I wrote bucket….and yes, to my eternal shame, if it was a cupboard it would need to be quite large. My weight issues are a work in progres I’m afraid.

My point is that if Marlene Mizzi started a business, and it’s not a bad business ( considering the huge amounts one has to spend to clothe babies and buy them toys, something that I am doing at the moment) then she has some degree of inherent business skills.

[Daphne – Again, I beg to differ. Starting a shop at a time when people would buy anything at any price was easy-peasy. That’s why so many people did it. And that’s why they are now faltering in the face of competition. Opening a baby-goods shop back then when there was nothing and importation was just beginning? A child could have done it. The trick was to work out whether it was sustainable or not. If anyone can do it, then before long, anyone will be doing it and you’re fighting your ever-tightening corner.]

A businessman is not born that way, but becomes so, after making countless mistakes and trying not once, but many times. But degrees do help make those skills learned better.

[Daphne – I disagree. Being good at business, like many other things, depends on innate aptitude. Training and experience build on that but they cannot create it where it does not exist – just as no number of music lessons will turn me into Mozart. Or even into Renato. Philip Green started out as a barrow-boy on Portobello Road, and not as a Harvard graduate in economics.]

In Europe, it’s considered shameful to have a business and fail. In the USA, its considered an honour, because you tried doing something different if not innovative.

[Daphne – I don’t think there’s any shame attached. It’s just more difficult to get back up on your feet after bankruptcy. And we’re not discussing failure here. We’re discussing mediocrity, which is completely different.]

Well, Daphne, I am sorry, but I beg to disagree on this one. One does not preclude the other. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t vote for her. But she had stints in other things besides her clothing business. BOV for one. Insurance for another. Plus she does have a degree in economics and management.

[Daphne – I know nobody who runs a successful business on the back of a degree in economics and management, except for a couple of individuals whose success is all down to their inherent business skills and the degree was incidental. Please enlighten me. On the other hand, I do know a prime minister who tried. As for BOV and Millennium Insurance, don’t get me started.]

I think she was not the right person for Sea Malta but in all fairness she didn’t do a bad job there. She just fell foul of Austin Gatt, and she had no right to contest the government’s decision to sell off the company.

As for not revealing identities, you know how I feel about the matter. I’m rather contemptuous about nom-de-plumes, because it gives you the luxury to say what you feel without facing the consequences. I put it into a par with “tfesfis fil-widnejn”. I do risk bothering everyone in this blog, but this is one guy who will not hide.

[Daphne – Good thing too, because it would have to be a big cupboard.]

David, I have to agree with you for once. It’s obvious she voted PN and is now trying her damnedest to convince her electorate otherwise. She was wrong about Sea Malta. But your last comment takes the cake, and is unfair.

[Daphne – Actually, it isn’t, and I had to delete the last part of your comment because you shouldn’t reveal a person’s identity when that person has not chosen to reveal it himself. There is the world of difference between operating a large import and distribution company and running two shops that retail toys and baby-clothes. The know-how acquired in the former can be applied to other businesses. The know-how acquired in running two shops can only be applied in running another shop, not even a whole chain of them because that takes things to a whole new level. And that’s why Marlene Mizzi fell flat on her face so dramatically when it came to challenging the owner of the company for which she worked about the future of the company. She didn’t even know that when you challenge your employer about the future of the company, it’s you who gets shown the door and obviously not your employer. And she wasn’t even shown the door – I suspect more to avoid political fall-out than because of her management attributes. Instead, she stormed off in a huff.]

God, how they deserve each other those two. Actually. looking at their photos, I think there’s a resemblance. Are they related?

[Daphne – Edward has emigrated to England to live and work there, thanks to his EU passport, which he only has due to the efforts of the former prime minister and political party he despises. Unless, of course, he has convinced himself that we joined the EU thanks to Harry Vassallo.]

If she was in a court of law, the judge would throw her in for perjury.

[Daphne – The thing is, with the vote you can claim what you please and there is no proof either way. I actually believe her, because it would have made much more sense to claim she voted PN. That wouldn’t have exposed her to accusations of cracked thinking, which have done her far more damage than any claim to have voted PN would have done. Her market isn’t among in-nies ta’ Bormla but among pro-EU up-and-coming types, who wouldn’t have minded her voting PN in 2003 because they did so, but who sure as hell mind the fact that she voted for Sant and to keep us out of Europe. I’m one of them. I think it’s unforgiveable: I’m all right Jack and screw the rest of you.]

As for her ‘lanzit’, it all boils down to her showdown with Austin Gatt over the (failed) Sea Malta privatisation. She just wanted to be a primadonna and got herself into one big mess. Privatisation is the prerogative of the shareholder (ie the government) , and not of the chairman.

She should stick to what she knows best – selling nappies.

[Daphne – My point exactly. She was promoted way beyond her abilities. I remember remarking at the time – privately – that it’s a rum old world if you can go straight from selling baby-clothes out of a shop in your mother’s Rabat front room to running Sea Malta. Tokenism at its worst, and it works against women in the end.]

What do you expect – Marie Benoit is back from her holidays and she is the executive editor of “First” magazine.

… Dr John Zammit has one too, a small one, but one nonetheless.

Spot on!