since you hate wikipedia…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

the PN blames the 70s recession solely on Labour.

[Daphne – Not just the PN. Most other people do too.]

He is trying to speak highly of Mintoff with the intent of getting back the Mintoffjani that were so disgruntled during Sant’s time and at the same time he is also saying that Fenech Adami did a lot of good things so that Nationalists of a certain age who used to follow Eddie blindly would also feel at ease with Muscat’s comment.

This to the detriment of Gonzi’s image.

You hit the nail on the head: middle class are middle aged, who recall vividly how people were treated by Joseph’s idol, Mintoff.

Joseph’s plan is to bring back to his fold the middle aged ‘lost sheep’ who experienced Mintoff’s far left socialist tactics at first hand.

It was definitely not the MLP or Mintoff who gave “a tertiary level of education” to the middle class in Malta.

Indeed, that “asset” is now widely spread among the Maltese working class as well – thanks to successive Nationalist governments.

Tutto fa brodo! and in this case the Maltese “brodu” fits Joey as a glove.

Well, there’s always some blurring round the edges. My own grandfather was in the photo of Caruana Dingli’s students in his “academy”, on the first floor mind (I never knew he was that good). He was fully literate and cultured and all, but would never have considered himself upper class, and neither do I.

Muscat is stirring up a hornet’s nest with his “middle class”. Just when you thought we could move on to tackle the challenges of the 21st century, he comes along unwittingly sows the seeds of social discord.

I disagree with Reuben Scicluna’s thesis. Our social classes are not based on the British model, but on the model of any ex-colony (for want of a better word, but let’s stick to the subject) with a reasonably advanced administration and economy, such as the Maghrebin countries, Egypt and the Lebanon.

We share the same pathways of access to money without access to culture, the same phenomenon of the “local boy made good”, and the same styles of hamallagni.

Indeed, you’d be very hard pressed to find the equivalent of our hamalli in Britain itself. Hamalli and chavs are not one and the same. But take a walk through the streets of Beirut and you’d think you were in Paceville surrounded by the Bylons and Rollons of Malta, complete with flashy cars and loud stereos, tons of hair gel and macho accessories and total lack of finesse.

Ditto for our millionaire hamallu contractor/explosives importer/quarry owner types. Line up the richest people in the countries I listed and you’ll get an exact copy of their Maltese equivalent: the “bling” and gold accessories, the semi-literacy, the barely-disguised disregard for legality, and everything else, down to the paunch.

Again, unlike Britain, we do not have a landed aristocracy, and the concept of the “public school élite” only existed, if at all, in St. Edward’s, which has now gone to the dogs.

Our real upper class are the descendants of all the people who figured in Edward Caruana Dingli’s paintings. Now the common link between all these people is that they either served in an administrative/legal/academic/government capacity or they were businessmen before 1964.

The very practical being, of course, that they were just about the only fully literate, cultured people on the island. You’ll see the same common thread in the ex-colonies I mentioned.

[Daphne – Well, H. P. then that makes me upper class not middle class, because that exhibition was kind of like a family portrait gallery for me and your description of who they were is right on the money – which kind of illustrates your point that we don’t follow the British model because according to the British model I’m textbook middle-class. But yes, you’re right, if people like me are the middle class then it kind of begs the question as to who the others are who are supposed to be swinging around above us. I don’t see any. But I still think of myself as middle class because my point of reference is the British ‘grading’ system. And it’s interesting that you should mention the literacy factor. When I linked literacy to social class in the rikotta debate some months ago, people became hysterical. But it’s a fact – it was with great astonishment that I discovered just how many people are only first or second generation ‘literates’. In my narrow growing-up world, grandmothers did complicated crossword puzzles, read books, magazines and newspapers, and discussed world events. So meeting people who appeared to all intents and purposes like me but who had, I discovered later, illiterate grandmothers and sometimes even illiterate mothers was a startling revelation.]

All the rest – the peasants, labourers, small shop owners, dockyard workers – have descendants who took one of two paths post-1964 and the coming of modernity to Malta. They have either educated themselves to a certain degree and acquired certain social skills which more or less enable them to interact across all levels of society. Or they have turned into hamalli.

At no point in this process does the financial situation enter the equation.

The term “lower class” can tentatively be assigned to these sub-literate hamalli, but in no way does “lower” indicate lower income, lower employment prospects, lower standards of schooling, lower living standards or lower enjoyment of life.

Finally, a word about this “middle class” nonsense. When Muscat says “middle class”, what he means is “the poor”, as in “those who struggle to make ends meet”. So 1) these people can come from any part of the social ladder, and, more importantly 2) if he means the poor, why not just say so?

Will he make the poor feel any better by calling them “middle class”?