Guess it wasn't such a great idea, eh, Joseph?
That's what I said, but it's not what I meant.....errrr, I mean what I say, no sorry, actually I don't, and I don't say what I mean, either
In between striking cheesy poses in naff ‘pre-wedding video’ outfits for that Mr and Mrs Chav-tastic interview in The Circle, the leader of the opposition has taken time out to gauge public opinion on his infamous Proposta Numru Tlieta Dwar L-Inflazzjoni.
This is the one that says, there in black on white in the Labour Party’s official statement, that il-gvern should import prodotti u servizzi huwa stess and then sell these b’modi differenti.
Public opinion hasn’t been good. In fact, it’s been horrified.
Muscat didn’t live through the bulk-buying Labour days as a cognizant being, and his screaming-harridan-fil-meetings-ta’-Mintoff nanna (his self-described main political inspiration) wouldn’t have bothered telling him about the system’s myriad shortcomings.
It’s a safe bet that the man didn’t even know that the government used to import goods and services huwa stess way back when and sold them b’mod differenti, and so when he sat down and devised his Proposta Numru Tlieta he thought it was a jolly amazing idea.
That’s until it was highlighted on this blog and a couple of other places and people began hollering: “Please, no more bulk-buying! No more government intervention in the market for goods and services! We don’t want all that again.”
He probably called Mario Vella – Il-Goo Roo – in for a pow-wow and a little update on early 1980s economic policy. And then it was a case of ‘Oh. My. God. Why did no one tell me this before?’ Errrrrr – maybe because you’re the leader of the Labour Party and you’re supposed to know?
So now Muscat has gone into damage limitation mode. Fortunately, he has spared us the usual excuse that the party Amstrad malfunctioned and wrote Proposta Numru Tlieta on its own initiative, sort of like Hal the computer in Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey.
He has denied that the Labour Party believes the government should intervene in the market and directly import products and services.
Yes, indeed: he has gone into Super One Spinning Hack mode and is denying what’s right there, written down and indelibly so on the Labour Party’s list of suggestions as to what should be done to control inflation: No. 3 – the government should import goods and services itself and find different ways of selling them.
It’s a classic Pants on Fire moment.
Because it’s kind of difficult to deny that your party has said something when that something is printed on official party stationery, Muscat tried a bit of Super One Spinning. And I must say that being a Super One Tool is like riding a bicycle: once learned, never forgotten. The man has lost none of his old touch.
That’s what we said but it’s not what we meant, Muscat announced today when he met a delegation from the Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise at Labour HQ. What we meant, he said, is that there should be greater transparency in EXISTING government imports, like fuel.
Oh. Right. Yes. In that case, a little explanation is called for as to why the Labour Party used the subjunctive mood (the government should import) rather than the present tense (the government imports) – unless we are to assume that the Labour Amstrad bungles verbs as well as concepts.
And one would imagine that if Labour were talking of transparency in the importation of fuel by the government, then Proposta Numru Tlieta would have said specifically that, instead of: ‘The government should import goods and services itself and sell them in different ways.’
Now for his second act, perhaps Doctor ‘I’ll use my twins and my wife’s bleeding as a cynical PR tool’ Muscat might wish to tell us what he thinks of his deputy leader’s passionate belief in the revenue-earning potential of a Labour supermarket.
And meanwhile, back to that Chav-tastic interview: perhaps Muscat and the missus would shut up once and for all about how their children were born. It’s getting very, very stale and very, very annoying.
Somebody should remind them that all babies are born in one of two ways: pulled out of the womb or pushed out of the normal channel. There are varying amounts of blood, varying amounts of pain, varying degrees of confinement, worry, panic and distress, but it’s been roughly the same experience for the billions of us who have done it.
So enough, please. We really don’t want to hear any more about how much Michelle Muscat bled, how long she lay in bed, how many hours she was in labour, how much ahead of time the babies were born, how her husband rushed to her side (why say so? aren’t all fathers present at their child’s birth unless they have some quarrel with the mother?) and how sweet the babies are.
All parents think their babies are amazing. They just have the common sense to understand that the only people they should be saying this to are those who share their amazement: all grandparents and the mother’s siblings. Even the father’s siblings can generally express little more than polite interest.
And another point: you can’t invade your own privacy and then complain that other people are doing the same and invading it too. Use your twins to gain votes and you’re just asking for others to use them to cost you votes. That’s a bit of advice, for free. Besides, I like children and I can’t stand to see them used as a tool by politicians.
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“In between striking cheesy poses in naff ‘pre-wedding video’ outfits for that Mr and Mrs Chav-tastic interview” … “Doctor ‘I’ll cynically use my twins as a PR tool’” …
You’re not Joseph’s best friend are you :) By the way, did you realise that the twins’ faces were not shown? Don’t you think that if he really wanted to use them as a PR tool, he would have demanded a nice full blown frontal photo of his kids?
[Daphne – It makes no difference whether the faces were shown or not. It’s not as though anyone is going to recognise a toddler. All our recent prime ministers bar one had children. They didn’t make a song and dance about it, or use them to gain sympathy votes – granted that in Mintoff’s case it might have been difficult, but Fenech Adami had an entire regiment of children and we don’t even know exactly how many there are, still less what they’re called. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Chav-tastic are representative of the times we live in even in this: not only are they ‘savagely aspirational’ (a term used by the anthropologist Mark-Anthony Falzon to describe people of a certain socio-economic profile in Malta) but they also appear to have embarked on what I call Project Parenthood of Unique Offspring, a condition which afflicts people who give birth to a carefully planned only child or pigeon pair when in their 30s and make a really big deal out of it all.]
David Gatt,
You are all over the place physically and mentally to justify and defend Dr. Muscat but you are travelling on inward spiralling concentric circles to nowhere.
Rather than waste your time interpreting and polishing Muscat’s gaffes you should devote your energy to changing the MLP for the benefit of Malta….maybe you are still in time
Funny search engine google: I was looking up ‘subjunctive mood and this blog came up. Made my grammar query search a little more interesting I must say. But Listen, I do not think that “The government should import goods…” is an example of the subjunctive mood. In any case I suppose you were translating from Maltese and I don’t know if the subjunctive exists in Maltese as it does in Italian for example.
In any case only old bores use the subjunctive so he should not be using it if he wants to project an image of fresh youth.
Why do you think there is no photo of the pool at Joseph Muscat’s home?
Poor twins, Joey and his wife can’t even imagine how much their kids are going to be mocked in their teen / adult life with such astronomical names – all because their father does not have any self awareness and on top of that no real work experience. CVs with such names are immediately sidelined, unless of course they know that you were the PM’s daughter.
Its really amazing how this guy puts his car deperately in reverse and goes back the way he came. But it’s not that simple, is it? Joseph, your party said it. Your party meant it. Your deputy leader said it. He meant it, too. Given the chance, both of you will do it. It will bring in votes from a certain kind of person, and it will force the importers to discontinue products or bring down prices to unsustainable levels.
The Times quoted the prime minister as saying that the government is thinking of importing some pharmaceuticals itself. It already does: 55% of all pharmaceuticals in Malta are bought by the government. That makes the government a dominant player in the market. Someone has been giving our Lawrence daft advice, and I have a pretty good idea who it is.
[Daphne – The government doesn’t import pharmaceuticals to sell them in competition with importers, but to distribute them for ‘free’ under the national health service. There’s a major difference. And as you know, the government can’t buy direct from the major pharmaceutical players because they will go through their Malta rep office only – not out of loyalty or because they are dead keen to hand on the commission on sales, but because they want payment in 60/90 days and they can’t get that from the government.]
The gentleman who is reading this, who is giving advice to the prime minister, who looks at surveys and says …..right, we need to do something to reduce the price of this because it’s worrying Cetta down at the Mandragg and Censa at the Monti.. well, he is being told …lay off, buster.
Price orders anyone?
You see, these people, in the parties, who pore over surveys and are fed morsels of “sentimenti tal-poplu” in dribs and drabs, do not understand one simple rule: give the guy a rod to catch fish, but don’t subsidise his bait.
[Daphne – The bait is free already. So is the fish. Is it any wonder that people expect the rod, too?]
People in business, be they at the CoC or GRTU have been branded thieves without any justification whasoever.
So far, the government doesn’t do that…..as yet. I can’t count how many times I have heard the threat that it will do so unless prices go down. Government also distributes them for free, again, correctly so. It’s not a perfect system, of all people I should know, but it works for the great majority that need the medicines, because to its credit government doesn’t skimp and buys the best, even at the hospital. Not many people realise that. Our quality of care is really up there amongst the very best.
As regards to payments, well, yes, they can do much better if they want. They won’t. They are “tac-civijl”…….As regards the 60/90 days payment demanded by foreign companies, that, in these credit crunchy times is a ludicrous joke. It doesn’t exist, because credit insurance has become very very expensive abroad.
So very few people give that kind of credit, even if you had a long business relationship. And with our microscopic enterprises here in Malta, with piddly turnovers, Maltese companies’ credit rating is not good. Credit insurance depends on grading, as a low turnover does not help that credit rating at all.
As for the rod, well, is-Salvatur thought us to expect things for free, and that’s their right.
It’s not a question of the repeat of the dreaded price orders or bulk-buying but anyone who has travelled or lived abroad can confirm that there are certain categories of items which are definitely and inexplicably more expensive in Malta than in other countries – one case in point being pharmaceuticals.
[Daphne – Inexplicably? Could it have something to do with the fact that we have to import by sea and air every last little thing that we use, and that the cost of landing cargo, thanks to the closed shop operation, is astronomical? Funny how the Labour Party failed to mention the single greatest contributor to the inflated price of imported items: stevedores. Pharmaceuticals: I’m not getting into that as there are others on this blog who know that market better than I do. And pharmaceuticals and related items are far more expensive in Italy than they are in Malta.]
Daphne: I can tell you for a fact that items transhipped via Malta and sold in, say, Tunisia or Libya are markedly cheaper there. And by cheaper, I do not mean 10% but, in some cases, even 400% and more. This is the case for pharmaceuticals.
[Daphne – If you want to live in Tunisia or Libya, go right ahead. I think you’ll find there are reasons pharmaceuticals are so much cheaper there which have everything to do with the reasons we prefer living in the European Union.]
Regarding shipping costs: you may have a point there for some cases but one tends to forget that within Europe – for example – land/rail transport costs can be more expensive and the chain of agents, distributors, middlemen, etc. in Europe is more extended than in Malta.
[Daphne – It costs more to land goods in Malta then it does to bring them to Malta. This is because of the fees charged by stevedores, who are tightly unionised and operate a closed shop. It is not a government-induced cost but a union-induced cost, and this is one union that both government and opposition are reluctant to take on. They have to take it on together, otherwise all attempts at cracking the problem will fail.]
One other point relates to items imported from the US or the Far East: Shipment costs there are negligible in terms of the total cost and still do not explain the differences with prices found here and those found elsewhere.
[Daphne – Anything imported into the European Union from outside the European Union is subjected to extremely high tariffs. The USA and the countries of the Far East are outside the European Union. In this case it is not shipment costs that are putting up the retail price, but the customs tariffs.]
@Disgusted: First time I was in Switzerland I was surprised to see that the Swiss cheese available in Malta was cheaper than the supposedly same cheese I bought in Switzerland. I think that this is something like the cheaper drugs in Libya. Something to do with subsidies for Third World countries methinks…… or maybe quality?
Are we to take it that from now on Joseph Muscat doesn’t mean what he says and that whenever he says or writes something we have to wait a week or two to get a go-ahead from HIMSELF that what he had said or written is actually what he meant or didn’t mean to say?
It’s a question of: “How can I tell you what I think before I’ve heard what I wanted to say?”
The FAA apologists are getting quite nasty, what do you think?
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=91968
[Daphne – They always were nasty. They bitch and kvetch all day long. They act nice only to win people round to their cause. They’re the opposite of me: I act nasty but am nice.]
The only possible reply to that reference to poison is the infamous quote “If I were your husband, I’d take it”.
No, you’re not (nice), Daphne!
[Daphne – How would you know, given that we have never even met? I’m not a character in a play, you know. I’m a real person.]
Have you read Stephen Calleja’s articles, Edward, or bothered to read some of nasty comments posted here? I don’t condone the letter the letter which appeared in The Malta Independent on Sunday but some people just open the door to abuse (which, I repeat, I do not condone under any circumstance).
[Daphne – If you don’t condone it, then how about giving your friend a ring to condemn it? Sitting on the fence gets uncomfortable after a while. And there was absolutely nothing wrong with Stephen Calleja’s articles about Astrid Vella: they are legitimate and well-thought-out criticism of somebody who has been blasting us through her megaphone for the last three years. Perhaps she (and you) believe she has some kind of divine right to march through public life unsullied by taunts, insults or even fair comment? If you can’t stand the heat, you get back to the kitchen.]
“some people just open the door to abuse”
You don’t mean Lesley Kreupel deserves abuse, surely?
I read Stephen Calleja’s comments and I do not think there was anything nasty about them. Maybe you should quote them to remind us? I thought they were fair criticism of how FAA operates.
On the other hand, these are some adjectives used against Stephen Calleja in four letters from FAA’s toy soldiers in an attack orchestrated and instigated most probably by Astrid Vella.
“Puerile. Barbaric. Pompous. Ridiculous. Blinkered. Patronising. Snide. Superficial. Arrogant. Bully. NGO-hater. Aggressive. Troglodyte.”
And this is an excerpt from a letter by another of Astrid’s toy soldiers, Lesley Kreupl:
“On reading Stephen Calleja’s bit in defence (?) of what he wrote about Ms Vella (“Where’s the halo, Astrid?” TMIS, 19 July), I must admit that I was very surprised to hear that an MCP such as he (still) has a wife – if I were married to him and he wrote of me in that vein I would be long gone to greener pastures, or he would be in the grave having succumbed to my purposely poisonous cooking…… My description of him as “barbaric” obviously needs to be re-accessed – downwards – Hagar the Horrible, on a good day, would not even come close. ……Mr Calleja, all I can say in conclusion is that, although I am 100 per cent for freedom of speech, I am exceptionally disappointed that someone of your inferior intellect has been given space in a newspaper of this calibre.”
Daphne: You mistake is to generalise and to presume you know people and their motivations. We’re not mass-produced in some Chinese factory!
[Daphne – With your way of thinking, there would be no psychology, no psychiatry, no anthropology and no sociology. Actually, people ARE mass-produced. Hadn’t you noticed? There are billions of us, but really so very little diversity of emotions and behaviour.]
I honestly loved your last words, ” I act nasty but am nice”. Reminded me of a lovely English thoroughbred racing at the Marsa in the early 1980s, called Naughty but Nice. And I do believe you are so, no matter what is said about you. Certainly no hypocrite.
Dr Muscat should say a prayer at the start of each day:
“Oh Lord, help me to keep my big mouth shut until I know what I’m talking about. “
Daphne, reading that passionate diatribe you referred us to in The Independent……..whatever happened to that Angelik character? I used to find those bits you wrote about him quite amusing. Has he ascended to heaven, body and soul?
[Daphne – Qiehed bix-xutdawn bhalissa.]
Imma tal-GOL mhumiex!
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090805/local/maltas-meps-should-defend-pro-life-values-gol
No he isn’t – I am told that there is a billboard in Marsa – saying something about his weekly visions.
Now that Joseph Muscat is trying to deny that he said, and wrote, that Goverment should import and distribute things and services itself, which is reminiscent of Labour’s infamous bulk-buying, I was wondering if Toni Zarb – the only person in Malta who finds this as positive news, will also be issuing a denial. A veritable bunch of clowns!
The only thing that is inflated is the ego of this insufferable man.
Is it not about time that the government did something about the stevedores? PS I am not interested in why it’s Labor Party’s fault nothing has been done; the government is responsible for running the country.
[Daphne – And the government, in this case as in the case of the drydocks, can do little or nothing without the support of the Opposition. The tragedy of this country that change for the better is generally met with opposition for the sake of opposition or for the short-term gain of achieving political supremacy. What do you think would happen if the government took on the stevedores?]
“should import” is in the conditional tense not subjunctive.
[Daphne – That’s what I thought at first, but then wasn’t quite sure. ‘Should’ can be an order as well, and in this case it is. ‘The government should import’ rather than ‘should the government import…’ – the latter is the conditional tense but I’m not certain about the former. I never had a grammar lesson in my life, except in French, Italian and – for my sins – Latin, so I have to work out English grammar for myself; not in practice, but when it comes to the names of things.]
Some of you guys write perfect English but If I were you I’d lay off talking about grammar because you make a right royal mess of it.
‘Should’ is definitely not a conditional tense (no such thing exists, though there are conditional clauses usually starting with ‘if’). it is just a modal auxiliary verb. It is called so because it modulates, or changes the strength or ‘flavour’ of other verbs.
Hi Daphne. Go to http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090806/local/children-welcome-pm-at-summer-club
Now how’s that for a “cheesy pose” and cheap PR?
[Daphne – I guess you’re not great at reading body language, but don’t worry about it. Men find it more difficult than women on the whole, and have to practice and read a lot about it. The instinctive/intuitive reaction to The Circle photographs – especially the cover – of Dr and Mrs Muscat is that they were cheesy, false and that at least one of the spouses was uneasy (Dr Muscat). I’m not going into descriptive details of why this was so. Just take it from me. As for this photograph of the prime minister with a little girl – no, no such reactions. I’m not saying that because I like the PM and I don’t like Muscat, but as somebody who knows about these things in the same way that others might know lots about something that I know nothing about, like football, say, or nuclear medicine, or how to rewire a house. When you see a photograph of a politician with a child, you assess the child first. If the child is at ease, laughing, has a genuine smile, even ‘flirting’ in that way children do, then you know for a fact that the politician is genuine and has struck exactly the right note. Children have major antennae for awkward adults and false smiles. The prime minister’s smile isn’t false in this shot; he clearly likes children and knows what to say to them (he’s the same with people in their teens and 20s) and whatever he’s told this child, she likes it.]
Nuclear medicine. I like to call it unclear medicine. It generates rather hazy pictures.
Ms Caruana Galizia
You wrote “Fenech Adami had an entire regiment of children and we don’t even know exactly how many there are, still less what they’re called” What planet are you living on?
Or is it that your blind prejudice against the Muscats is not letting you see certain things such as the big beams in the Nats eyes?
Haven’t you seen all the Fenech Adamis – and all the Gonzis in the pre election propaganda regularly stuffed in our letter boxes and splashed all over the papers?
[Daphne – Nobody says ‘Nats’ except people who don’t vote for them and think it’s what the Slimizi say (they don’t) and one former newspaper columnist now turned letter-writer-to-The-Times who used to gush embarrassingly about the prime minister when she was chairman of the Housing Authority and who has dripped acid over him from London since her contract was not renewed. And no, I don’t remember Fenech Adami using his young children for propaganda purposes, not even when they were assaulted in their own home by thugs who wrecked their house and beat their mother. Lawrence Gonzi never fought an election as party leader with young children, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. When sons and daughters are over 18, it’s not a matter of using them because not only do they participate of their own accord, but they are not even appealing. The only purpose they serve is to add that ‘family dimension’. And to answer your question: no, I don’t recall any insipid interviews in which Mary Fenech Adami described her – what? five? six? – pregnancies and births with all the bloody details, or in which Kate Gonzi spoke about her children as though no one else ever had any. That’s because both women have an entirely normal and well-balanced approach to children, unlike the ‘project parents’ with their 1.2 children of today, who appear to believe they are doing something quite extraordinary – a category into which the Muscats fall neatly.]
Ray Borg. You just simply cannot understand that the art of communication, apart from transcending all aspects of modern society, is a fundamental pillar in an effort at winning an election. The PL is light years away form the level achieved by the “Nats”, even if the latter are not brilliant either – if they were the PL would exist no more.
Do I expect an improvement – honestly with the current leadership I stand a better chance of claiming next week’s Super 5 jackpot. The leader has contributed to building the self-defeating “One” medium and the other two simply cannot communicate.
to add to your Ray Borg comment:
And the mother gives birth for the first time at the ripe old age (with relation to prima gravidanza) of 33.
[Daphne – Yes, that is an essential part of it, but I didn’t want to be misinterpreted as so many women are touchy about it, pointing out that there are valid reasons why they couldn’t have a baby earlier. They don’t get the point that it’s not the age at which they first gave birth that is being discussed, per se, but the sort of behaviour that comes afterward, and which seems to be a direct consequence not so much of the age, but of the baby being carefully planned like a major undertaking. The result seems to be an over-fussy, over-cautious, ‘helicopter’ mother (always hovering). Women who give birth in their 30s but who have had other children earlier are not like that. When I and my contemporaries were growing up, so few children received that sort of parenting that they still stand out in my mind, and they were generally regarded by us children and even by our parents as ‘msieken‘. Yet now it’s the norm. Funny how this should have happened.]
Cynthia & Daphne
Are you aware that Michelle had a miscarriage before having the twins?
[Daphne – I would say that almost every woman who is in a position to get pregnant has had a miscarriage or several. Most of us don’t even notice. We call it a ‘missed period’. Yes, it’s traumatic when you’re trying hard, but it’s also part of life and the sort of thing our mothers and grandmothers took in their stride. It’s only nowadays that people make such a big deal about it – for precisely the same reason that they make a big deal of their 1.2 children. Because pregnancy and birth have become major projects and unique undertakings, this has changed the nature of miscarriage – from something routine to the catastrophic end of a carefully planned project.]
True. We have the two extremes though: women nearing middle-age and teenagers giving birth. Even though not commendable, the latter is the way nature intended it to be.
I totally agree with Daphne’s view on ‘helicopter’ mothers and people creating a drama about ordinary life. But I can’t understand the ‘nature’ bit, Cynthia. Life expectancy has increased and it is the ‘natural’ way these days (if you wish to use that word) that women across Europe give birth the first time when they are around 30 or even older. Nature or not, that’s the way it is.
Anybody giving birth for the first time aged 30 or older is regarded as an “elderly” mother by the obstetrician, requiring special attention. It is healthier and safer for all concerned to produce children at an earlier age.
John, I think that is rubbish and has nothing to do with reality and the life we (women) have to live. So most women in Europe are elderly mothers then. What a fuss, really.
[Daphne – John is 100% correct from the medical/biological point of view. Very many births in Europe and North America – around 30% if I remember correctly, and Malta is among the highest at around 35% – now take place by Caesarian section. A woman giving birth in her teens or early 20s is unlikely to need a Caesarian section, which is a way of ‘rescuing’ the baby when it can’t be pushed out through the normal channel, either because it is in the wrong position or because the mother’s older body is unable to shove it out, resulting in a long labour which goes nowhere and which is stressful and dangerous for both mother and child. Women who have babies in their late teens and early 20s literally pop them out and are back on their feet the next day as though nothing has happened (well, almost), with all their bits and bobs intact and back in place. The idea that pregnancy and birth are especially difficult and that conception is a project to be approached like Everest has developed from the fact that all this now happens to people in their mid-30s and not their mid-20s. A generation ago, women tried not to get pregnant and would have viewed today’s attempts at getting pregnant with wonder and disbelief. I must confess that even to me, the idea of large numbers of people trying all sorts of things to get pregnant seems ever so slightly amazing. But of course, as you say there is no way around it. It’s unrealistic nowadays to expect women to have babies in their early 20s. I think it is sad, though, that within a couple of generations this will mean that children are as unlikely to have grandparents as they were 150 years ago, when life expectancy was much lower. If you have a child at 35 and then that child also has a child at 35 (or if he is male, possibly even at 40 or older) then you will become a grandparent for the first time in your 70s rather than your 50s, and so would be the equivalent of a great-grandparent rather than a grandparent.]
Thank God, Andrea, that “most women in Europe” don’t need to resort to you for obstetric care.
That’s what I meant, Daphne: we cannot turn back time, even if we want to. Reality beats the biological factor. Sad, but true. Even if an ‘elderly’ mother and the baby need special attention, it is not necessarily safer to ‘produce’ (what a word) children at an earlier age when personal living conditions are not healthy and safe.
Most women I know do find themselves in a permanent quandary when it comes to babies and their profession, at least in Germany. I was honestly surprised when I read that a woman in her 30s who gives birth to her first baby is called an elderly mother. I know hardly any women who give birth for the first time at under 30. My mother gave birth to three children and was only 18 years old when she had her first baby. She worked all her life (like all women in my family, even my grandmother did) and keeps telling us that she could not cope juggling with job and family these days, anymore. She is convinced, even though she had a tough time when she was a very young and a full-time working mother (and there was my full-time working father, as well), that nowadays life is more complicated and demanding.
The discussion in Germany as to whether a woman is an elderly mother or not starts when a woman is around 40 and that’s why I was surprised.
@John
Well, why should they?
I am not an obstetrician.
You have made that very clear, Andrea.
John, what is your actual message?
Andrea, the message is clearly stated in my first comment. It is healthier and safer to produce children at an earlier age. And for many more reasons than the one outlined by Daphne. This is a medical fact, not an opinion, and even though you regard it as “rubbish”, a fact it remains.
For Andrea
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/09/fertility-mot-children-nhs
bw
Yes, Cynthia, I know them all and I’ve read them all: the pros and contras. It is not as if couples do not think about those facts. You are not getting my point: women AND men do not ignore them, but they have to face reality. It can’t be that hard to understand that.
@Andrea
It was you who said that you “couldn’t understand the ‘nature’ bit”. If nature intended us to have our first child in our early twenties, then we have to face the natural consequences when we don’t, such as increased levels of infertlity due to our aging ovaries, to metion just one cause.
[Daphne – Hey, come on. Nature doesn’t have ‘intentions’ and not everything that is natural is good or healthy. Most girls have begun to menstruate by the age of 12, at least in the Mediterranean. That doesn’t mean they should be having babies – it is dangerous from the medical point of view and wrong from every other standpoint.]
dear daphne, i am new in this blog, why maltese ppl never learn!!!! political life has nothing to do with private life, so when you comment on your blog, can you pls leave out the relatives of the person you are commenting on