I am glad that you agree that there should be parameters. What worries me is that more often than not these parameters are very fluid and easy to circumvent.

@Daphne: “Even women leaders have to be masculine – and when I say ‘masculine’ I mean the traits one would normally associate with men, but which in reality are more common among women”.

What traits are masculine, but more common among women?

If we are all so liberal, Astrid Vella has the right to protest and do whatever she wants. It is up to the authorities not to be bullied by her antics, or maybe they should unleash the SAG to make her and her misguided followers see reason. Why don’t we do an Iran.

[Daphne – I agree that she has every right to protest. But with power – even self-assumed power – comes responsibility. That’s why I compared her tactics to Alfred Sant’s. He ignored his responsibility to truth and accuracy, too, choosing instead to reason that the means justified his personal ends, going even further in reasoning that his personal ends were those of The People.]

Pedestrian he is, but you are still being unfair in judging and sentencing the man before he has even started.

[Daphne – I have become a pretty good judge of character over the years. Most women are by the time they’ve reached this age. It’s just one of the reasons why Muscat has more appeal among men than he does among women – just one of the reasons. Another reason is that he gives off no ‘testosterone’ signals. Women don’t mind having an unmasculine man as a friend and confidante – not that we would trust Muscat as a confidante because he strikes us as too vain and self-absorbed and the sort of person who would rush off to repeat what we’ve told him – but we don’t want an unmasculine man as leader. Even women leaders have to be masculine – and when I say ‘masculine’ I mean the traits one would normally associate with men, but which in reality are more common among women, though lots of us choose to disguise the fact.]

Do we keep on building or not?

[Daphne – Of course. The state can and should set the parameters for building, but it can’t ban development. For a start, and this is something many people don’t seem to understand, the immediate and ongoing consequence of a ban on development would be escalation of the market price of all existing property.

I would never choose to return to the days when Malta looked like a remote Greek island with a bit of Naples attached while most people lived in squalor, just because I wouldn’t have been one of those living in squalor. That’s the flaw in FAA’s thinking: they reason from the point of view of people who would have been privileged and with a house to themselves even 70 years ago. Perhaps they weren’t exposed to the reality of Valletta tenements with 15 people to a room, as I was – my parents did not protect me from this information – or newly married couples living in one room in their parents’ rented house, or the children of peasants – and I use that word in its literal meaning – sleeping with horses on bales of hay in a damp shed, or homes like the one our live-in help came from when I was five years old: one room with nothing but a table in it, in which the entire extended family slept on the floor crammed head to toe.]

So you think that in a small country like ours we should still keep on building all over the place just so we do not appear to be socialist? Interesting. I can understand that kind of thinking from some money-hungry speculator, but coming from you its quite disappointing.

[Daphne – I am a liberal. I believe in minimum interference in people’s lives, property and business.]

Apologies, I should have written, ‘have you read or have you heard of’. As to how the small village lawyer turned out to be, it is a case of ‘wara kullhadd gharef’. I do not think that there were many in 1969 that were foreseeing the greatness to come.

[Daphne – I think we can safely say that there is no greatness in store for Joseph Muscat. He will be a pedestrian prime minister at best. The situation does not call for greatness – which is just as well, given that he does not have the qualities for greatness. Cometh the hour, cometh the man – now as then.]

“Of course there are going to be people who disagree with what FAA are doing and those people have every right to leave comments but I’m sure it would be appreciated by all concerned if they could comment in an adult and polite way.”

I find it very amusing coming from one of Astrid’s toy soldiers; the people who have turned personal attacks into an art form.

And here’s a second joke. James Tyrell accuses Antoine Vella of being unreasonable and intolerant. This comes from someone whose writings are in most cases unreasonable and intolerant.

Vera kaz li ma jarawx it-travu li ghandhom f’ ghajnejhom.

[Daphne – No, what is simply scandalous is the socialist thinking that is innately opposed to people owning a lot of property. Property is just something else that people own, like cars and jewellery and famous paintings. I don’t think it should be treated any differently. The fact that it is treated differently is rooted in French revolutionary thinking. It has nothing to do with the ‘environment’.]