The satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’ has a cartoon running called ‘Dave Snooty and his Pals’ in the style of the Beano’s ‘Lord Snooty’ which features Boris often. (Private Eye is edited by Ian Hislop who also appears on ‘Have I Got News for you.’) Boris went to Eton and was a member of Oxford’s Bullingdon club like ‘Dave-I’ve-always-been-called-Dave-and-not-just-because-Anthony-Blair-was-called-Tony’.

[Daphne – George Osborne, not Cameron.]

It is a real stretch to say the Conservatives promoted Boris on the basis that he is not an ‘ABC1’ and helped to dilute their presentational weakness of being elitist.

Boris comes across as the amiable fool, but is very sharp. Perhaps he plays up the buffoonery. He was a reliable reporter for The Daily Telegraph before going in to politics, getting his time pressured work done every day.

[Daphne – He is, in fact, the equivalent of our very own John Attard Montalto: vide the discussion going on elsewhere on this blog.]

“Daphne my beloved late parents didn’t give us blue blood, instead they gave us the spirit of survival, the will to carry on, the courage and the noble sentiments to make it on our own.”

You don’t write this sort of drivel in 2010. It makes you come across as incredibly smug.

My ‘beloved’ parents didn’t give me blue blood either. They gave me food and clothing and shelter and a bunch of noble sentiments which have been my curse ever since.

‘He’s (Clegg) at ease with his poshness in a way that Cameron isn’t, possibly because he went to Westminster rather than Eton and has been coached on how to turn the volume down on his patrician heritage from the age of 13.’

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100036138/sky-tv-leaders-debate-will-david-camerons-performance-be-enough-to-stop-nick-clegg/

This UK journalist seems to have a similar opinion to mine.

In spite of its scourge and tyranny Communism also had a share of good notions just like Fascism, Nazism and extreme capitalism. The Red Revolution was a war against Capitalism which at the time was extremely extreme.

The end of WW II Christian Democracy replaced Fascism and years later Mikhael Gorbachev’s Glasnost
paved the way to move the USSR away from its far left position, and the rest is history.

Extreme ignorance and poverty caused by despotic right wing regimes encouraged the proletariat to revolt and its only hope then was Communism. Today both sides had got closer to the centre and mellowed and the ideological divide is now based on democracy, tolerance and peaceful coexistence.

The world’s biggest problem is now Religious fundamentalism which will only end when Islam moves to the centre.

This to change the other post.

Daphne, once again your source had fed you duff and incomplete information about my personal life.

Besides Villa Casablanca we also own other prime properties and they are not tucked away in some ugly little alley in one of our less prestigious villages.

Unlike you and your protégée’s pretentions I wasn’t to the manor born and there’s nothing grand in my family social background to write home about, all working class except for one exception, a former President of the Republic but that doesn’t really count because he was a lejburist from Gozo. My late father was illiterate who ran a small bakery in Mellieha, the upbringing was uphill all the way but he and Mummy always gave us all they had to give.

Notwithstanding, one of my brothers today is a multimillionaire and my other brother owned two four stars hotels and numerous other properties in Malta and abroad before he passed away at the age of 45.

Daphne my beloved late parents didn’t give us blue blood, instead they gave us the spirit of survival, the will to carry on, the courage and the noble sentiments to make it on our own.

You’ve got nothing on me biex izzeblahni barring an occasional misuse of syntax. If you have you would expose it without feeling any remorse about it.

You criticise the Elves for their use of interrogation marks instead of making categorical statements when you do exactly the same to avoid the legal repercussions.

Finally, to answer your impertinent question, my wife never worked, as there wasn’t the need for her financial support. She preferred to stay home being a good wife and a good mother and she has no regrets.

Have a nice day if you consider digging in people’s private affairs nice.

[Daphne – Charles, if only you knew how little I care about what you do and say. You’re completely irrelevant. The only reason I have to take notice of you is because you post comments here, and expect me to answer them, and I do. But please don’t take that as a sign of interest, because it really is not. If you own a villa on the Santa Maria Estate and ‘other prime properties’ then good luck to you. Perhaps to relieve your evident boredom in retirement, you could start a consultancy project advising other Air Malta employees on how to build up an impressive property portfolio off their company salary. I’m quite sure they would be all agog to learn your secrets. I, however, am not.]

That’s the last we’ll hear from Charles Buttigieg for a while, and thank heavens for that.

Stop your bull Daphne,you’ve got nothing to tell. Let me tell you how unreliable your source of information about my personal life is-contrary to what they fed you I was never employed with a bank.

[Daphne – I never said you were, Charles. I was asking you. Thank you for your answer. I don’t deal in bull. You’re getting your websites confused. And why do you assume that what I have to say about your reaction is negative? It might be something positive like: “Oh thank heavens that nice man Mintoff is now prime minister! At last the poor workers have somebody to defend them.” Incidentally, how did you buy a villa on the Santa Maria estate off an Air Malta salary? Did your wife work? Did you get a special deal from Albert Mizzi? That was a joke of course, based on the fact that he owned the one and ran the other.]

I also fully agree that the British (and not only), at the end of the day, want to look up their leaders and admire them. Why do you think that Italians continue to vote Berlusconi? They all run him down but secretly they admire him. He’s got all that the average Italian dreams of: power, money, women and yes, displays charm and compassion.

With respect to the doom and gloom being considered intellectual, I don’t know about France, but in Italy doom and gloom communists (those in their 50s who run around with a grim face, cotton-white hair, stained clothes and hang around organic food shops) are considered just “communisti” – stop, not intellectual.

Communism has disappeared, except for the few nostalgics, the equivalent of the nostalgic Fascists, and what remains of the “left” is disguising itself as centre or, nonetheless, centre right.

It appears to me that the “gloom and doom” communists are no longer fashionable, although I agree that they were, up to ten/fifteen years ago.

Boris Johnson: He was cast out of the Conservative party by Cameron’s predecessor, Michael Howard, for lying to the party. One of Cameron’s first moves was to bring him back into the fold and push him to the fore, a symbol of the Torys’ new image.

While he’s undoubtedly a toff, he’s an affable, self-effacing one with quite the common touch. He’s presented ‘Have I Got News For You’, for Christ’s sake. He’s miles away from being a plebeian, but ask your average Londoner whether they feel they have more in common with Johnson or his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, and I can guarantee that Johnson would win every time.

[Daphne – You’ve asked the wrong question. What you’re talking about here is not whether voters feel they have more in common with Johnson or Livingstone, but who they like and trust more. Obviously, they like Johnson more (any sensible person would, he is so amusing) but there is no doubt that they would have ‘more in common’ with Livingstone. People vote on the basis of who they like more, and not who they have most in common with. I don’t think I had anything in common with Fenech Adami except on some matters of politics; I would probably have had fairly interesting conversations with Alfred Sant, but there is no doubt about who I liked and trusted more.]

It doesn’t matter that he’s had a charmed upbringing, that he’s inherited truckloads of money or that he’s as upper class as they come.

[Daphne – His upbringing was far from charmed. It was actually very difficult. His father was a serial adulterer who made his mother miserable and eventually abandoned the lot of them, without money. His mother scrabbled for a living. His sister Rachel wrote a column once describing how in her view her brother’s extrovert personality is deliberately modelled on their father’s. Interestingly, despite being ‘typically English’ his ‘real’ surname is Kemal Bey: his paternal grandfather, who was Turkish, changed his name to Johnson when he became a British subject.]

The widely-held perception was that ‘Boris is the type of guy you’d gladly have a pint with’, while Livingstone was sulking in the corner with his Che Guevara t-shirt while furtively sipping on a glass of Chablis. That’s the image the public emerged with, and it won Boris the mayoral seat.

[Daphne – No one likes Lefties, except in France and Italy, where gloom and doom are seen as a sign of intellectual superiority.]

Far be it from me to teach a grandmother to suck eggs, but you of all people should know that in real politics (as opposed to the Mickey Mouse goings-on in Malta), appearance and perception are far more important than the reality of it all.

[Daphne – That’s the case here too, but in British politics, what you see tends to be what you get, because with such intense press scrutiny and so many opinion columns written, it is impossible to hide anything or even to pretend. And that’s why David Cameron and Boris Johnson can’t even pretend to be ordinary. What they are saying instead is: ‘I might be a toff, but I’m a fun toff. We could have a drink together and chat.’]

I mentioned Portillo because I happen to know a few of his relatives – who, incidentally, are lovely people – and am familiar with some of the games they were forced to play for the sake of Michael’s career.

[Daphne – Not least, no doubt, all that palaver when he was foolish enough to mention a homosexual encounter at university.]

And what makes you think that I ‘took’ my ‘Maltese social system to England’ ? Whoever told you that I was born, or indeed brought up, in Malta?

[Daphne – A deduction based on your surname being Galea and your having said that you lived in England for a few years while you are clearly not just a few years old. But very well, you might have spent the other years in the United States or Italy, or are the descendant of a Maltese but are not Maltese yourself. It doesn’t matter, anyway – I’m grateful for the opportunity to discuss politicians other than ours. It’s a relief.]