Ha ha. Saviour Balzan would be on a winner there.

The beauty of Google – one of three libel cases filed by Saviour Balzan against Lou Bondi – di-ve news item from August 2004. Your old friend Toni Abela signed all three libels. Not sure about the outcome. Apparently, the best way to rate a brain is to donate the brain to medical science; so Saviour might have pulled out of that one.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:r9JPc_679ugJ:www.di-ve.com/Default.aspx%3FID%3D47%26M%3D%26Action%3D1%26NewsId%3D38717%26currentPage%3D54+lou+bondi+libel+third+rate+brain&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[Daphne – Thanks for the laugh. Imagine suing somebody for saying that you have a third-rate brain. “No, ta, my brain is not third rate!” This is the bit I liked best, though: Saviour Balzan sued Lou Bondi for calling him a lair http://www.elook.org/dictionary/lair.html in a published letter called….LAIR.]

He reminds me oh-so-very-much of a teacher I had at St Dorothy’s junior school over three decades ago, who saw fit to call me “Mari’ tal-Bajd” in a derogatory way – not because of my typical Maltese appearance, but because of grudges she most certainly bore, it being the mid-1970s.

She obliged us to call her ‘Madam Balzan’, while all the other teachers made do with Miss or Mrs.

Didn’t Balzan file a libel suit against Bondi for this, or was it just a threat? Would have loved to be in the courtroom if it did go that far.

[Daphne – No libel suit as far as I know: but like you, I would have loved to be there as discussions took place on whether Saviour Balzan’s brain is first, second or third rate.]

No…just a ten minute studio exercise. Very often in such programmes the guests do not even get paid for being interviewed. According to my calculations – if Reporter was on for three schedules during 2007 – 2008, then Balzan must have aired approximately 195 ten-minuters with each costing approximately 451 euros.

I sometimes do TV production myself but I just cannot work out how that amount could be a reasonable sum. Oh, and is he going to grace our TV screens again for the upcoming three schedules? Probably the cost has gone up.

[Daphne – http://europa.eu/whoiswho/public/index.cfm?fuseaction=idea.hierarchy&nodeID=172686&personID=91980&lang=en ]

Public servants DO get interviewed by the media and they don’t necessarily need permission. It’s not like they’re on a leash. As any other top public servant he should be more media friendly, even more in his case since he’s representing our government at EU level in the adoption of EU legislation.

[Daphne – You’re wrong there, Kevin. There’s something called the Estacode. The conditions of employment of public servants prevent them from speaking to the press or giving out information without the express permission of their superior, who would in turn have to obtain permission from his/her superior, and so on. This is not such an unusual concept: employees of private companies also need the boss’s permission to speak to the press. Whenever you see a public servant interviewed – including the one you mention by name – it’s because permission has been sought and obtained. It might even be that instruction has been given, rather than permission sought.]