@ giorgio – Hang on mate. In those days I wanted to have a pathetic telephone installed at my parents home. Everybody else in our street had it. Even people who came to live there five or six years after my father had applied got it. But not us of course. Anyway it’s too long a story so I will come straight to the conclusion. Sunday afternoon I got nicked for assaulting the minister in question and six of his goons. Of course I did nothing of the sort, even though it was hard to resist. He came to speak to me and all I did was give him a piece of my mind, then I fixed my stare at the goons who together with the minister turned round and left. Two hours later I was out with no charges. Tuesday my parents received a note to go and pay some stupid fee and by the end of the week the telephone was installed. Good old days eh.

if you are so patriotic, then write in Maltese …. ha naraw kemm taf tikteb bil-Malti. Jew qed tipprova timpressjonana tikteb bl-Ingliz!

And please enlighten us as to this venim you are talking about.

Tony,

My great-uncle died on a bed/stretcher in the corridor at St. Luke’s, after being left unattended for several hours from the time of his admittance. And that was under Labour.

One step forward – you have noticed that there are punctuation marks. Now learn how to use them better – that way we could understand you better.

Now for your dying in the corridor – people die every second and everywhere – if it just happens that this person had a life threatening condition whilst waiting for a bed to be prepared, what can anyone do.

The same for that woman who gave birth on the stretcher – even here, it is normal practice that births do not wait – have still got to see one being prevented from happening.

What I can say about Mater Dei is that in most places accessible to the public the amount of wilful damage (toilet seats torn off their hinges, damage to the lifts handles, lift notices that are torn, toilet paper strewn around – and this when the cleaners clean the place at least twice a day – seats torn in the waiting room etc) is unbelievable.

What is for sure is that the hospital is:
1 finally working also in the afternoon with numerous outpatient clinics being open;
2. the radiology department working till late in the evening;
3. same situation for the lab;
4. a state of the art blood result system where results are never lost and are always available to the doctor;
5. hundreds of operations being performed on a daily basis;
6. good food;
7. comfortable beds with all the amenities;
8. preventive medicine e.g. breast screening;
9. specialised clinics – breast clinic, stoma clinic, diabetes clinic – all very well run by very dedicated nurses and doctors;
10 a service that is at least 1000 times better than the one available during those fantastic times under the socialist rule.

So please, as it seems that you have never left this country for a long period of time, and given your level of education obtained during those golden days under socialist rule, it is possible that you might understand only Super One, and so it is no surprise that you have no idea about the level of the hospitals and hospital services abroad.

Tony:
Malta is not a planet, despite our overinflated sense of our own importance to the universe.

Was your English teacher’s name Agatha, by any chance?