus guiding them to be responsible and honest. When all else fails, you have to use more persuasive measures like making them do housework (ix-xoghol salmura tal-gisem), reducing tv and computer time, etc, etc. The usual stuff.
“Your theory about ensuring a good career for your children is only so much rubbish.”
Hah, yeah so your vision for turning children into whining softies, complaining at every turn is good? Give us a break will you?
“Have you ever thought about whether they *would* want to work for such a person? Or whether they might want to be the boss themselves?”
As I’ve said before, before you can command you have to obey first. Thus, I am essentially teaching them how to command when they see me. You see, I teach by example also.
“Nor is it essential to take such a draconian attitude towards ensuring there’s no litter on the ground.”
Look at the state of the country. Malta is a rubbish dump because generations of Maltese have not been taught this basic fact, that littering is bad.
“There’s a lot to be said for respecting people who deserve it. Not all elders do. There’s lots to be said for respecting children. It seems you haven’t heard any of it.”
By instilling discipline in them, I’m respecting them because when I’ll be old they’ll thank me for raising them in the proper way. One think I notice is that children don’t respect meek ones like you. That is the problem with beaten teachers. Lack of forceful personalities. Too much softies running around.
“Muad’dib: It’s just occurred to me that you say nothing about what your children’s other parent thinks. Perhaps there’s no room for that, given the size of your ego.”
Why should I speak for my wife? She has a mind of her own and so she can speak whenever she likes. I’m not a possessive and dominating husband as you try to depict me.
@Daphne
“Women like you prefer to believe that your services in the home are indispensable. They are not. I have worked all my married life, my home is better kept than that of many women who are housewives – this is because somebody is paid to do it professionally”
Jew forsi trid tghid ghax qas taf issajjar u tnaddaf? U ahjar ma nghid xi kelma ohra tibda bl-‘gh’ ghax nkun krudili wisq. :-)
” and two of my sons are in postgraduate education while the third is completing an an honours degree. All three are accomplished and very well-informed, and have been able to make real conversation from an early age, the result of being raised by a mother active in the world outside the home, rather than by one with little contact beyond her immediate circle of familiars and the four walls of her home, and consequently with poor knowledge of current affairs and social issues. ‘
Mhux tieghek biss hi. :-)
[Daphne – What a surprise, he’s married to a vulgar housewife.]
You see. She speaks her mind.
[Daphne – What I see is that her identity is as Your Wife. Unless she’s fake, of course.]
[Daphne – Yes, that’s why the university was humming with women in the 1960s, and why more than half of Maltese women over the age of 30 today are non-productive, I imagine.]
In those days , it was only a few hundered students (male and female) that made it every year to university. Tal Qroqq cxame years later. You came to the conclusion that I was referring only to University . I referred to institutions offering tertiary education_ not just the old university.
Muad’dab: There are plenty of draconian, authoritarian parents in this country, and I don’t see that improving the litter problem. Oddly enough, there are plenty of draconian, authoritarian parents in other litter-filled places too. There’s usually less litter in places where parents are liberal. So what’s your point, exactly?
DISCLAIMER: I know this is completely irrelevant to the original post, but since the discussion seems to have taken this directionI was just wondering :)
It has been established (in this discussion) that Muad’dib’s methods are more likely to result in maladjusted individuals than other methods. Since we have no objective figures at hand we’ll have to take it as fact.
How would the participants in this discussion go about instilling values – whatever values – in a child? My point is that values are not something that a child can “imitate”. (In that respect I would imagine that Grace’s advice is very practicable. I have even read a quote to that effect: “Your actions are so loud that I can’t hear what you’re telling me”)
[Daphne – I find that on the whole, children brought up without religious indoctrination and with civic values and good manners turn out better. Avoid anything that makes them feel resentful or put upon. There are only five things a young person needs for a successful life: good manners, charm, conversation, common sense and common decency. If they’re good-looking and intelligent as well then they’re in clover – but really they only need the first five. And you don’t get them by being bullied by your parents.]
Muad’dib & his wife,
Someone so obsessed such as yourself is normally the stooge at his place of work and so tries to assert authority on those who HAVE to obey – you prove this completely!
As to that coarse mate of yours – ha ha, less said the better.
By the way, you are obviously a pair of blogus trollus!
One of the most unbiased person in this country. I like his articles. Believe me, you can learn a lot from his articles daphne!
[Daphne – You’re obviously not the world’s most perceptive and well-informed person. Balzan was, is and always will be Mr Agenda.]
These Muaddib and spouse can’t be real! Real hamalli wouldn’t be spending time chatting on the internet. I have to admit though they are a bit of a laugh!
As far as I have followed the Labour press has never mentioned the name of the lawyer parliamentary secretary in connection with his brothers’ alleged rape of a fourteen year old girl, not even when a lawyer and the accused allegedly offered the victim money in order not to testify in court “The defendants, brothers Peter Paul and Josef Said, stand accused of raping the girl, while Mark Lorry Said and Peter Paul Debono were charged with her defilement. They are all under house arrest.” as reported in The Sunday Times: http://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081005/local/lawyer-and-family-offered-gozo-rape-girl-euro-7-000-deal
This weekend there was a knife fight and the PN media reported that one of the persons arrested was the son of the Cospicua mayor Joe Scerri.
The parliamentary secretary and the mayor are both public figures and the former is not responsible for the actions of his brothers. whilst the latter is not responsible for the actions of his son. Strangely enough it seems that the operators of the Labour media understand this whilst those of the PN media don’t.
[Daphne – Listen, buster – you stick to your field and don’t try to teach me about mine. Anything that’s worth reporting should be reported, unless the perpetrator is under 18. To fail to report that the men charged with gang-rape are the brothers of a parliamentary secretary is a serious dereliction of editorial duty – it is, in effect, hoodwinking or deceiving your readers: “I know, but I’m not going to tell you.”]
X’inhi l-kelma tibda bl-‘gh’?
[Daphne – Il-Mexxej tal-Oppozizzjoni, ovvja.]
Muad’dib – I know of a family where the father had your ideas about raising his children.
One of the children ended up with severe OCD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive-compulsive_disorder ) when well into his adulthood. The other child ended up with severe psychological problems well into his adulthood too: abusing one girlfriend after another, trying to control them, being violent, threatening them; even attempting suicide a few times.
To the outside world, nothing was wrong with any of them; to those who knew them well, things were very different.
You may eventually realise the harm you’ve caused your children, Muad’dib, but by then it may be too late.
I think the word starting with gh has nothing to do with what Daphne calls JM. Women like Muad’dib’s wife think that whoever works and lets others do the housework is lazy. So that word must be ghazziena. She did say “Jew forsi trid tghid ghax qas taf issajjar u tnaddaf”
[Daphne – Errrrm, Grace? Whoever works and lets others do the housework? They’re working, remember. Now if you had said ‘whoever spends all day having coffee and visiting the hairdresser while others do the housework’, that would have made sense – and even so, I don’t believe anyone should do housework if they can pay others to do it. This was excellent advice given to me by two much older ladies, one who would now be in her 60s and another who would now be in her 80s: however little money you have, cut down on something and pay someone else to do the cleaning and ironing. Then you can concentrate on doing other more useful things, and even if you don’t do anything more useful than read a book, your family won’t come home to a fed-up and angry person who’s been having highly uninteresting close encounters with dusters and mops all day. Bloody good advice. I find it very strange that people like this woman we’re discussing place such a high premium on doing their own cleaning – the most unskilled job on the books. The window-cleaners sent round by the company I use are always teenage boys who left school with no qualifications, and household cleaners are invariably women with no other marketable skills or qualifications, and that just about says it all: it doesn’t take much to wash a floor.]
Le imma hi bdiet il-clause jew subclause jew x’jghidulha b’lista ta’ verbi, jigifieri dil-kelma tibda bl-gh suppost hija verb, filwaqt li l-kap ta’ l-oppozizzjoni huwa nom.
Incidentalment, “Muad’dib” xi tfisser?
Muad’dib – “I’m not a possessive and dominating husband as you try to depict me.”
But you sure as hell are one dominating father. Poor kids!
This week, Austrian newspapers reported Fritzl describing how his abusive relationship with his mother fed his life as a rapist.
“She never showed me any love, she beat me and kicked me until I was on the floor and bleeding,” he said. “I felt so weak and humiliated. I never got a kiss from her or even a hug although I tried very hard to please her. The only thing she did with me was go to church.
guardian.co.uk
“She beat me and kicked me until I was lying on the floor bleeding. I had a horrible fear from her. She kept insulting me and told me I was a Satan, a criminal, a no-good.”
Oh Tony Borg – may I remind you of the ex minister Lawrence Gatt who was ridiculed and vilified by the Labour press, tv and radio because of his son. You want more? What about Richard Muscat, Malta’s ambassador to Ireland, again ridiculed and harassed because of his son, who after all was never charged with anything. Mid-dehra il-memorja qasira, jew irridu nilghabuha tal-qaddisin.
[Daphne – The real problem is that they never see the beam in their own eye.]
Daphne I always thought that you were a smart person…controversial, outspoken, and nutcracker. But really, you should not have opened this can of worms. I fear for your safety. I will pray for you, your husband and your children. In the meantime, rest assured that you will continue to have our support. Go Daphne!
[Daphne – Oh God forbid we should still have to live like that.]