It is a sad day indeed when the Prime Minister of the Republic chooses to discuss policy not with David Frost or Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, but on Xarabank.

Not only is he patently not transcending social class, he is proving that he is working class.

The unwritten rule in Malta seems to be that you cannot refuse an invitation from Xarabank. You are there at their pleasure, and you owe it to them. It angers me beyond words to see subliterate proles wielding such power.

“Peppi” Azzopardi has even inveigled his way into various think-tanks and committees. Him! He who needs the clapper boy’s help to pronounce “DVD”.

I am amused with references to ‘private companies’. One has to realise that a private company is not necessarily independent of the political Esatblishment or government control.

[Daphne – I never thought I would find myself using a Facebook Wall expression, but OMG. How can the government control a private company? What is the political establishment? Doesn’t it occur to you that some people – strange as it might seem – support the Nationalist Party and favour its policies because they can think and because they want to? You are drumming out the same tune as those who say that I favour the PN because I’m paid to do so. This is because they just cannot accept the fact that somebody who’s obviously got a bit of a brain and can use it has used it to work out that Labour is rubbish and the PN is much better.]

I think it would be naive to deny that the company responsible for Xarabank does not have links to the Establishment (PN controlled) and therefore, its continued success reflects the PN administration’s policy. Nothing wrong with that.

[Daphne – What? My dear, you’re not thinking straight. You’re saying here that Xarabank is successful because it has links with the Nationalist Party and reflects PN policy. The definition of a TV programme’s success is viewship figures and audience ratings, and it is on this basis that shows are repeatedly included in the annual schedule. Your mentality is the unfortunately primitive but typically Maltese one where success does not come through merit and hard work but through patronage and ‘links’. That is why people who think as you do cannot perform outside the narrow world they inhabit and don’t even know where to begin working for things and applying themselves to a goal.]

There are lots of private companies in the world where the government owns the ‘golden share’, effectively controlling the policies of the company.

[Daphne – When the state – not the ‘government’ – owns a controlling stake in a company, the company is no longer private. Malta (the state) does not have a share, controlling or otherwise, in the company you mention. Go to the MFSA site and find out for yourself. The state-owned company in this equation is PBS, hence its name.]

In Malta, political parties gain control of ‘private companies’ by proxy, i.e. syncophants.

[Daphne – OMG again. Private companies exist for one reason only: to make a profit. Socialists do not understand this, and when they do, they assume that profit is evil or worse, that the people who make it don’t have a right to it and they should have it instead. And it’s sycophant, as distinct from, say, synchronise.]

Effectively, Xarabank is a PN creation intended to attract working class votes.

[Daphne – I hate to disappoint you, but it’s actually a profit-making venture by a private business, and a very successful one at that. PBS will keep it on post 2013 for the simple reason that it makes shedloads of much-needed money for the beleagured public broadcaster. Your assumption that the working-class is made up of dumbass people sitting there ready and waiting to be manipulated is typically Labour. Nobody patronises, looks down upon and abuses the working-classes more than the socialist party and its various leaders. They were all really patronising to those they considered their intellectual inferiors: Mintoff, Mifsud Bonnici, Sant and now Muscat. Their thinking seems to be of the Groucho Marx sort: ‘if they put me here then they must be really damned stupid.’]

The problem is that it has nurtured the worst elements of working class culture rather than imbue rational and civil national debate. The result of this can be seen all around us, where even the middle class is constrained to behave like the proletarian sub-class if it wants to get anywhere.

[Daphne – The ‘middle class’ of which you speak, Farrugia, is actually working class to begin with, but with some recently acquired money and education. But you probably can’t recognise that. When people LIKE ME are surrounded by others shouting and interrupting and talking over each other, they retreat into silence, not join in. The higher up the social scale you go, the less noise there is. Yesterday, I saw this illustrated live when I swam out to sea and took a long-distance look at two immediately adjacent parts of a beach: one a smart lido and the other a public-access bit of sand. No voices could be heard from the lido, which was packed, but the sound emanating from the 100 or so people on the sand was like the rumble from a crowd or a football pitch, or the Tottenham riots. It was really incredible. I had to ask myself why they were bawling at each other and why in God’s name they feel the need to talk, talk, talk, all the time and at full volume.]

Try to be polite in this country and you will be viewed suspiciously, an anomaly. Don’t blame the PL for this!

[Daphne – It’s the other way round, Farrugia. I blame the bawlers for the Labour Party, and not the Labour Party for the bawlers. They created it, made it in their own image, and vote it in.]

True, but sadly, Xarabank is a PN creation which proves what I wrote earlier that vulgarian behaviour now transcends political and social class.

[Daphne – Xarabank is not a ‘PN creation’. It was created and is produced by a private company. Learn to tell the difference. And it does not transcend social class. On the contrary, it is QUINTESSENTIALLY working class, but again, it is an excellent and successful example of the genre.]

Perhaps that is why some people think that voting PL rather then PN is inconsequential, because the latter is behaving like the former! The PN brought this on itself.

Another Muscat!

One word: Xarabank. Oh-eh-oh and so the darkness spreads.

English Mintoffjani are running amok in London today and this has got nothing to do with the Tottenham protests the day before.

Your claim that Maltese emigrants of the 1950s and 1960s were all ‘Mintoffjani’ is a gross generalisation.

You have developed the habit of attributing dispicable behaviour such as that of David Muscat, to only Labour party supporters, as if PN voters are immune of such behaviour. They are not. Both the PN and the PL have their skips that need to be filled with rogues.

Your generalisation founded on the deceptive argument linked to the MLP’s rogue past has an irrational basis and reminds me of the tactics used by Dr Goebbels, Reich Minister for propganda in Nazi Germany, to defame Jews.

Intelligent people who contribute to your blog should have spotted that.

[Daphne – Intelligent people tend to see things the way I do. I’m sorry to disappoint you on that one.]

Tragically, it has become the culture of the majority (a perverted national culture) and persons who do not ‘conform’ are ostracized or hated. One cannot help noticing that when in public, the Maltese (especially men between the ages of 25 and 40) delight in rudeness and in annoying everyone around them. I cannot understand why this happens but I am sure the Maltese were not like that in the distant past.

It seems that the benefits of increased wealth, especially from the 1970s onwards have been channelled towards disdain to others rather than self improvement.

The elimination of social skills and good manners during the Socialist era (in line with ‘revolutionary’ policy of communist countries) has now resulted in conceited egotism that culminates in anti-social behaviour. What goes on in Paceville is a case in point.

In a few years’ time Malta may become an unpleasant place and the Maltese unpleasant people. The government should seriously try to do something about this. Blaming the opposition is hardly a solution and reinforces the culture of disdain towards others which David Muscat continues to cultivate in Australia .

I believe even the young in Malta, who do not have first hand knowledge of the Mintoff tyrannical years, are unable to understand the ‘Mintoffjani’ mind-set.

Next headline; Man offers 10,000 au dollars for berdie sculpture!