[Daphne – Not necessarily, no.]

What do you understand by clerical duties?

To me, clerical duties would consist of:

“typing” emails and letters
general filing
making coffee
answering the phone

All you have to be is literate and have good phone manners. In your day one would have been thankful to have been employed at all.

[Daphne – You don’t know much about offices, do you. Phones are answered by receptionists. Coffee is made by the cleaner in big companies, by the boss’s secretary for guests and meetings (and the boss), or by everyone else for themselves. Not much filing goes on nowadays. Emails are typed by those who send them. Letters are virtually a thing of the past. Clerks’ duties are actually quite onerous and depend on the business: sales clerk, store clerk, insurance clerk, shipping clerk. The work generally involves numbers, forms, spreadsheets, logs, records, invoicing, and the like. It is in fact the perfect work for a BComm graduate.]

Another thing, one shouldn’t equate “education” with “importance of post of employment”. I can’t stomach such reasoning, viz. that one should educate onself to improve one’s employability.

If that were the case, a bachelor of arts degree would be the epitome of uselessness. It obviously isn’t, because “the arts” (I know I am using the term very loosely here) are one aspect that differentiate us from our closest relatives (phylogenetically speaking, of course).

And what was a B.Comm graduate doing, performing clerical duties? Coming to work must have been a nightmare for this person.

You should never employ people who are over-qualified for the job they should be doing. I think that you were the incompetent one in this matter, rather than your “office clerk”.

[Daphne – Why do you assume that a BComm graduate is over-qualified for clerical duties? Or that s/he automatically deserves some more important position mere by dint of that degree? I was a clerk for four years before I had my first child, and I never felt over-qualified for the job or that work was a nightmare.]

Please don’t tempt him. The last thing we need to see is Franco’s whale tail.

*In the 2008 election

If you were around in 1981, which I doubt, Jacky, you’d know what a strain on democracy is – the Labour Party raping democracy and ‘winning’ a 2 party election with 49% of the votes as opposed to 51% for the ‘losers’.

What’s more, the electoral districts, as defined by Labour (and never corrected due to Labour intransigency), provided the MLP with 34 seats as opposed to the PN’s 31, despite the PN getting more votes. That’s Labour democracy for you.

Pity school reports don’t mention such traits: far more important than marks obtained in tests which have no bearing whatsoever on the rest of your life, or in this case, the future of a nation.

I think David Agius had an excellent idea. The only snag is that it may be that three extra seats are not enough.

Naturally LP supporters would object, they have exceedingly short memories (Mintoff anyone?). Mind you if I was Muscat, I would take a good hard look at the oddballs currently being considered for standing on the LP ticket, and ask for a minimum of ten more seats.

Conversely, taking it as given that the PL will win the next election, Gonzi should drag his feet about this proposal, In turn he can enjoy the ruckus the wannabe minister of the south (to mention one potential trouble maker) will raise, should his ministry not be forthcoming.