Karen Mugliett’s mother writes to The Sunday Times ‘in disguise’: to criticise the Transport Minister and Arriva
Jesmond Mugliett - waging a four-year war of attrition because he wasn't included in the cabinet
Jesmond Mugliett kicked up one hell of a stink when he was told four years ago that his services were no longer required as transport minister, or any other sort of minister.
This because of the ‘tahwid’ of which he stood accused when he was given the privilege of serving in the cabinet in the previous government.
For the last four years, he has been simmering with resentment and bearing the sort of grudge that – this far down the line – points to a severe personality flaw.
Who holds a grudge for that long, for heaven’s sake? More to the point, who spends four years working it out instead of just walking away?
A well-balanced man would have done one of two things: resigned and moved on elsewhere, or got over it and got on board with the rest of the team.
Imagine having to deal with personalities like those of Jesmond Mugliett, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and John Dalli in the military, or in a corporation. But that wouldn’t happen, because in the military they’d have had the crap kicked out of them and then been court-martialled for gross insubordination, and in a corporation they’d have been fired.
It really shows that they’re all self-employed (or in Dalli’s case now, a big boss), I can tell you. No idea how to cooperate and a complete reluctance to take orders from superiors they consider, wrongly, to be their inferior.
Now a sharp-eyed reader has worked out that the Rita Camilleri who wrote to The Sunday Times last August to run down the transport minister and Arriva (because the transport minister is no longer her daughter Karen’s husband) is Mugliett’s mother-in-law.
The three grandchildren she talks about in this letter are Jesmond-and-Karen’s children. The trip between Blata l-Bajda and Tarxien, which she grumbles about, is the trip between her house in Blata l-Bajda and Jesmond-and-Karen’s house in Tarxien.
How disingenuous, honestly. Or perhaps that should be ‘dishonestly’.
I don’t suppose Mrs Camilleri had any scruples about doing this kind of thing, or had to be hotly persuaded to to it. I’m assuming that given her daughter Karen is a Laburista, then Mrs Camilleri is probably a Laburista too. People don’t convert to Labour, because people who make a clinical choice don’t go for the lowest quality. You’ll find that almost all people who are Labour are Labour because they grew up that way and then find it impossible to change their mentality. So I’m assuming that Karen Mugliett is a Laburista because she grew up in a household of Laburisti.
Mrs Camilleri might have got off on the fact that her son-in-law was a ‘ministru’, even though he was with the wrong party. But now that he is no longer a ‘ministru’, she has a problem with bus fares and with the transport minister. She, Karen and Jesmond, when they hatched their little letter-writing plot, thought that nobody would work out the connection between them because Rita Camilleri is such an ordinary name unlike, say, Karen Mugliett or Jesmond Mugliett.
But they hadn’t reckoned on my eagle-eyed detectives.
Here’s the letter.
The Sunday Times , August 28, 2011
by Rita Camilleri, Blata l-Bajda
One-day ticket should be valid for 24 hours
I have three grandchildren, aged 12, 11 and eight, who twice a week come to my house in the evening; we go out together and they sleep over and then return home the next morning.
Six months ago we managed to train them to catch the bus and all was going well. Using the previous transport system the bus fare was 47c each, that is €1.41 coming and going back home the next day – €2.82 in all for the three of them. The cost with Arriva has now risen to €7.80 from €2.82 – a rise of €4.98. Each child, even the eight-year-old, pays €1.30 each trip.
Can anyone please explain why this rise has been allowed tohappen – an increase of €4.98! In other countries the one-day ticket normally covers 24 hours from the time one starts using it. Perhaps Arriva does not yet have the technology to provide this service.
If we were to have this service the problem would not be so bad and night duty workers may also benefit from it as was stated in the papers a few weeks ago. The children will have to spend €1.50 each on a return ticket, that is €4.50 in all compared with the €7.80 that they are paying now for one visit. At present they come to visit twice a week, meaning they have to fork out €9.96 more every week.
I must also mention that last Saturday a 10-minute trip from Blata l-Bajda to Tarxien took one hour 15 minutes – another hurdle. Who planned out all this mess? The public was never consulted about these details.Shame on the Transport Ministry to allow such a situation to arise. Arriva’s managementare surely out of touch with the people.
I was very critical of the shortcomings of the previous transport system, but what we have now is worse. I sincerely hope this letter does not fall on deaf ears.
———
The connection between Jesmond Mugliett and this letter was pointed out originally in a comment on this site some weeks ago. I hadn’t given it much thought at the time. But I should have.
Now Mugliett – acting in tandem with his twisted sidekick Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (currently showing us his pretend supper plate of spaghetti ricci on his Facebook wall, as though you can get sea-urchin roe in January) – has begun to incite hatred against me on Facebook.
I feel ridiculous even saying it, for these are grown men we are talking about, men with households and children and responsible jobs, and Facebook shouldn’t be their main means of communication. But there you are. I did mention the words ‘personality flaws’ earlier.
Mugliett has accused me, among other things, of ‘attacking’ his mother-in-law. I tried to work out how this could have been, given that I don’t know his mother-in-law from Adam or even know what her name is, then I recalled the comment made a reader and pulled it up.
Bingo.
The idiot had confirmed, indirectly, that this woman writing so disinterestedly to pour scorn on the individuals who replaced her son-in-law is indeed his wife’s mother.
So, now that Jesmond and his mother-in-law have put the details of their child-management arrangements into the public domain, even if they did try to pretend they are not who they are, we are free to criticise them. And by ‘them’, I don’t mean the children but their parents.
If the Mugliett children are sleeping over at nanna’s twice a week, that means Friday night and Saturday night – because otherwise they wouldn’t be going home by bus the following morning. They would be going to school.
One assumes that they sleep at nanna’s on Friday and Saturday because Jesmond and Karen are still determinedly going out on what slightly more sophisticated people call ‘amateur night’, and that even at their age they don’t want to miss a trick or a Consuelo-and-Robert reception mimli trash u rancanc.
But why are they sending their children there and back by bus? To get to Blata l-Bajda from Tarxien (and back), all you have to do is slip onto the bypass and you’re there in five. It’s literally down the road and round the corner.
Please don’t tell me that neither Jesmond nor Karen can be fagged to drive three young children to grandma’s – five minutes each way – on a Friday and Saturday night before the make-up is trowelled on and the hair tortured into position for the big night out in Siggiewi or some chav restaurant.
And please don’t tell me, either, that they’re both so plastered and hung-over on Saturday and Sunday morning that neither of them can roll out of bed or pick themselves off the carpet where they’ve fallen to get in the car and go collect them.
When Jesmond was Transport Minister, you see, this wasn’t a problem. The ministerial chauffeur ferried the children around in the ministerial limo. And while it cost Jesmond and Karen nothing, Grandmama should be reminded that it cost the Exchequer a hell of a lot more than seven euros a trip.
Perhaps there’ll be more letters from Rita Camilleri now, complaining about the cost of school-bus fares. When Jesmond was a minister, he did the school run in his ministerial limo, with his ministerial chauffeur. When the limo stopped outside the school at the drop-off point, it was the chauffeur, not Jesmond Mugliett, who walked the children out of the car and down the path to the building.
Dak servizz, mhux bhal ta’ Arriva.
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I am NOT the Rita Camilleri you are mentioning.
[Daphne – I know that, Rita. Don’t worry.]
Thanks, Daphne.
This shows how Nationalist governments handle ministers who are caught abusing their positions: their position of responsibility is taken from them and given to more upstanding individuals.
What a contrast to the way Labour does things, under Labour governments everyone knew the dishonest ministers and their shenenagins and they were left to continue with their abuse of power in everybody’s face.
This government is being punished by people who had abused their positions and had those position taken away or others who have shown they are not to be trusted and were never given those position in the first place. If there is any justice in this world the P.N. should win the next election by a landslide.
“I have three grandchildren, aged 12, 11 and eight…
Six months ago we managed to train them to catch the bus and all was going well.”
Impressive, they must take after their nanna.
I see that they “trained them” … a bit like performing monkeys.
One of Jesmond’s sticky situations arose when the minutes of a meeting regarding the Royal Malta Yacht Club were leaked to the press.
What happens when a developer decides to cancel a 20-storey tower?
The FAA feels hard done by.
Joseph Muscat prattikament Prim Ministru!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbnfbgbN92s&feature=youtu.be
Mrs. Camilleri is quoting adult rates in both instances. With the old system, a child paid 23c a trip. With the new system, a child can travel for up to 2 hours for 30c.
So, even if they need to make just one trip per day, the new system will only cost them 7c more than the old one. Even if they did ‘train’ the children to travel by bus, Mrs. Camilleri is making a fuss about nothing.
http://arriva.com.mt/fare-information
[Daphne – Do you honestly believe that they really send those three young children on that particular route by bus, in the evening? I don’t. And that’s why they don’t know what the bus fare is.]
Home Economics was not a popular subject 25 years ago. Therefore, I think, there would have been fewer graduates in the subject at the time.
[Daphne – Twenty-five years ago, you didn’t need to be a graduate to teach. An A-level was enough. A friend began teaching at the Convent of the Sacred Heart immediately she left sixth form. Many of my teachers at St Dorothy’s Convent were nuns; others were middle-aged ladies who’d come out of the old teacher-training college. And Karen Mugliett wouldn’t have been a graduate back then, either, because there was no home economics course at the university, though if there were, her political affiliations would have ensured that she got in, unlike many others. Anyway, I believe she’s younger than that.]
I suppose you’re right.
Good teachers of home economics usually know exactly how to keep good housekeeping, economics, budgetary planning and so forth in the home, therefore one does not see them complain about bus fares, cost of living and other trivial stuff.
Twenty-five years ago you didn’t need to have any postgraduate qualification to be a professor in the Faculty of Law (Demarco, Mifsud Bonnici, Cremona etc).
No other university faculty had such high standards.
Little wonder a graduate was not required to show Secret Hart girls how to boil an egg.
It think the situation is still the same in certain convent schools in Malta.
Some years ago my niece, who goes to a convent school in Sliema, had an ex-midwife as a primary school teacher with no degrees in teaching at all.
25 years ago Karen was still at university training to become a teacher.
[Daphne – Did she get in with 20 points, or with a parrinu? I think we should be told.]
Is she the (Dr?) Karen Mugliett we listen to on RTK Radio?
I guess my childhood hunch of never liking Mrs. Camilleri when she was headmistress at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, worse still her daughter Karen, who was made home-economics teacher there, was right after all.
[Daphne – Typical Labour: dahhlet it-tifla. Maaaa, u imbaghad jghidu dwar il-pjaciri u l-hbieb tal-hbieb.]
All in the family then, seeing that the middle child (the only girl) mentioned in the now infamous “bus-fares” letter also joined Sacred Heart (in Junior I).
“and Facebook shouldn’t be their main means of communication. But there you are. I did mention the words ‘personality flaws’ earlier.”
They should not be on Facebook in the first place, let alone make it their main means of communication.
What is it with everyone these days, have they got nothing positive or interesting to do with their time?
Keeping up with Facebook is a job in itself. No wonder people keep nagging about the cost of living and whatever it is that annoys them under the sun, when they are wasting so much time being unproductive.
And the habit of writing stupid letters to the editor is another thing I find irritating.
If they can’t afford to go see Nanna three times a week, get them to go once, get a flipping day ticket from Arriva and deal with it.
[Daphne – What we should be asking is how much Jesmond and Karen spend on their nights out, when their children take the bus to sleep at nanna, and then complain about the measly fare. Biex johorgu ghandhom flus; ghal bus m’ghandhomx.]
Home economics is quite an interesting subject because there’s a similarity between success in healthy eating and success with financial matters: it takes dedication, practice, and discipline in both areas.
The problem of financial illiteracy is growing in this country.
Two points strike me, if, of course, the letter is true:
1) The fact that children were ‘trained’ to catch the bus – what are they, dogs?
2) Why a twelve year old, eleven year old and eight year old actually catch the bus on their own.
Shouldn’t children be monitored and supervised at such a young age? I mean for goodness sake, I’m 22 and have no children of my own, but know better than that.
Matt, that’s something that only happens in Malta. Kids are kept on a very short leash.
Go to Germany, and see kids as young as seven or eight struggling with school bags to get on the trains on their own.
Go to the UK and you’ll see how independent kids are – and how they grow to be as well.
Kullimkien imorru bil-buses u trains, imma ahna jigi ghalina u jwassalna l-pa jew il-mummy peress li id-distanzi kbar u pajjiz unsafe hafna. Fsied dak li hu. Kulhadd irid u b’ xejn jekk jista jkun.
As has already been said, children abroad, get on trains, tubes and buses all the time. The question is why are people finding the bus rates expensive, when they are not?
Why does a silly bus fare ‘misunderstanding’ compel one to write a long letter to the newspapers, to magnify ‘the problem’ and to make it look like it is the most important thing in the world, when it definitely is not especially that the rates quoted are incorrect.
Why does one not write about how nice it is to have less pollution, thanks to the new Arriva buses? How nice it is to breathe some nice fresh air when walking out of Valletta. How ugly it was when the rickety buses were around?
God !
I believe that yes, Karen Mugliett is younger, probably born around 1966 and that, yes, she probably did her home economics course around 1990. I may be wrong, of course.
Was just thinking how funny having a surname symbolising a party, e.g. il-partit ta’ Boffa.
Even funnier is turning a surname into an ideology. Joe Muscat was so proud of Labour’s Mintoff that he boasts himself as being a MINTOFFJAN (jaqq).
I was now just thinking out loudly how proud Muscat would be if HIS surname is turned into an ideology, such as having a Muscatjan, which doesn’t sound nice.
Sounding nicer is Muscatier… with his fans being Muscatieri… which also leads us to It-Tlett Muscatieri… and promptly these pics from the internet come up.
http://www.maltarightnow.com/content/images/1362008115055Joseph%20Muscat%20Anglu%20Farrugia%20Toni%20Abela%20120608.jpg
http://www.catman.ca/Images/t%20pics/threemusketeers1973.jpg
Musketterija would be more like it – A lot of fuss about something obnoxious. http://fatimafeast.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=37982155
And it fits with the family business as well
Meaning?
Can’t they do it the other way round? She can visit them at their home using only 1 ticket instead of 3, and sleep over in Tarxien herself.
Thanks a LOT, Daph. I just love articles like the one above. You really made my day, honestly.
Articles and blogs like these put another nail in the PN’s coffin!!!
See you get to have your fair share of political popularity, you will be loved by the PL supporters in a few month’s time, if there was a podium you would be just UNDER Dr Debono.
Stop writing crap and get a life !!!
[Daphne – Yawn. This is a legitimate news story, and in the United Kingdom it would be all over the broadsheet front pages and turned into a resignation matter. The cultural gulf in Malta grows wider: l-iSqallin/Afrikani ta’ Fuq u l-bqija. Progressivi u liberali ta’ Ghar Hasan.]
This article aside, Daphne, I am a right-winger and I cannot say I agree with you and your methods but this made me think about the world we currently live in and how important free speech is, so here it goes.
http://9gag.com/gag/1973919
Daphne, I may never agree with your methods but free speech and the internet is what it is. Hope you enjoy.
The Muglietts have been accustomed to the luxury of chauffeur-driven limos and other perks prvided by the taxpayer. Now they probably think they have been driven into poverty.
There’s Home Economics – a subject I would recommend to be compulsory in secondary schools. It teaches one how to manage in awkward times, and to stop complaining and start thinking.
Unbelievable. You can tell by the expression on Jesmond’s face, which does not show resentment, but hatred. And they are supposed to be professionals. They are a scar on professionalism. Shame. The problem is that their number is increasing.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120120/local/Lawyer-accuses-police-of-abusing-their-power.403114
The above story sounds familiar to you, because you have been through same thing, Daphne.
[Daphne – Yes, I have, and it was the same police station. It should be purged, closed down and reopened. The reports of police abuse in connection with the Spinola station are now too regular.]
Here’s a small gift to the deeply-rutted, provincial minds that wander aimlessly in the fog of lies and misinformation: http://youtu.be/eUXNfk4MMlI
[Daphne – Hello, Kevin. I hear that Sharon’s a big fan of what Franco’s doing.]
Maybe she should adopt him in Brussels. That would be a nice way out.
Kev, do you realise that you posted a link to a video that contains “personal attacks” on Obama and the Republican candidates?
The above blog-post most certainly does not look like lies or misinformation to me. How about checking the facts yourself, kev?
Hey Kevvy! See you finally finished the dishes in time to volunteer another inane comment. Your timing is excellent. Needed the laugh.
“You’ll find that almost all people who are Labour are Labour because they grew up that way and then find it impossible to change their mentality.”
I have very few Labour friends. I find I get on much better with those who vote Nationalist than with those who vote Labour. It’s a mindset and shared attitude, and nothing to do with prejudice – something which you, Daphne, have written about so many times over the years.
Many of my close relatives are Labour supporters, and I love them dearly, but I can’t help noticing how their mindset is totally different to mine.
Those who are raised in Labour families rarely, if ever, cross the great divide, not even if they get themselves a good education and understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Labour way of thinking.
I can’t help noticing how so many of those who are committed to Labour have a chip on their shoulder, are incredibly envious of those who make something of themselves, tend to feel themselves ‘fixed’ and unable or unwilling to take any initiative, and so on. This is a generalisation, but I know I am pretty close to the mark.
But there is another kind of Labour supporter, and he or she is usually more secretive. This is the self-seeking ex-Nationalist who thinks he didn’t get his share of the ‘favours pie’. The good of the country comes a far second to his own personal need for favours, which he does not even consider favours but as his due.
Neither of these two basic types of Labour supporter votes through belief in Labour’s policy. Think about it: how many people do you know who told you that they vote Labour because Labour’s policy is better than that of the Nationalist Party, or because Labour is more competent and better at doing politics?
I always hear: le ma nivvutax lil PN ghax ma tawnix il-permess or because the road is still pot-holed, or because we want a change – and then you discover that the change they want is a change in the way his daughter/son didn’t get the promotion at a particular public office or whatever other favour they were after.
I have yet to meet a Labour supporter who switched to the Nationalist Party because he was expecting something. There are some people who grew up in Labour families and switched to voting for the PN, but it is clear that they did so on the basis of policy, particularly EU membership, education and so on.
Indeed, the Nationalists who turn Labour do so as a form of personal vendetta for “unrequited love”, to put it that way, or rather an unreturned-yet-expected favour.
So, I can’t agree more.
I had the dubious honour of having both Mrs Camilleri and Mrs Mugliett as Home Economics teachers and they both annoyed the hell out of me. They hardly ever let us cook but went on and on about their personal experiences and the way they designed their house bla bla bla.
There appear to be many in the PN who have a personality flaw, at least according to the gospel of Defsa. I imagine it takes one to know one. Tell me who hasn’t got at least one personality flaw ….
[Daphne – You know, Joseph Carmel, you’re my first gay male internet stalker. It’s an interesting experience.]
“Training” children to catch a bus?
What did they get as rewards – lumps of sugar or peanuts?
In this case, probably carrot sticks.