I can qualify that because I am one of them and I personally know most of them.

Just to note that a village of 4000 ignorant plasterers will be churning out 10 doctors in the coming years.

That’s my biggest gripe with PN. It needs to be washed and hung to dry for the next election so it can strengthen itself. It’s better for the country and better for the party. If the next government falls short it will certainly be axed.

Hubert Zammit: you seem to be referring to libertarian ideals. My understanding is that political parties from left to right by nature want control. The ideals of libertarianism/anarchism and greens should be small parties or pressure groups keeping the government in check.

The right tends to be more tied to the nation and strive for a mono-culture, whilst the left is more focused on the individual and is historically more tolerant of multi-culturalism.

Whether they carry on like this or don’t they are still all going lose anyway – and that the point – they know they are going to lose the next and are now venting their spleen and leaving a leaking ship well before the storm sinks it.

Daphne, I don’t think it’s a myth. It is perfectly normal in the USA to send your children away, and my friend Bill from Texas did just that to his 18 year old son. Tony Capoccio swore that he would never do that thing to his sons. We were discussing this in a Carabba’s restaurant. I had other friends from Costa Mesa who were living on their own even though their parents lived in the same area.

I also have relatives who went all over the world , the reason was always the poor economy of an overcrowded island. Gwann Mamo’s book ‘Ulied in-nanna Venut fl-Amerki” sheds a lot of light on emigration between the two wars.

Well I’m sure we know different people but I didn’t make up or embellish a word. Once any of the people I know started working full time then they are no longer provided for. Anyway, unimportant really, the main point I was trying to make was that as a rule Maltese youngsters are too spoilt. I still remember at university students expecting to be spoon fed notes etc and it can also be seen in the way we expect government to pay for water and electricity etc!

As a side note, can you can compare earnings of a 17 year old in Mintoff’s Malta, to what people earn today, locally and abroad?

Myth my foot.

Well, ok, they are not exactly expected to live in the streets, fair enough, and perhaps kicked out is too strong a word, but I have many friends abroad, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Norway and without exception they were all asked to leave home.

Those that do stay at home are expected to pay their share of the bills!

Nothing to do with being nasty and more to do with expecting adults to be adults. It is considered perfectly normal that once you are earning money, Mummy and Daddy no longer support you financially!

[Daphne – Well, David, maybe you know different sorts of people. None of my friends outside Malta were asked to leave home. On the contrary, their parents – especially their mothers – viewed the permanent departure of their offspring as a traumatic event. Empty nest syndrome is not a condition peculiar to Malta, nor are non-Maltese parents biologically and psychologically different to Maltese parents. It’s a complete fallacy. Being expected to pay your own bills is not the same thing as being asked to leave home. I have paid my own bills since I was 17, but I still lived with my parents between 17 and 21. They didn’t charge me for rent, food and electricity – that would have been ridiculous and selfish, and understandable only if they too were on a tight wage – but I certainly didn’t go to them for money for clothes and stuff I needed.]

“We Maltese are so effing spoiled”. Dave, in Italy it’s even worse because there are more “mammoni”. I think people with a Mediterranean culture would never kick their children out of home after they graduate. I know an Italian American who would never do what our friend from Texas did to his son: he kicked him out from home just after his 18th birthday.

Parents should give their children roots to keep them grounded through tough times and wings to soar above everything, explore new worlds and fly farther than they ever did.

[Daphne – Almost nobody gets kicked out of home, anywhere in the world, John. The myth of nasty Protestants and Inglizi kicking their children out at 18 is just that: a myth. They leave because they want to or have to: because their university campus is a couple of hundred miles away or because they’re moving away for work. In Malta young people continue to live with their parents because of distance and not culture. You don’t move out if you’re only moving five miles away. You’d rather save the rent money for a down payment on a flat. That’s why men who are in their 30s, affluent, with property of their own, but still living with their mother stand out and are the subject of comment, like Franco Debono. It’s because it’s not normal. Maltese men, unlike Italian men, have tended so far to be relatively tough and adventurous, not afraid of striking out on their own, far from home, in search of something new. The cultural norm with Maltese men so far has been rather the opposite of ‘mammoni’: leaving home very young, either to emigrate, join the army or marry. Of my four grandparents, three had several siblings who left Malta between 16 and 20, never to return except for the occasional visit, and some of them didn’t even return for that. One of my father’s first cousins emigrated alone at 16. One minute he was a boarder at St Edward’s and almost the next minute he was on a ship to Australia, to make a life for himself, which he did. When I expressed consternation on hearing this, I was told it was entirely normal at the time and that no one thought anything of it. My mother’s father left Malta for North America at 18 with two of his brothers. My mother’s mother had no siblings in Malta at all; her brothers had all left for New York when they were really young (and in an interesting twist on the ‘mammoni’ trend, their mother emigrated to join them when she was in her 70s, after her husband died). But Maltese mammoni are really a very new thing. Previous generations of Maltese, as was typical of those who grew up in a Mediterranean harbour culture rather than an agricultural environment, left home when very young in search of work and a different life. Italian mammoni are a new development, too. Southern Italians emigrated en masse and many of them never saw their mothers again because the trip back to Italy was too time-consuming and expensive. Mammoni are the result of contemporary affluence and not tradition: parents in Italy, like parents in Malta, don’t know how to deal with the historical novelty of being able to support their own children well past the age when they would, in the past, have been contributing to the household income themselves, or setting up a home of their own.]

I think Zuzu is just teasing…right?

[Daphne – No, Alex. I think he’s a Friend of Franco. He means it.]