How very true, but what prevents you (and many others) from educating yourself about horrendous events abetted by your party in government AND understanding what people felt and experienced during those ‘golden years’?

Failing to educate yourself and truly understand that present elements in important LP positions are the same people who carried out corrupt and atrocious acts is tantamount to blindly supporting a political movement without giving a rat’s ass about your own welfare let alone your country’s.

Not knowing your political party whom you support so intently (and who brought Malta to the brink of civil war), amounts to contempt for your country.

[I trust you are not one of those people who believe, as Anglu Farrugia appears to do, that when people don’t write about their experiences it’s because they haven’t had them. ]

No, of course not. That is why I clearly said that what you write is, also, based on your personal experience (I didn’t feel the need to specify that you have the ability to analyse them, as people, even much of those supporting the PL, do actually have a brain to analyse stuff).

[Daphne – Wrong, they don’t. If they had the brain to analyse that sort of stuff, they would not be voting Labour still less working for the party or standing for election on its ticket. If they do have a brain, then they have no moral integrity. Karmenu Vella springs to mind, for instance. It is my beef with all these people suddenly defecting from Gaddafi’s government after 40 years of working for it. It is the only time Saif Al Islam Gaddafi made any sense at all in his interview with Christiane Amanpour: they are keen to go with the new group (of power), he said. And he’s right. It’s good that they’re distancing themselves from Gaddafi, but their integrity should be forever in doubt.]

That is exactly what I was trying to get across – the younger generation, for the most part, analyses the past and what’s going on at the moment, but obviously, not having lived through the 60s, 70s and 80s they can never really relate to us as someone who has lived through those years.

Yes, they can talk about it but they can never share the same feeling. Do you think that in 60 years time, Malta will still be discussing the Mintoff and the Eddie eras? I doubt it. And do you think that Mintoff and Eddie’s relationship with Gaddafi will have an influence in 60 years time? Again, I doubt it.

[Daphne – That’s because there will be nobody alive who lived through it, but everybody alive here now lived through part of it, so it is starkly and immensely relevant. This is what you are unable to see: the Labour Party cannot distance itself from the Gaddafi regime when its current international secretary and programme-writer, among others, are who they are.]

[As for pointing out that I have every right to express myself – only a Labour supporter would say that (it is as though you have to remind yourselves).]

I pointed that out, not because I am a Labour supporter and not because I feel the need to remind myself. I pointed but because once again, you think that all labour supporters are just like thoseFEW people who publicly express their desire to silence your blog. So just in case you got me confused with those, I had to point it out. That’s all. And had I been one of those few people, I wouldn’t follow this blog. I would simply, as you put it, comment on my facebook wall on what I think you said or on what I heard you said.

[I trust you are not one of those people who believe, as Anglu Farrugia appears to do, that when people don’t write about their experiences it’s because they haven’t had them. In addition,]

No, of course not. That is why I clearly said that what you write is, also, based on your personal experience (didn’t feel the need to specify that you have the ability to analyse them, as people, even much of those supporting the PL, do actually have a brain to analyse stuff) That is exactly what I was trying to get across, the younger generation, for the most part, analyses the past and what’s going on at the moment, but obviously, not having lived through the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s they can never really relate to us as someone who has lived through those years. Yes, they can talk about it but they can never share the same feeling. Do you think that in 60 years time, Malta will still be discussing the Mintoff and the Eddie era’s? I doubt it. And do you think that Mintoff and Eddie’s relationship with Gaddafi will have an influence in 60 years time? Again, I doubt it.

[As for pointing out that I have every right to express myself – only a Labour supporter would say that (it is as though you have to remind yourselves).] – I pointed that out, not because I am a labour supporter and not because I feel the need to remind myself. I pointed but because once again, you think that all Labour supporters are just like those FEW people who publicly express their desire to silence your blog.

[Daphne – They are by no means few. They are many, and they include the entire Labour Party machinery. Trust me on this one: I’ve been around a long time. The Labour Party understands freedom of expression only as the freedom not to criticise it or make fun of it, and it also thinks that freedom of expression gives it the right to lie about its opponents and harass them in an unequal battle between a full-on political party with its media machine and one woman with a blog and a newspaper column. They are appalling. Their inability to understand freedom of expression is actually one of the most frightening and worrying things about them.]

So just in case you got me confused with those, I had to point it out. That’s all. And had I been one of those few people, I wouldn’t follow this blog. I would simply, as you put it, comment on my facebook wall on what I think you said or on what I heard you said.

[Daphne – Oh rest assured that those of them who can read English and follow fairly complex arguments in the language do read this website, and obsessively, because they are fixated. I’ll admit that the ones who can understand what they are reading are in the minority, which is why the rest tend to stick to the wisecracks I make about their Great Leader and his brontosauruses, because they tend to be short and easy to understand.]

Yeah, well done for laying the topic on the table so that other media can pick it up.

But this argument doesn’t hold water – it is all based on “what ifs”. If Gaddafi’s son didn’t prove to be the psychopath he is and stood up to his father, none of this would be happening today. If the Ukranian nurse had the balls to poison him, none of this would be happening today. Ecc ecc. I get your drift, but saying that it is “all his fault” is exaggerated.

[Daphne – You’re talking of chaos theory and the butterfly effect. I’m talking of a specific plan that was sabotaged, which is entirely different.]

“I imagine you are one of those who say that we should not have cooperated in the Hercules/SAS airlift to pluck those oilworkers out of the desert, because it is against our Constitution. Well, bollocks to that”

Of course not. That operation was purely carried out on a humanitarian basis, as our prime minister said (you might be surprised that I’m using the term OUR prime minister – considering how you tend to assume that all Labour supporters are one-way-minded chavs). That operation was not set out to attack a country, it set out to evacuate workers.

[Daphne – You forget that I am a close observer of political developments and that I log minutiae because, contrary to the belief of many, they are often significant. Coincidentally, one of the patterns (shifts) I noticed today is that the man who was gOnzIPn last week and regarded with contempt has become, overnight, ‘our prime minister’. It is the classic ‘an external crisis solves the domestic crisis’ situation faced by leaders who are embattled at home. Faced with an external threat or a common national cause, we pull together and behind our leader (Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands). But this only when the leader demonstrates leadership. Today I couldn’t help thinking what the situation would have been like had our crisis management team been composed of Joseph, Toni and Anglu with Gaddafi worshippers Karmenu Vella and AST thrown into the mix. There would have been total chaos, and with the added problem that Britain would not have been able to trust us on the Hercules air lifts because of the very real risk that AST or one of the other weak links would bleat to Tripoli.]

You are a columinst and no one expects you to be neutral.

[Daphne – I am not neutral, John, not because I am a columnist but because I am a thinking person. It is only people who don’t think who are neutral. They are neutral because they have no thoughts, or because the thoughts they have are inadequate. You can rest assured that Christiane Amanpour, interviewing Muammar Gaddafi’s sons today, was thinking very definite thoughts about them and they certainly wouldn’t have been neutral. I think you confuse a dispassionate stance with a neutral outlook. A reporter is obliged to be dispassionate (unless he is paid by one of the political parties or Malta Today) but that does not mean he is neutral.]

Obviously your history and past experiences contribute to your way of thinking today and obviously you have every right to express yourself in any way you deem suitable.

[Daphne – No, John, my way of thinking has not been shaped by my experiences but by my ability to analyse them. Also, you seem to suggest that ‘my experiences’ were not also those of many tens of thousands of other people. The only difference between me and them is that I write about them. I trust you are not one of those people who believe, as Anglu Farrugia appears to do, that when people don’t write about their experiences it’s because they haven’t had them. In addition, when I write about ‘my experiences’ I am not writing about fiction or my personal impressons, but about documented historical events – real things that happened and which are recorded. As for pointing out that I have every right to express myself – only a Labour supporter would say that (it is as though you have to remind yourselves). The rest of us take it for granted.]

The political history of Malta is important, but then again, I’m 26 years old and I can only speak of what I know and what has/is happening during my life time.

[Daphne – Utter tosh. I wasn’t alive in World War II, but ask me anything about Hitler. I have never lived in China, but I can tell you rather a lot about the Cultural Revolution. Bear in mind that I have sons your age and so the ‘I’m only 26’ argument really doesn’t cut any ice with me. I can’t even begin to imagine them saying or thinking anything so childish and ridiculous. At 25 I wrote newspaper columns and I don’t ever remember writing one that included the words “I’m only 25 and can only speak of what I know and what has happened during my lifetime”. I am shocked at the various people coming into this website to claim that they are Labour voters in their 20s who can’t be expected to know what happened before they were born. It only serves to reinforce my belief that voting for the Malta Labour Party is not an informed decision.]

As a Labour supporter, I don’t go around saying “The prime minister addressed the nation today” .. I say ..”Our prime minister”, because he is our prime minister.

[Daphne – Well, if you say that, you must sound ridiculous. The correct way is ‘the prime minister’. It has nothing to do with the way you vote. In idiomatic English – or shall I be specific and say British culture? – ‘our prime minister’ is generally used to signify sarcasm, exasperation or criticism, as in “What has our prime minister gone and done now?”]

Thinking on the same lines as you do, I can easily bring up the past, saying that Labourites have suffered in the past because of the interdett and therefore I dont’ call him our prime minister. But that way of thinking is, hopefully, obsolete for the vast majority. Give the past its appropriate weight .. but the key is to move forward and concentrate on issues that are happening now and will be happening in the future.

[Daphne – Oh, so you know about the ‘interdett’, as you call it, even though it happened before you were born? But obviously you don’t know enough about it, as otherwise you would know that it has absolutely nothing to do with the Nationalist Party, and I say this as somebody whose family supported Strickland’s party in those years (look it up) and certainly not the Nationalists. The row was between Mintoff and the Roman Catholic Church. Or had you thought that the Nationalist Party had the power of excommunication?]

The whole point in this situation is that Libyans are being slaughtered because they are demanding their basic rights. However I do fail to understand why the PL has been criticized harshly for taking a step back in all this?

[Daphne – I haven’t criticised the Labour Party for ‘taking a step’ back. I’ve criticised the Labour Party for the way it’s ended up painted into a tight corner after building its foreign and domestic policy on kowtowing to Gaddafi and calling it a ‘special relationship’. Only the September before last, the Labour Party held a big event to celebrate 40 years of its relationship with Muammar Gaddafi. Now it can’t say anything, because it is completely flustered and flummoxed.]

Didn’t the US government do the same?

[Daphne – No. I take it you don’t even know what’s happening in your lifetime.]

If the US government was cautious before making a harsh statement, why is it such a big deal that PL (a party in the opposition!!) took a week to come out with a statement?

[Daphne – The US was not at all ‘cautious’. It was unreserved and immediate in its condemnation and it was the first to take action. The Labour Party did not take a week to release a statement. It hasn’t released a statement. What it released (this morning) was a precis of a short speech Joseph Muscat gave on Super One radio. The Sunday Times had to literally corner Labour’s shadow minister to get some kind of reaction out of him. Muscat seems more concerned about upholding neutrality than booting out Gaddafi. And international secretary AST is probably grieving. But then why am I bothering? Labour’s special relationship with Gaddafi was cemented and rammed down our throats before you were born, so you can’t possibly know about it. I, on the other hand, had no choice but to live it.]

After all, so did our prime minister, he said that Gaddafi has to step down today, almost two weeks after the uprising commenced.

[Daphne – The uprising began on the 17th. The date today is the 27th. Exactly one week ago, last Sunday night, I began writing about Libya and nobody else was. People were wondering what I was on about. That’s how quick it’s all been. So much has happened that it seems longer. But it was obvious at the outset that Gaddafi was finished, and if you skip back through the very many posts I have uploaded since then, you will see that I called for the prime minister and foreign minister to be more specific in their condemnation. Finally, the prime minister said it, but at least he did. Muscat appears to be contemplating his options still.]

That’s my whole point .. let’s focus on what really matters … innocent people are being slaughtered … an inspiring nation which proved to the whole world that they have more cojones than everybody else thought … they stoop up .. demanding a better future .. otherwise they are preparing to die .. in an attempt to obtain what they want.

[Daphne – I agree. But you are naive if you think that your Labour Party has not been derailed at a fundamental level by these developments. You cannot see this because you do not know that Muammar Gaddafi was actually an intrinsic part of the Labour Party. Since 1970, the Malta Labour Party developed around him and was deformed by the process. It will now need to regroup. The Nationalist Party has no such problems because it never had a relationship with Gaddafi, special or otherwise. The government did, and I really hope I don’t have to explain the difference and the implications, because then I will truly despair. ]

You forgot to mention that the post Independence PN government also built/invested in social accommodation which was then distributed only among the diehard ‘Mintoffjani’ by Mintoff’s government.

Post Independence, the PN government built a new university (later effectively destroyed by Mintoff), desalination plants, industrial estates and schools (later effectively destroyed by Mintoff).

In brief, Mintoff inherited a country with solid foundations that was opening like a flower. Within a few years, all the future held for Malta’s youth was Korpi lugging sugar and digging trenches (for less than the minimum wage). . . but that’s OK – they had children’s allowance!

[Daphne – Thanks to Gaddafi, who paid for it. And you forgot to mention the way brilliant masters of tourism like Karmenu Vella and the rest of the society of freaks destroyed our blossoming tourism industry, which was 100% upmarket, and turned these islands instead into a mass market destination of tacky hotels and a reputation as a cheapo getaway for chavs. And once that happens, there’s no going back. We’re still paying the price.]

Make that a ticket to Tripoli; costs less and should give better results.

‘Similarly, Dr Vella said: “The fact that you have close relations with a country like Libya doesn’t mean you approve of the regime’s system. If we did we would have tried to adopt it.”’

Is George Vella serious?

The MLP government of the 80s did not only ‘try’ to adopt a regime system. The system was very much in place. One chiselled very much on Gaddafi’s model – backed by Mintoff, KMB and the ‘aristocracy of the workers’ with Zejtun as their little Tripoli.

A regime system with police and Labour thugs shooting randomly at PN crowds and clubs, looting the Curia and the law courts, burning The Times, killing Raymond Caruana, ransacking Fenech Adami’s home and terrorising his family.

These kind of comments hurt much more than KMB’s prattle. George Vella may well be Malta’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in two years’ time.

[Daphne – Repeat after me: Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici led the Labour Party for eight years and was Labour prime minister. He is part and parcel of fairly recent Labour Party history and played a major starring role in its Golden Years, even though the Communications Coconut thought it best to write him out of the movie script, so that the move segued straight from Mintoff to Joseph Muscat, with the merest blip over Sant.]

So let’s concentrate on what really matters here, rather than trying to twist everything around Labour. I do enjoy your posts but at times I find them blown out of proportion. Like the article where you wrote “I wonder if KMB is looking at what’s going on and thinking it is all my fault?”

[Daphne – Ahem. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but rather a lot of people have picked up that theme since I brought it up, including The Sunday Times today. It is entirely relevant, because if it were not for a telephone call Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici made in 1986, none of this would be happening today.]

All his fault? Whether, by advising Gaddafi, he was observing our constitution which says that no country can attack another country from Malta is debatable. Maybe he should have warned the US to abort the mission since it was being carried out in Maltese airspace, but seriously, do you think the US would have agreed to an order coming from a tiny island? I don’t think so.

[Daphne – Or how about this? Why didn’t he just stay out of it – you know how we love to say that things are not our problem and we should stay out of them – and let those planes take Gaddafi out? Oh, but I forget: THE CONSTITUTION! The neutrality clause! And why do we have that neutrality clause? BECAUSE OF GADDAFI. That is aside from the fact that the Constitution does not oblige prime ministers to inform other Great Leaders that planes are headed in their direction. I imagine you are one of those who say that we should not have cooperated in the Hercules/SAS airlift to pluck those oilworkers out of the desert, because it is against our Constitution. Well, bollocks to that.]