Her job was to produce original writing that reflects original thought. There’s a way of dealing with ideas scrounged from elsewhere. It’s called attribution. Anyone who claims to be in higher education should know that.

Ok, La Redoute. Let’s reach a compromise. Nakita was translating from English to Elvespeak.

Poor chap. I mean he is the most godawful smug condescending self-aggrandising snob at the University of Malta (and that’s saying something) but to have this inflicted upon him?

[Daphne – Poor chap, my great aunt Norma (if I had one). It’s about time he did something about it instead of acting like it’s no concern of his. Isn’t he the chairman of the National Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse? Not that it would be anybody’s business except for the fact that she’s occasionally inflicted on the rest of us. Funny how he doesn’t seem to know that when your wife is drunk, brawling and removing bits of clothing in public, it’s time to take her home and to apologise on her behalf to the people she’s hit and insulted, not time to move to the other side of the room and pretend she’s not with you. She’s the mother of his children, for crying out loud.]

Hang on a minute. Richard “Innovation” Muscat is married to a nutcase?

[Daphne – Yes, an alcoholic nutcase (I don’t know which came first) who makes a spectacle of herself at parties by punching other women in the face, yelling ‘fat whore’, ‘your daughter is a whore’ and ‘ugly slag’ and following them around the room exposing herself. Of course I wouldn’t be saying any of this ordinarily hadn’t it been for what I had to put up with from her. Occasionally she goes on a real bender, coming in here at 4am, probably blind drunk, and doing the internet equivalent to me of what she did to those other women, calling me all the names under the sun, then going on Facebook to do the same IN HER OWN NAME. And when I rang her to ask whether she’s completely cracked, and why she doesn’t just ring me if she’s got a problem with anything I’ve written or just tell me to my face instead of making a mad public spectacle of herself like somebody from the DiuBalli, she blabbed and said ‘But you’re not being fair to Labour supporters’. Then she promptly went straight to Facebook to call me a Fascist Nazi who’s doing to Labour what Hitler did to the Jews and trying to suppress her freedom of speech. This, I hasten to add, is a woman of FIFTY. As I told her (here), all that LSD she took 30 years ago must have really fried her brain and left her with just a little piece to be getting on with. Is it my imagination, or is Malta a psychiatrist’s dream patch? The array of crazies out in public is just SPECTACULAR.]

See, I told you Elton John was at the bottom of it.

Oh dear. Richard Muscat.

[Daphne – Let’s be clear: not the PN one, but the one married to Suzanne.]

What was it? STEPS? Shouldn’t complain about the Nationalists much, should you, Nikita?

[Daphne – It appears to be yet another lie.]

Gillian Tett is British and graduated from Cambridge University, though she lives in New York.

Nikita Alamango’s writing qualifies as neither US English nor as UK English. It isn’t even Manglish. It’s simply incoherent writing that betrays a poverty of original thought, or any thought whatsoever.

That’s the sorry state they’re all in, and sorrier still for those on whom they wish to inflict themselves. They know that plagiarism is wrong but don’t know what it is, and their only line of defence is that it’s all a matter of opinion and everyone does it anyway.

Why don’t they ask the FT whether that’s plagiarism?

Michael, this person might be able to recommend someone to you: http://www.um.edu.mt/contact/richardmuscat