I asked a clapping man what Mintoff had said as I had arrived late. He said “How should I know what he said?” This man had a vote and I believe he still has that vote for the coming election.

Try EuroStat – or is that also fiction, if the LP says so?

Aha! Inadvertently, you have pointed the way to a solution. Turkey is a NATO member. This was a NATO operation. So Turkey WAS involved, even if it was only by voting on the NATO Council. Malta is a member of bugger all. For Malta, geopolitics is just something that happens to other people.

Turkey contributed next to nothing to the Nato effort and yet the Turkish PM gets a hero’s welcome in Tripoli. He visited a day after the visit of the British PM and the French President.

The position taken by Malta was the right one and has nothing to do with ‘small island mentality’. I disagree with those who give the impression that Malta will be disadvantaged in the rebuilding of Libya.

Impossible. He’s surrounded by a wall of big bellies and arses. The sad thing is the people love him. No really, they do. Ghax ragel sewwa.

Where in the whole world does the prime minister of a country turn up, Sunday after Sunday, in some village kazin?

Rather than lifting the telephone, someone with the slightest problem can go one better – find out where the PM is giving his little talk and have a tete-à-tete.

“Talking about RATES, yesterday ONE News…”
Growth is Up, except in the Land of Down, where less growth (still up) is always DOWN for anything government related (PN).

Fact: The name of the PL game has been and is exclusively marketing (forget reason and rational analysis), while the PL wait for the electoral clock to tick down.

Objective Fact: How can anything (or any political Party) based upon illusion provide the country with anything other then disaster, if they should be elected to government?

Opinion: If austerity is the best medium-term prognosis for the best of governments in the months and years ahead, what depression (economic and psychological) lies ahead (for another generation, at least, considering the potential for damage it seems to me), if Dr. Joseph (the PL-Moses leading his fractious tribes to the Promised Land) should get to imagine his way into a Maltese PM-postmanship?

Opinion: Dr. Joseph as “Son of Sant” and “worshiper of Dom” seems to me very likely to be a far worse combination (along with any of their potential cabinet of Antiquarians, Moderates, and Progressives) than any previous MLP government to wreck its havoc in the last 50 years.

Opinion: The prospect would be far worse than the current (or continuing) PN government (with its mixed bag of religious conservatives, moderates, and socially-liberal progressives).

Fact: But I sure wish that a true and safe alternative to PN government were possible in my lifetime, as a normal political process. Opinion: Maybe there will be an alternative, perhaps if I should live another 20 years?

Opinion: It seems that the PL simply hope that PN and AD people are tired (and not principled) of their not-voting-MLP/PL–and that the electorate is essentially irrational. There appears to be no worry among the PL leadership about a potential majority of traditional MLP/PL voters, for whom voting is the same thing as blind faith.

Facts: To test the (PL) political hypothesis about election campaigns, we’ll need an election to determine the issue: is the margin of rationality greater than the weight of emotion and desire? Alfred Sant clearly had placed his bets on desire (which only lasted for 22 months)–and this pretty much is the PL bet today: their still betting on desire (yes, it is like a football match).

Fact: There are unhappy folks on both sides of the political divide [yes, the world situation is a bit chaotic right now].
Empirical question: but for the majority of Maltese voters [who have looked beyond the belly-button center of the Mediterranean], is reason stronger than disappointment?

It depends: Can government communicate its achievements and its potential for the future of the country? Will the PL be allowed to get by without having any policies or a workable plan? No 15-year vision is necessary; but immediate two-year priorities clearly spelled out within a five-year objective is necessary.

In a dynamic and inter-dependent world, no one has absolute control over their future [although many socialist and authoritarian mindsets presume that governments control and provide benefits and wealth at their largess: we can look at contemporary Greece for the irrationality of that assumption.]

The bailouts required from several national governments because of poorly controlled capitalism in the US also have undermined world economic growth. In turn, this situation has impoverished many millions and the hopes of many of young and not-so-young, the present would-be-working-if-I-only-could-find-a-job generation.

Human resource development and assistance is part of the solution; a sound economy is the rest of the solution. But our futures, both as a nation and as individuals, are made more secure by rational policy; prudent attention to history; openness to truth and the correction of present errors; and responsible decision making.

At present none of these characteristics feature clearly as PL traits. Nor do I have any confidence in their realization for a Party that cannot define itself coherently and honestly.

We all expect that the government and the various Ministries to report, on a daily business, the goings on in diplomatic circles about affairs of national security.

What obligation was Dr. Gonzi, Prime Minister, to go and visit the two defectors when they landed and on two other occasions? – None. He visited them, and I am only guessing, for one reason – he wanted to hear first hand what was really happening in Libya and perhaps made the scale tip in the direction of some measures taken by the government.

The probability of Cameron or Sarkozy meeting personally two Libyan defectors would be slim to zilch. That is where the Secret Service, the army and other national security personnel enter into the picture.

The government could have briefed the Press with details about every decision taken as it was taken, but what would the benefit have been? Just to feed the often referred to ‘amateur reporters’? To give them more ammo to twist and take phrases out of context in order to translate them into anything but the truth? Daphne Caruana Galizia has first hand experiences from the hands of the media from the left.

The problem here is that anyone with the slightest problem expects to be able to lift the telephone and speak directly with a Minister or, indeed with the Prime MInister himself! Where, in the whole world, is this done, or even possible without going through endless hoops?

Those who often accuse us of having ‘an island mentality’ are right after all, but reading some arguments and comments here, to me, the accusers seem to reveal their own ‘island mentality’.