The Day of the FW
Nicola Abela Garrett
This is my column in The Malta Independent today.
Exactly what did that theatre studies student hope to achieve by calling Austin Gatt by a noun that begins with W and an adjective that begins with F?
This particular cabinet minister has been called a lot of names in his time and is famously immune to insults. He was never going to react to Nicola Abela Garrett, 20, with the sort of cold fury to which Alfred Sant, say, succumbed time after time.
And so this is not about him, though had he reacted by calling her “you stupid bitch” or saying “shut up, you silly little c**t” in perfect retaliation (difficult to imagine), or had he asked for her arrest and interrogation, which she would have absolutely adored, he would have definitely become the story.
Austin Gatt is a cabinet minister, not a rock star or entertainer, so he can’t very well shoot back with some amusing remark which turns the tables on his attacker and breaks the tension by prompting laughter, like “Sweetheart, I love you too. What’s your number, darling?”
As things were, he just walked past as though he hadn’t heard anything, which is – though I hate to say it – a major identifier of social background. When people insult you to your face, or ask invasive questions, you are supposed to behave as though you haven’t heard and just carry on, so as not to add to the embarrassment that somebody else has just caused.
I had to contend with a similar situation myself some weeks ago, when the estranged wife of a Labour politician headed towards me as I stood with friends at a party, to raise funds for a heritage organisation, and with a wide smile on her face proceeded to pass loud and spiteful remarks.
I walked away without responding, to speak to somebody else, and when I had finished I found her standing behind me, waiting to have another go. So I left. We were on our wait out anyway.
“I have been waiting for the chance to tell you that for ages,” she said, as a parting shot. How infantile, I thought, wondering why, in that case, she hadn’t simply picked up the telephone and dialled, or sent me a letter or email. The reason, of course, is that she hadn’t been waiting to insult me, but had been waiting to insult me in front of an audience.
That was pretty much Ms Abela Garrett’s motivation, too, except that she is a good half-century younger than my verbal assailant, and so there is hope yet that she might grow up. Both headed straight for Facebook to carry on with their insults there, which speaks volumes.
The point is that nobody who heard the woman as she accosted me thought that she was smart, or clever, or even as spirited as she prides herself in being. They just thought that she hadn’t taken her medication.
There is a time and place for everything, and insulting people loudly and unprovoked, at social gatherings which are supposed to unite guests in levity and a common purpose, is bad behaviour precisely because you cause awkwardness and embarrassment to people other than the object of your insults.
Poor manners reflect badly on the person who tries to cause this sort of scene, and not on the recipient of insults. If you want to have a row, then take it outside.
Nicola Abela Garrett is obviously immature, so we can dismiss her need to call Minister Gatt a FW in front of an audience as little more than the cavalier bravado of youth.
I distinctly recall shouting exactly the same thing at the foreign minister when I was 22, the contextual difference being that Alex Sceberras Trigona had just swished past us in his chauffeured limousine and a convoy of thugs, displacing us in the queue for the ferry from Gozo to Malta – there were only three or four daily trips back then – and leaving us stranded there for another night.
The other contextual difference is that as his thugs emerged from their cars to deal with me (I had bothered to give them the Maltese version too, knowing they were unlikely to understand FW), those who were with me pushed me back into the car and fended them off by saying ‘She’s pregnant.’
Not that they couldn’t see that to start with. And not that it would have stopped them ordinarily. After all, Lorry Sant’s thugs, led by Piju Camilleri – see the story Accountant was dismembered ‘within 30 minutes’ of his death in The Times today – had the previous year chased me down Merchant Street with lengths of chain slipped through rubber hose, when I was quite obviously pregnant too (with a different child – I am not an elephant). I was rescued by post office workers who pulled me into the post office building and slammed the door shut. My friend, a woman, was so badly beaten that she spent weeks in bed.
So let’s just say that I have scant sympathy for Ms Abela Garrett and her terrible suffering trying to get to the university by bus. I will resist the temptation to tell her that at least she has a university to go to, and that while she was busy calling Minister Gatt a FW, he was launching a EUR250,000 ICT project to make her student life even easier and freer of expenditure.
But I will say that if I were 20 today I would feel absolutely no need to call any member of this government a FW. If I were 20 today it would be absolute heaven. In fact, I would do anything to be 20 today, but like thousands of others of my cheated generation, I just have to contend with the reality that it’s never going to happen.
Every day I wake up with a stab of regret that I was born in 1964 and not 1984. But my consolation – and it is great – is that my sons, who are marginally older than Nicola Abela Garrett, have done and are doing many of the things I wanted to do myself, but couldn’t because I lived on a wretched rock with a worthless passport and a socialist government that seemed dead set on turning Malta into Hoxha’s Albania and, by 1987, had almost succeeded.
Perhaps Nicola Abela Garrett hasn’t had the good fortune of growing up with a sense of perspective imparted by parents who briefed her properly on this island’s recent history. But to those of us who have that perspective, she is a living example of the Nationalist Party’s incredible success in transforming Malta from a hellhole prison to a member state of the European Union, with all the normal freedoms and opportunities.
Buses are apparently the single greatest looming problem in Ms Abela Garrett’s life. She has no university fees to worry about, she has a job to supplement the stipend which the state pays her, she has state-sponsored financial incentives on ICT, she lives at home with mummy who does her cooking, laundry and cleaning, and with daddy who pays the bills, and she does not have rampant unemployment to worry about when she leaves university.
She might choose not to take up employment at all and instead take a great wad of money from the STEPS scholarship scheme and her EU passport and spend time at a British university on a postgraduate course, just as she has done already in the undergraduate programme. And if she doesn’t think she can get what she wants in Malta, she can, thanks to the man she called a FW and his friends – and certainly not thanks to the man she is apparently planning to vote for – live and work literally anywhere in Europe. Would that I had been so fortunate, but unlike Ms Abela Garrett, I had real FWs to contend with, and some perfect Cs too.
Nicola Abela Garrett is in heaven and she doesn’t know it. Elsewhere, she’d be paying rent for a real garret and eating cornflakes every meal of the day while looking for a job along with a couple of thousand other applicants.
If you think Austin Gatt is a FW, Ms Abela Garrett, you would have had a high old time being 20 in 1984. Don’t ask your parents why. Judging by your attitude and outlook, they’re unlikely to tell you the facts because they don’t seem to have bothered thus far. Find out for yourself.
Oh, and grow up. It helps to be taken seriously.
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Under a Labour government, the cabinet Minister would have taken the opportunity to call the University students collectively as “abjetti.”
It should also be pointed out to Ms Abela Garett and other similarly-minded students that there are thousands of workers, whose taxes pay for their stipends, who commute daily by bus and do not feel the need to make hysterical scenes about it.
I can’t believe your (and for that matter, Mr Bondi’s) reaction to this. So what if this is a “little girl who doesn’t remember”? She’s got an issue and I’m sure it doesn’t matter that it may be small compared to other issues past and present. She protested and made sure that she was heard. She’s the little girl with very little in the way of a soap box. He’s the big boy with all sorts of powers. She stood up to him in one of the few ways she could. He took it well, very well indeed judging from his statement. He took it in a way any civilized person living in a real democracy would expect.
My problem is not the girl or the minister – she has shown you can raise your voice when annoyed with something others ultimately impose on you whilst he has shown that he has no issue with people with no power doing that and that he will do what he is ultimately where he is for – do his best to look after her rights. No, my problem is how you of all people (and perhaps similarly Mr Bondi) seem to have reacted. Let people voice their feelings, air their views and even criticize. Let ministers show they understand the people’s frustrations, that they will not show any animosity and that they will hound those who can do better. Do not belittle the girl – let us hope that there are more out there who are still willing to shout when they are frustrated, who will not be afraid to protest should protest be needed. And do not glorify HIM too much either – he, after all, is simply showing how it’s done.
So, just because you haven’t done it, please allow me to. Prosit Ms Abela Garrett and Prosit Dr Gatt. I never thought I would hear myself say this but this whole incident gives me back a little bit of faith in this little island that takes itself so seriously.
She complained that it took her two hours to get from Attard to Naxxar. Why, in heaven’s name, didn’t she just walk there? She’d have been there in no time, and worked off her frustration in the meantime.
And lost some weight.
Or she could have done the next best thing and used that time to read.
There’s really no need to be a c*nt.
Yes, she really shouldn’t have called Dr. Gatt an effing wanker.
I take it you are are taking a degree in English?
So let me see if I get this right. You want Nicola to refrain from uttering expletives towards Austin Gatt because she can go to University and you couldn’t way back in the 80’s? You dismiss her transport plight because in the 80’s we suffered under corrupt ministers and thugs? That you uttering expletives towards AST before boarding a Gozo ferry was justified because the measure in your imaginary seriousness scale warrants one but not the other?
[Daphne – No, I am merely pointing out that people who have been spoiled all their life lose their sense of perspective, and that a parent’s role is to toughen children up to face life, not encourage them in moaning and whining. Twenty-somethings in Malta are extremely vulnerable to the vagaries and cruelties of real life because they have been sheltered from them in a sort of wonderland where everything is paid for and served right up to your door. So it is doubly incumbent on parents not to encourage more of this sort of thinking, given that the state does so much spoiling.]
No wonder good, well meaning citizens are so disenchanted from this cohort of politicians, bloggers, columnists etc. My word you are so detached that it baffles me.
[Daphne – I am not in the least bit detached. My defining characteristic from day one in 1990 or whenever it was is always being right in there. The people who are truly detached are those who, like you, talk to those who see things as they do. And then they think that their view is the world view. Labour succumbs to this dangerous thinking, which is why it always celebrates victory before the election result is out.]
Do you honestly expect that Nicola, before being rude towards one of the most arrogant ministers since the Socialist’s dark days, should resist the temptation to utter FW because she:
[Daphne – I don’t think Austin Gatt is at all arrogant. He’s well bred, and well bred people are trained from birth not to be arrogant. Any sign of getting above yourself is smacked or scolded out of you. You mistake directness for arrogance. It is the same mistake people make about me. You will only find arrogance in the ill-bred, one such example of arrogance – you seem to need to have it defined for you – being the way Joseph Muscat kept the prime minister, the PBS chairman and an entire staff of people waiting at Television House to begin filming a debate, throwing around 30 people including the prime minister off schedule just so that he could conduct his own business at leisure. Or leaving the King of Spain waiting, then holding out his hand FIRST and saying he was stuck in traffic. That, my love, is arrogance of the highest order.]
(a) should think about what Daphne and we all suffered under the Mintoff regime;
(b) be grateful towards the Nationalists that in 1987 ushered democratic rule;
(c) actually come to the conclusion that the only way is to utter, Viva Gonzi, Viva Austin, Grazzi PN?!
[Daphne – I wouldn’t talk like that if I were you. It sounds silly, childish.]
Do you honestly think that this young generation can be convinced in not standing up for the things they witness nowadays just because your times, in your opinion, were worse? Even if they were, and which I can concur with you they were, as I lived through them too, what gives us the fringing right to determine that Nicola’s plight is frivolous compared to ours in the ‘80s?
[Daphne – No, I mean something quite different: that they don’t know how comfortable they are in comparison not to our past, but to the present reality everywhere else, and that this is a matter of serious concern because life is about the survival of the fittest and they are very clearly unfit. They are the equivalent of a bear raised in a zoo who cannot be released into the wild because he won’t be able to fend for himself.]
As a social entertainer you ought to know that the world’s new mantra is relativism. And this completely undermines what you tried so hard to achieve in your opinion piece.
‘Fucking wanker’ is really rather a mild insult. It carries no connotation of corruption or evilness. It’s not the label that I would choose to tag on to some cabinet ministers of ‘the golden years’ that I recall.
What you failed to mention was her apology. I don’t think she planned on calling him a ‘FW’ from beforehand. She wasn’t right in doing so, I agree, but she spoke in anger, for which she apologised. By leaving that out your article has taken on an incredibly biased tone…
[Daphne – Apology? Come off it, Emma. She planned the whole thing, and the evidence is on her Facebook wall, though it’s too late to delete it now because it’s been captured. Spoke in anger indeed….it was premeditated, so much so that there is an exchange between her and a reporter from The Times, on her Facebook wall, in which she tells him to go along to the presentation and she’ll give him a story. ]
Her exchange was premeditated, her calling him a wanker wasn’t. And that’s why she only apologises for the vulgar language.
[Daphne – Yes, her exchange was premeditated, and that’s what she should have told the readers of The Times, rather than letting them find out through other means and hoping they wouldn’t find out at all. As for apologising for calling him that, why do I suspect that the only reason is that her parents sat on her hard?]
Like I said elsewhere, her apology is superfluous and only adds to the fact that she wants to milk this ’15 minutes of fame’ till the very last drop.
A real apology would not include a sarcastic comment about the Jaguar.
I was wondering when you would attack the girl’s credibility for having the audacity to criticise this infallible Government. You insinuate that she plans to vote Labou. Is your assumption based on the fact that she doesn’t think this Government to be perfect? In your world view is there place for criticism of a PN Government?
Granted, Malta was a shithole in the 80s, so are we to for ever shut up and accept all the mediocrity which is dished out at us? The public transport reform was a flop and as Minister responsible for Transport Austin Gatt shoulders some of the blame. To a 20 year old confronting the Minister responsible for Transport might seem as the easiest way to get her grievance through.
[Daphne – Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it. She’s an undergraduate, but the best way she was able to get her message across is by shouting incoherently in public. I distinctly remember being so pissed off at things when I was 24 that I began writing articles about it, which a year later turned into a column for The Sunday Times. And I had never been to university.]
I rarely share your sentiments, this is one of the times.
Ms. Nicola Abela Garrett is 20 years old, a theatre studies student and an exhibitionist. That explains her silly, hysterical outburst.
Minghaliha xi indignado. Only, the `indignados` have very real problems to contend with in Spain with the Socialists in government – such as a phenomenal rate of unemployment amongst the young.
Actually, I was quite amazed at The Times on the front page for referring to her as a `heroine’, even if it was only reporting comments about the incident.
It is at moments like this that I really appreciate and admire the guts and stamina of politicians who carry out major reforms in the country such as the transport system, the Drydocks etc and who take things in their stride – temporary setbacks, massive resistance and petulant outbursts.
When things settle down as they surely will and the system will start working properly and without hitches (Rome wasn`t built in a day) then no doubt the grumblers will go on to the next stage – taking things for granted as their due.
What would Nicola have said to the minister who banned computers because they displace human resources, if she calls the minister who changed the ICT face of these islands a FW?
She wouldn’t even have tried. It would have been MUCH too dangerous.
Her behaviour just showed her true colours and degraded her.
Life’s a bitch.
Students in Libya and Tunisia died to liberate their country from tyranny…and we think it’s normal.
But some Maltese think that a student who called a cabinet inister f… w…. (actually he was one of those who liberated Malta from tyranny) is a heroine.
And then we think Malta’s worst problem is Arriva, when it’s this kind of poor mentality.
“I rarely share your sentiments, this is one of the times.”
I have to say the same about this. While I think Austin Gatt had the guts to bring in the reform no one else dared to think about he was arrogant with certain recent comments.
It only adds to the frustration and increases the likelihood of being targeted personally. Dr. Gatt’s bluntness always worked against him overshadowing his hard work.
Pot
Kettle
Black.
I can’t believe you’ve got the nerve to tell someone else to grow up when you so clearly haven’t. If you HAD grown up, you’d realize that we’re living in 2011, not your dear hellscape past that you love to reminisce about. It’s odd that a woman is telling someone else to grow up when she clearly hasn’t left a mentality that’s decades in the past.
And I wonder, how do you know that my friend’s worst thing to complain about is the bus system? Oh, you don’t. You’ll just make all sort of stuff up to make a stupid point.
Transport sucks. Public and just general motor transport. It needs to be fixed. It’s needed to be fixed for years. You should be ashamed to excuse the laziness of the mediocre government of Malta by saying “It’s not as bad as under Mintoff.” I could blindfold myself and throw darts at a wall full of policy decisions and it would be better than what we had under Mintoff.
The whole point is that we live in a culture, society, and governmental system that wallows in mediocrity. You’re in the media, the most horrendous side of Maltese nepotism and low standards. The fact that you’re applauded as some sort of brilliant commentator is more than enough to point out the desperately low standards our nation has when they can’t spot the downright fallacious reasoning and idiocy of your posts.
I wonder what the odds on this actually being published to your comments section are….
Sorry a mistake on my part. I misunderstood Richard Borg’s comment. What I meant to say is that this is one of the rare times when I do not share the same sentiments.
Is that Caesar’s House?
No, it is not the Roman Villa.
A university student was physically attacked by a notorious regime thug, arrested, hounded and taken to court for “looking” at then President Anton Buttigieg in an unkindly or unsympathetic manner.
Had he called him a FW (no comment), then God help him and his family.
I am sure Ms Abela Garrett is aware of this incident. Her parents have surely recounted it to her.
Well I do agree that she shouldn’t have insulted anyone to get her point through, however, when it was YOUR son, F*** OFF people, you didn’t bring history up did you?
[Daphne – My son told Kurt Farrugia and Byon Jo Zammit of the Labour Party to go and fuck themselves after they had spent 30 minutes invading his privacy (he is, despite his mother, a private citizen) filming him at a distance of three feet. In his position, and at his age, I would have picked the two of them up by the hair and hurled them down the aisle (they are both midgets). That is the proper time and place to tell somebody to fuck off: when they are harassing you, there is no security official to call, and you don’t wish to leave the room. I can’t see my son ever calling a cabinet minister a fucking wanker – let’s spell it out, shall we – while seated in a quiet audience at the launch of an expensive project to benefit students. He’s not that ill-bred.]
For me he is ill bred because first:
1) Stop talking about people as if they are dogs with pedigree. If you’re so ‘above’ everyone, you should be aware that we live in times of equality and not of breeding with our own class members.
[Daphne – You can come from the working class and be well-brought-up, SA. But yes, you can tell good breeding in a million ways, and the signs are the same right across Europe. ‘For me he is ill bred because’ – this is not a matter of opinion, I’m afraid. I don’t think I’m above anyone. However, I am acutely and painfully aware that some people live with the feeling that they are less than others, and project it as just this sort of antagonism. Also, your justification No. 1 bears no relation to your opening statement. It does not follow logic. Are you an undergraduate? Dear God.]
2) If he is so well-bred too, he’d have this so called class you’re promoting as ‘having’ innate such as Dr.Gatt and sit down and don’t mind the so called harassment. When you get bullied you don’t provoke.
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but I can’t understand what you’re trying to say here.]
3) Ms. Abela Garrett was filmed, told off and her details were taken by UOM people and the Minister’s office. According to your logic, its no good for someone ‘her age’ to be filmed and harnessed that way.
[Daphne – The whole event was filmed, by reporters. Ms Abela Garrett is not on a vicious loop on Super One – of course. Or Net, which shows you the difference between the two parties. It’s obvious that the university would want her details. She’s one of their students. And it’s normal for a minister’s aides to take details in a situation like that, to address a complaint. Nobody had to take her details anyway. She wasn’t wearing a burka. So please, be realistic.]
4) Also advocating ‘violence’ as you’ve just done in this comment, proves you’re not so grown up yourself after all… Ms. Abela Garrett might have used the WF in public, you insult people on an intellectual, emotional and physical manner, which can be also termed cyber bullying, not once in a life time, but every day, especially if the person concerned seems to prefer siding with another party either then PN.
[Daphne – You have much to learn.]
I wonder, do you ever manage to have an intelligent, unbiased and not over opinionated discussion with someone who is not of your ‘bred’ and allegiance?
[Daphne – Yes, which is why I am aware of how people think. What is an unbiased discussion? As a side note, intelligence is a requirement for an intelligent discussion, and I actually prefer talking to stupid people because I find them fascinating. It’s breed not bred, and you don’t use it for people.]
‘Tossing the midget must be the most politically incorrect sport devised by man’. Still – I can see the attraction in flinging these two tossers around.
So she called him a F W…this country is full of ’em anyway. Especially from the die hard blue and red supporters. I suggest a rotten egg next time though. Prudes get less offended that way…
While I honestly can’t stand you most of the time, I have to give you props for doing this. The attitudes, pretentiousness, snobby vanity and self-importance of some people smell rather rank and Ms. N.A.G’s is a specific, overwhelming stink. The only pity is that people who take her line of education (The arts but Theatre Studies in particular) tend to see themselves as well-bred gods amongst plebeians instead of honest people with a humble love for their chosen path. I say this as I’m fairly experienced with such people on stage and off campus.
I’m sure a lot of people think you deserve to be brought down a few pegs as well but respect for doing it to someone else who deserves it.
“As things were, he just walked past as though he hadn’t heard anything, which is – though I hate to say it – a major identifier of social background. When people insult you to your face, or ask invasive questions, you are supposed to behave as though you haven’t heard and just carry on, so as not to add to the embarrassment that somebody else has just caused.”
Exactly the opposite of what a certain midget called Edward Fenech Adami did strutting down Republic Street, surrounded by his thugs and shouting “Fejnhom il-laburisti?”
Kulhadd ghandu xi jxomm.
[Daphne – Another Super One fairytale, I’m afraid (literally so).]
There is absolutely no chance she will work for me. A loose cannon indeed.
Without thinking about the ramifications of her appalling language, Nicola Abela Garrett became infamous in Malta for a long time to come. Not a nice label to carry around.
And who exactly do you think you are? Who would want to work for an evidently partisan W.? I am sure she made more friends than you think.
Oh Daphne,
Placing the Minister on a pedestal and then comparing yourself to him when it comes to being insulted. Poor Austin, Poor Daphne!
You also carry on to compare yourself to Nicola Abela Garrett, do I sense a conflict of judgement or are you just jealous she’s generated more talk than you have this week?
[Daphne – Newspaper columns and blog-posts are by definition written from a personal angle, Mike. That’s the way it works. I want less talk about me, not more. But that’s difficult in my line of work, so I just have to live with it.]
You feel that ‘having a university to go to’ is a privilege, she comes from a time where education is a RIGHT.
[Daphne – Education was always a right, Mike, even in medieval times when I was 20. But rights can be violated. University education is not a right – schooling is. Universities have selective criteria for entrance, which means that a university can never be rightfully accessible to all, but only to those who are smart enough to make the grade. Unfortunately, the fact that our university lets everyone in, doesn’t charge them fees and even pays them to go there has given rise to this false idea that a university education is a right, rather than the privilege of the qualified and able.]
You base your argument on things that happened over a generation ago – proving yourself no better than the 70 year old ‘mintoffjana’ who sits at home on her plastic covered arm chair saying that things were better back then.
[Daphne – Arguments are of necessity based on facts, and facts are sometimes the product of events. A generation might seem long to you because it is your entire life, but the minute you hit 25 the years are going to fall away and you’ll wake up aged 45 wondering what in God’s name happened. Oh, and you’ll remember every last detail of what happened 20 years ago like it was yesterday. And then you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I’m not going to bicker about this because I just don’t feel like it. I’m not being patronising because of your age. There are people my age who are just as childish, irrational and simplistic. There is something in Malta which arrests people’s development, and I have not been able to work out how and why.]
The only difference is that you say that things were worse.
Unlike you or the 70 year old ‘mintoffjana’, Nicola Abela Garrett comes from a time of higher expectations. A generation of ambitious youths who yearn for more rather than feeling good that they’re not living in the past.
You either have a false sense of reasoning when it comes to appreciation/evaluation or you’re heavily biased.
I can’t make up my mind, so I’ll go with both.
[Daphne – Your last sentence should be emblazoned on T-shirts and sold on campus.]
hi
last tuesday my daughter , from university to bugibba back home took her three whole hours
thanks
[Daphne – Oh, I wouldn’t believe her if I were you. I used that kind of excuse all the time. ]
Yes Daphne. I am sure you have a vast experience when it comes to riding buses (you sure have when it comes to finding excuses though).
[Daphne – Nicola Abela Garrett has no experience riding Austin Gatt, and yet feels perfectly entitled to comment on his sexual proclivities. But there you go.]
If she comes from “a generation of ambitious youths who yearn for more rather than feeling good that they’re not living in the past”, she would have picked up her bag and walked to her duties and responsibilities come what may.
We also yearned for more, and what we yearned for has been presented to her and her age group on a silver platter after a decade of struggles with a heartless regime, so that she and others can take for granted that which for us was beyond reach.
She and others who are too young to have experienced it firsthand should never be afraid to visit the past, because it is our past which has built her present and hopefully contributes to her future.