Nice one, Edwin
Published:
June 7, 2011 at 1:08pm
Who selected Edwin Vassallo to speak on Joe Grima’s Inkontri on Super One television last night – the Labour Party or the Nationalist Party?
If it was the former, the decision was excellent. If the latter, it was disastrous.
He looked and sounded stupid and ridiculous, like some human anachronism, from his ‘closed’ facial expression to his serf-standard arguments.
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Get rid of old baggage, I say.
Hopefully we can say good riddance to bad rubbish sooner rather than later.
Oh! I don’t watch Maltese television. What did I miss? What did he do? What did he say?
No more voting along party lines for me. From now on I’m only voting for candidates who are black.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13674696
“Every four years, everyone says evangelicals will vote on a particular reading of the Bible, but they don’t. They are motivated by the same things as everyone else – jobs and interest rates.”
Edwin Vassallo’s position should not be an issue.
To try and win over Labour No voters? Highly unlikely, but anyway.
The problem with Edwin is not the age. It must be the Taliban blood running through his veins. Unfortunately he is not the only one. A couple of senior ministers come to mind.
[Daphne – A former member of my household has just said that this seems to be an endemic problem in Mosta, reminding me that our mayor was involved in a great controversy some time ago when he refused to do his duty and perform civil marriages, or allow them to be performed in the Mosta local council office, because it went against his religious beliefs and his conscience would not allow it. The strange thing is that he’s Labour, which means that it isn’t even a political party problem.]
This mayor is a fundamentalist. He is not able to accept those who have a different opinion than his. I tell these people “morru ndifnu”.
Watching Edwin Vassallo last night made me suspect that we are now facing a new “condition”. It is not any of the ones we have encounterd already, so until it is medically studied and identified, I will call it THE BIG DOME SYNDROME, after his home town.
Our Joey has a BIG DOME also. However he covers it with new found ‘Farmville’ hair.
I agree with you, Harry, but at least Joey is, as you say, covering it up.
What I don’t agree with is people who are born stupid (could happen to anyone) making it their mission in life to make sure that everyone knows that they are stupid.
[Daphne – No, being born stupid can’t happen to anyone. It can happen only to someone who has inherited the genes for low intelligence, usually from a parent but sometimes even from a grandparent. This is, in fact, one of the frustrations that foxes some ultra-high-achieving men (who tend to have a high IQ): they marry an unchallenging woman because they need to relax and switch off at home, and then must bear the cross (to them) of a very average if not below average child. Perhaps they think that because they are dominant Alpha males, then their genes will dominate too. Sadly, it doesn’t work out that way. Also, since it is the mother who mainly raises the child, you have the double negative combination of a stupid woman raising a stupid child, compounding the child’s deficiencies. I say this because I am thoroughly fed up of people claiming that intelligence is an accident of birth. It absolutely is not. Garbage in, garbage out, so to speak. Hair colour and size don’t come out of nowhere, and nor do brains.]
The irony of it is, when they get paid from our taxes.
Could it be one of the symptoms of Big Dome Syndrome?
@ Daphne
You have brought up an interesting point of discussion here…. your argument may hold water; However I believe that you are right to a certain extent.
I truly consider that education and the personal will to think outside the box is what really matters here. Having a high IQ is a bonus, then again we can all ‘educate’ our brain to achieve a higher IQ.
[Daphne – Not quite. It’s actually the other way round: you can fail to reach your genetic potential if your home environment, in childhood, does not provide the stimuli required for development of the brain’s ‘circuitry’. This is like physical size being stunted by poor diet in childhood, so that the adult never achieves his or her potential genetic height. What you see as ‘educating the brain to achieve a higher IQ’ is just the ‘normal’ situation where a child’s mind is allowed to develop to its full potential. To use the size comparison again, feeding your child a good diet will not actually ‘make him taller’ but will ensure that he achieves his potential genetic height. Once you’re out of childhood/adolescence, you can forget it: any damage has been done already.]
Daphne, your argument re; being born stupid is such a load of self-congratulatory crap that whoever writes such an “analysis” has their head so up their ass, that it’s in another time zone.
What your argument basically says is ” You little worm are useless to society. Your grandparents were stupid, your parents were stupid, you are stupid and your kids will be stupid. Now bow down and lick my intellectual boots, peon”.
[Daphne – I said nothing of the sort. So unless you are dead set on proving my point, I just cannot understand your hysterical, chippy reaction – including your off-the-wall equation of what you would probably call ‘high class’ with intelligence and – this is you, not me – stupidity with peasants. Intelligence is not a function of social class, and that is especially not the case where social classes were rigid, so that you could not move in or out regardless of your intelligence and abilities. With the increased social mobility we have seen over the last 20 years, thanks to the centre-left, liberal and forwarding-looking education, economic and foreign policy (EU membership) of the Nationalist government, rather than the socialist rubbish you support, intelligent people of all backgrounds are moving onwards, upwards and especially outwards. The daughter of one of my neighbours – an illiterate peasant, if you must insist – is now a high-flying media company executive in London. And the daughter of another – a vegetable grower – is a whizz at languages, and will graduate in German. People like you, on the other hand, will get nowhere because you are far too busy seething with resentment at your perceived low station in life and at what others have achieved through what you think are connections and social status.]
It amounts to nothing more than a modern day serf-feudal lord relationship, a modern day ” white man’s burden”. “Stay in your little world, boy, your parents were too stupid, and you are just like them. You can never better yourself, you were doomed as soon as you were conceived”
For a woman who describes herself as a Liberal, you restrict Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness only to the “right crowd”.
[Daphne – I’ve been around long enough to know a prepared and much repeated spiel when I hear one, D. Azzopardi. This is the sort of repetitive rant that embyronic socialists or communists fixate on and drone on about as they begin to discover their political selves. At least have the common sense and good grace to acknowledge that I might have heard it for the first time around three decades ago, at sixth form, and now have little or no time for this kind of thing. These are the facts of the matter: stupid parents tend to have stupid children and intelligent parents tend to have intelligent children, and this regardless of social background. There are children from nice, middle-class Sliema homes who are as thick as bricks and there are children who grew up with pigs and cows who are now software developers and engineers. With social mobility the intelligent children of intelligent labourers are able to make much, much more of themselves than their parents did and so move out of the labouring classes. As social mobility increases and educational opportunities are broadened and become more far-reaching, this process of intelligent children leaving their labouring class roots behind increases exponentially, leaving an underclass of what are – sadly but inevitably – the ones who couldn’t move out because they didn’t have what it takes. They continue to have children with each other, increasing the problem. And then you get sink estates full of people like Vicky in Little Britain. The ultimate effect of extreme social mobility is NO social mobility: everyone who can move up and away does so, while those who can’t are fossilised in their situation. Malta hasn’t reached that situation yet but will have done so within a generation.]
And I don’t mean what you describe as the “Sliema type” That kind of person is an anachronism in ANY other modern European society.It is beyond the Beau Monde you would find abroad. Here, it is a mixture of British Upper Class, a Little Islander keeping up with the Joneses mentality, an arriviste “I made it” kind of braggadaccio and a little demi monde ( nothing Cocaine and Cuckoldry can’t smooth over).
[Daphne – You are not making sense. If you take me and Edwin Vassallo, for example, it should be quite obvious which one of us is the “anachronism in any other modern European society”. And I am 100% a ‘Sliema type”. I was born there and lived there for 26 years. The ‘keeping up with Joneses arrivistes’ you describe are just that: chavs. They are not from Sliema. They just buy flats there while all the real Sliema types flee in droves because they can’t stand them. In any case, I see it’s ‘let’s bitch about tal-pepe’ time again.]
This type of person, for all their travels, would just be laughed out of town in any other setting apart from Malta. Here, they are seen as people to emulate.
[Daphne – Every country has those sorts of people, but you appear not to know that. The trick is to avoid them, at home and abroad. And incidentally, only very simple societies are homogenous. I suggest you look at your insecurities and deal with them. Just don’t do it with a wig.]
Could you please decide?
Is it Nature ( your mama’s stupid DNA) or nurture ( your environment not being sufficiently stimulating) which is keeping that peon stupid?
[Daphne – I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but if you can’t understand what I wrote here, then you must have the DNA for stupidity, not intelligence. Not that I hadn’t worked it out already, mind. And do yourself a favour and stop saying ‘peon’. You’re neither Che Guevara nor operating in his world, and it makes you sound like a bit of a sad pr**k with a Hasta La Victoria Siempre poster on your (single) bedroom wall.]
Silvo, Daphne is correct. The genes rule. Why do so few Maltese have blue eyes? Genetics says that the dominant gene for eyes is brown. Called the the big ‘B’, the dominant gene. The ‘recessive’ gene, little ‘b’ (blue) needs both parents to have two little ‘b’ genes to create a child with blue eyes. Therefore, there is only one chance in în four for parents to produce a blue-eyed child. That is, if you have a little ‘b’ in your genes, plus your husband,
Same with stupidity..
Probably Joe Grima, to make the PN look weak. The PN needs changes at the top. Gonzi has to go. We need a leader who is decisive and can lead as Eddie Fenech Adami was. Gonzi was weak on his free vote decision. He should give a free vote but a real free vote and not a qualified one. He should not say vote aye, no or abstain as long as the will of the majority is guaranteed but vote yes, no or abstain, full stop.
Joseph Muscat, l-gharef ta’ salamun, is even worse. He said I will give the MPs a free vote as long as they cannot vote against. Amateurism at the top.
By the way, even the divorce motion approved by parliament was weak. They should never have approved a referendum which if approved by the majority would have to be sent back to parliament. They should have first approved the bill, then the referendum. If the people approve it, the president assents. The situation we do have today is Joseph Muscat’s. The referendum has to go back to parliament which means that Mps may vote against the people’s wishes.
Referenda laws are usually first approved by parliament then confirmed by the people. In Malta we do things the otherway round.
as if YOU are some sort of king makers. Lawrence Gonzi will remain at the helm of the party as long as WE the delegates want him to be. No Balzan, no MaltaToday, no vassallo and no other idiot, will tell us what to do with the leadership. They called him many times “a serial loser” but we all know who the real losers are. He succeeded in winning the war. There will be a time when yes the PN will hand over the leadership of our country to Labour’s Joseph Muscat, just to spite the lots of you leeches. And that time will be very soon, God willing.
[Daphne – Ma, x’attitudni tal-wahx. Qisek xi delegat tal-Partit Laburista kif nahseb li fil-fatt int, ghaliex il-Partit Nazzjonalista m’ghandux delegati bhalma ghandu l-MLP. Ghandu kunsilliera. Jekk int vera wiehed minnhom, din tkun tafa.]
Edwin Vassallo was and is a non-starter…. It’s just a sad case of a village shopkeeper turned MP who seriously thinks that he is some sort of business guru.
You mean like Marlene Mizzi ?
U int x’tistenna min Edwin Vassallo! Dan ibieh il-Jeansijiet kien ta!
[Daphne – Yes, I was wondering about that earlier today: how it could be possible for a man with O-level standard education who left school to sell jeans and underpants in a Mosta shop, to rise through the political ranks on the strength of his village constituency vote, and end up chairing parliament’s social affairs committee, as though it’s some kind of parish church or band club group. Nothing wrong with having a shop (it was one of my favourite games as a child and I would still quite like to have one), but this is just so insulting.]
Then they ask me why I hate my country of citizenship…
Baxxter, I love your country, it’s so much fun–a quizzical laugh every day. And I’m not even a citizen. C’mon, lighten up, you’re lucky.
I’m working hard to get another passport. I don’t want to be forever associated with such oafs.
Harry Purdie,I take note of what you wrote about the genes ruling. I am not in a position to question what you say,as I know nothing on the subject. I accept what you say and bow my head to your knowledge.
So the bottom line is that there is no hope for Edwin Vassallo to come out of his stupidity. With this I agree completely.
Not getting official qualifications is not the issue here. Take Alan Sugar, for example. One could go to the so called ‘university of life’ and come out better off than those which official degrees (like myself). But you need a good brain.
He has more moral authority than you can ever think you may have. I’d rather have a million idiots as my neighbours than having a snobbish one who treats others with disdain. No wonder they insult your foolishness.
[Daphne – How do you know Wrangler is a neighbour? Besides, anyone who would rather have a million neighbours than just one can’t count. It’s not possible to have a million neighbours, whatever their personality traits.]
Each time Edwin opened his mouth he gave the impression that we are living in Khomeini’s 1979 Iran and not in Malta.
While our MPs pontificate about their conscience, our European Commissioner is, as one Spanish delegate put it, helping to restore the honour of the cucumber.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13683270
Watched his ‘speech’ on Al Jazeera. Terrible–stuttering, mis-reading the text, blushing (could have been Joey’s tanning shit). Totally out of his depth. Should slink back to his cucumber patch. I hear he has a very large one in Libya.
Quite frankly, I don’t think it really matters any more WHO they select to speak on their behalf. The whole party has become an anachronism. I mean – can there be any other major political party in the world with an official anti-divorce policy. These guys are unenlightened intellectual dinosaurs. What mad idiots dreamt up this strategy?
Suppose they had sent on Mario de Marco instead. He seems like a reasonable sort of bloke – but what could the poor sod have said? His dithering prime minister, who asked the nation for instructions how to vote, still cannot commit himself personally to comply with the democratically expressed result. So de Marco waffles on about how it is perfectly all right if Gonzi and Gatt and the rest of them fly in the face of a referendum result. Well let me tell you something mate, it ain’t. Alfred Sant goes in for that sort of shit.
Poor old Mario de Marco has been forced to come out with other howlers. He informs us that the Nationalist Party is a coalition of conservatives and liberals, and that this coalition is respected in the formulation of party policy. Great big giant knickers to that, Mario. You mean like the anti-divorce policy? Nothing could be more disrespectful to the liberal wing of your party.
The people running this party put blind faith before reason. And I cannot trust people like that. If, in the unlikely event they get re-elected, I would not put it past them to attempt to abolish the yet-to-be-passed divorce bill. They could argue that they have an electoral mandate to do this. After all, is it not official party policy, Edwin Vassallo will assert. Of course, Tonio Fenech will agree, the poor Madonna has been crying all these past two years and we must put a stop to this.
As long as this insane anti-divorce clause remains official party policy, my conscience will not allow me to vote these people in.
[Daphne – Meanwhile, I would think this is an appropriate measure for forthcoming press conferences at which we are told that this or that MP has a conscience that tells him to vote No:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvVHqfWN0dA ]
That’s rather good. Never seen this one before. Beats that guy who threw his shoe at Bush.
like the reference to blind faith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUW1SGF7bR8
What a pathetic performance. To think that people like him, of such low calibre, hold such high office and are charged with making decisions that affect our lives. Time to clean out the sty.
Good thing about this referendum is that it has forced gas bubbles to the surface .
I get the picture. Anything like taking a bath?
Harry, I got a different picture:
Yes: 53%
No: 46%.
Therefore, in percentage terms, the Yes is 7 up.
Is there anything worse than leaving a grammatical error especially that of your native tounge daphne?INKONTRI ….READ MY LIPS INKONTRI !!
[Daphne – Dear jerk, ‘Ikontri’ was a typo. That should be obvious to you, given that you are clearly glued to this blog and know that, unlike so many people who can speak ONLY Maltese, I have absolutely no problems writing the language, a fact that appears to drive you insane. Even if I were not able to write Maltese just as I do English, and had, say, half a brain instead of a whole one, I would know that it’s spelt ‘inkontri’ because that is how it is pronounced. Now go and work it off by biting a pillow or something.]
tounge?
Dear Kieli il Maws,
I just wanted to point out that (i) that is not a grammatical error but a misspelling, (ii) “grammatical error… of your native tounge,” is grammatically incorrect, and (iii) so is “il Maws.”
Sincerely,
A. Coward
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/07/facebook_facial_recognition_on_by_default/
Deborah Schembri outshone every one else on Inkontri. She gave a lucid definition of what is a representative and avoided all the emotional claptrap linked to what happened in the past.
She was clear in her arguments which is in contrast to the deceitful arguments forwarded by politicians on the programme.
People are fed up with deceit and want clear, rational arguments. When will politicians learn?
“avoided all the emotional claptrap linked to what happened in the past. ”
It did not take long for someone to write this. So there it is. Deborah is joining a party without embracing its past. From now on that is going to be the political tactic. Forget the past and look to the future. However, will she be condemning Labour’s past with her ‘clear, rational arguments”?
“People are fed up with deceit..” Maybe she joined the wrong party.
It has been explained to me and I wonder if it makes sense to you because it does make sense to me.
Because we can have more than one candidate from each party in each district, they want to put up one who will vote Yes to divorce and one who will vote No, so that they will get votes from Nationalist voters no matter what.
[Daphne – I hardly think so. Read this: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110608/opinion/Social-liberal-agenda-for-PN.369465 ]
Even if you vote for a ‘yes’ candidate you are still voting for a NO party.
Edwin Vassallo is largely an irrelevance. But the irony of it all is that many of you rubbish him – and rightly so might I add – whilst, at the same time, finding no problem in praising or keep mum about Fenech Adami – as if the two are light years far from one another in their cultural mindset.
[Daphne – You’ve got the wrong end of the stick there, Bajd. I don’t rubbish Edwin Vassallo because of his cultural mindset but because of his very evident lack of intelligence (as opposed to ‘wajs’). Fenech Adami is streets and light years ahead of Vassallo in terms of intelligence. He is (was?) extremely sharp. Without that level of intelligence, his biting wit – most notable in face-offs with the irascible and easily provoked Sant – would not have been possible. I used to LOVE watching Fenech Adami in political debates. Leave out the religion and he was fantastic.]
Fenech Adami’s recent comments are nothing short of outrageous, even more than Edwin’s.
[Daphne – Oh, I agree. Apparently, the weekly polls indicated that the No vote dipped immediately after Fenech Adami spoke about divorce being banned by God. So I imagine he was ‘locked up’ after that.]
They are both by-products of the politico-religious doctrine of the mid-20th century whose cultural formation was limited to church school, Christian doctrine and band clubs. Both of them give me the impression that they haven’t read a single book out of pleasure and which wasn’t religious in nature. They are one and the same as far as their thinking goes.
[Daphne – We’re of one mind there.]
But you can’t leave religion out of it as if it’s not there or something relatively new to him. Fenech Adami breathed and ate religion right from the very start and most of his decisions were consequential of his fundamentalistic reasoning – vide his shockingly absurd mid 90s treaty with the Church – and was unfit to run a secular state as a result. Your cherry picking the good traits from the bad ones doesn’t quite cut it. Khomeini was also intelligent and probably witty too but you cannot leave out his obsession with religion when judging his political life, can you?
[Daphne – I don’t leave it out. In response to somebody else, I wrote that Fenech Adami’s political motivation was always religiously inspired and that he derived his strength and drive from religious faith. This was copiously evident in the 1980s, when the fight against Labour was the fight against Evil, and rightly so. He was the Man of the Hour precisely because of his religious faith. The last thing you needed in those days was yet another godless person who was not going to inspire 70,000 people to mass in protest against the godless government.]
Ok, but don’t go complaining about the ambiguous politco-religious state of affairs we are currently in and the way our politicians give more political weight to their own faith rather than to society’s pursuit of equality and happiness as these are all direct results of Eddie Fenech Adami’s approach to politics in the 80/90s. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
[Daphne – The confusion between church and state on the matter of divorce is the result of one thing alone: that the prime minister and some of his people (and also some of the MPs on the other side of the house) are unable to understand what the duty of a politician is when it come to legislate for divorce, and that their consciences simply do not enter into the equation except when voting in the referendum. That’s all. The LAW ITSELF allows for complete distinction between church and state in every area except marriage and indeed guarantees the right of freedom of worship. MPs are not the law. They make the law.]
“MPs are not the law. They make the law.”
Daphne Caruana Galizia, 2011
Nothing to do with the subject Daf, but can we have something on animal cruelty and welfare, please.
Don’t be such a troll!! Posting such controversial stuff in the hope of temporary traffic increase, it won’t increase the regular readers base. Trolling is outdated. And don’t feed the ignorants either favouring the ignorance weakens the mankind,correctly written text is like a good cooked dish it is more easy and effective to consume.Got that tramp?
[Daphne – Oh goody, another nutjob to add to my rapidly-expanding collection.]
I might accept a nut’s critique, but a nut copying a critique from another nut just takes the biscuit:
“Finally: don’t be such a troll posting such controversial stuff in the hope of temporary traffic increase, it won’t increase the regular readers base. Trolling is outdated. And don’t feed the ignorants either – favouring the ignorance weakens the mankind.”
Last paragraph from:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/04/04/writing-without-typos-is-totally-outdated/#comment-140843
It is only polite to add references to other people’s ‘work.’
Delacroix, something tells me that Kieli l-Maws was quoting himself. Look at all the grammar mistakes in the comment by
‘Michael’ in Penelope Trunk’s Blog: typical timesofmalta.com stuff.
My, my, MAWS, how touchy you are. Does this happen when we have high humidity.or were you just born like that?
Trolling one’s own blog is an oxymoron. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kieli il Maws thinks I’m calling him a moron. He doesn’t even know what trolling means, let alone an oxymoron.
As to the Gary Kasparov clip, well, what can I say? If those things don’t defy the law of gravity, they ain’t no good at all, are they?
Unfortunately we live in a country in which a handful of votes determine the result of an election and therefore both parties need the Edwins and the Anglus.
One side may have more bad apples than the other but we’re forced to live with this pathetic situation. Only solution would be:
A. Change the electoral system and voters given a choice between parties and their respective leaders not the parochial system we have today.
B. Reduce the number of MPs – they would be nominated by the respective parties according to the number of votes obtained.
C. The PM would have the liberty to nominate a technical government (not political ”animals”)who are not paid peanuts (as we know what you get) .
Gadhafi the historian doing peer reviewed work. I wonder what Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici has to say for this historical revisionism? What a mess!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8562311/Col-Gaddafi-vows-to-stay-in-Tripoli-dead-or-alive.html#.Te_NYGCrzK0;email
A politician who votes in favour of a drastic 500 Euro per week wage rise doesn’t seem to have his maths affected by a lack of university degrees. He knows when it’s convenient for his conscience to remain silent.