Maltese citizens intending to become good English-speakers (and also good Christians) are hereby strongly advised to read DCG’s Running Commentary every day – like Zebbugi is doing.

I will stop trying to, uh, be Jeffrey Bernard when Andrew Borg-Cardona quits his cringe-inducing impressions of P.G. Wodehouse. How about that?

If you are going to unwarrantably correct my comment, have the decency to punctuate, you tedious and fatuous buffoon.

[Daphne – Grow up, Peter. Leave your hang-ups behind. You’re an adult now. And don’t try to be Jeffrey Bernard, because it doesn’t wash when you’re from Malta.]

Ah, well then he’s merely imitating the French politicians. Chirac was a serial philanderer and the French secret service personnel used to call him “Mr Three-minutes-including-shower”.

[Daphne – So do the best.]

What’s even stranger is that many people are claiming that the Partit Laburista is our only real option, and keep on projecting the image of an ultra-conservative oppressor onto the Nationalist Party in order to prove their point.

Some go as far as to say that we need the PL to form a government in order to save us from this oppressive regime.

Then we have members of the PL who needed to consult their priests in order to be OK with being in favour of divorce and others who say that they would rather live in Iran.

And then we get Dr Muscat telling us that these are healthy disagreements. What liberal leader does not even have liberal followers? I would not be surprised if the liberals are in the minority in that party.

The President spoke about the need for a definition of “the family” and seemed to have left out same-sex partners (along with single parent families too I might add), and yet the party he is from is supposed to be in favour of gay marriage.

If you are going to stand for something you must stand for it through and through. None of this half baked nonsense. If you are going to be a Liberal leader, then every part of your party must think as a Liberal. Is that so hard to understand?

One side of the PL says one thing, but another side say the opposite. The usual supporters cheer for the good old days of Mintoff while the new supporters are convinced that the PL is going to liberalise Malta and will stop at nothing to convince themselves that the PN is oppressive and dictatorial – even though it was a member of the PN who put forward the all-sacred “private member’s bill” on divorce. And it is the PN which has an openly gay member of parliament. These new Labour supporters are acting like they will vote for anyone, all in the name of change, regardless of who they really are voting for, as long as that person says they are liberal.

And to make things even stranger, about a week ago supporters of the PL were going door to door in Lija asking the residents if they wanted to sign up to be members of the PL. Another one of their very liberal ideas.

I was asked if I was interested in joining the PL. I’m not sure what he meant by that, and I didn’t ask. The man speaking to me went on to tell me that Dr Muscat wanted them to go round the village and ask people if they wanted to join. I don’t understand what they were trying to do. Is the Labour Party trying to be exclusive? Has it become a members only club? Are they that desperate for votes? It left most of the village very uneasy. Some people found it to be rather sinister too.

Apart from the language I think one needs to discuss the issue as well. The article shows what the party thinks about education at tertiary level. They are still in the Mintoffian mindset that you go through university to eventually find a job.

If there is no job then you don’t need education (remember what happened to university under Labour). Also, they assume that because we need more nurses then the solution is to accept more students in the course, stuff standards and quality, just allow more students into the course rubber-stamp them through and hey presto we have a solution.

Whilst the numerus clausus might need to be removed to allow more students in, we need to ensure that there are enough resources at university to ensure quality.

There is also another explanation and that is that like other professions, the nursing profession is seen by Labour as something anyone could do so the course is just a formality.

Remember what Labour did when the teachers protested, they offered a job to anyone who would go. I’m not joking, untrained people just went to schools and got a teaching job. These people remained in our system for years and if I’m not mistaken were even given teachers warrants eventually.

And we have come a full circle, it could very well be that the Maltastar journalists were probably taught English by one of these people.

[Daphne – No, you can’t really blame the teachers. The trouble is with the curriculum. They should have been taught English as a foreign language and they were not – that, and the obvious problem that they are not exposed to any sort of writing that could help them.]

It should also have read “degree” mate

Peter, this is not just about bad writing. What is politically significant is that the Labour Party is content to let its news site be run in such an embarrassingly illiterate manner.

Maltese citizens intending to be Christians are hereby strongly advised to avoid DCG’s Running Commentary