Can we have readings from Kim Il Sung’s instead? They might actually sound cheering.

No. We will have compulsory readings of Kafka over the office tannoy.

The people who make routine reports are generally well known to the police because they follow a pattern. Have you ever been at risk from your partner, reported to the police and was told better to get out of the house because if you went back to your house – late at night with a daughter, in the middle of a storm – they couldn’t guarantee they could patrol the area?

I can assure you the driving force behind such a report is fear and believe it or not, extreme embarrassment!

When you’ve gone through that then you can review your opinion on whether this is our business or not.

[Daphne – It is DEFINITELY none of our business. You merely want to know, not need to know.]

Which leads me to question the meaning of Joseph Muscat’s statement that a Labour government will be the “biggest enemy to bureaucracy.”
Does that mean that under a Labour government we will have no rule of law, like in the Golden Years?

How safe was the now victim and her children (not to mention her parents with whom they were living) from this person? Was this case marking normal time? Wasn’t it an urgent case, as are all cases of wife beatings?

If the police failed to act quickly on that occasion, they shouldn’t try to take it out on the man now.

[Daphne – Please just stop it. The relationship between the dead woman and the father of her children is none of our business, and that is quite apart from the fact that police reports made by one spouse/partner against another do not necessarily reflect the truth. Police stations all over the island receive hundreds of these reports routinely. They are used as a weapon in anger or vindictiveness. The people who are truly at risk almost never file a report.]

Daphne you yourself have been the wrong end of the stick with the police, when they tried to frame you.

I think that with a nudge and a wink The Times has taken a leaf out of Italian gutter journalism: “sbatti il mostro in prima pagina” (splash the monster on the front page) as fodder for their readers.

A lot of fuss is being made of the woman’s missing handbag; could it have been taken by a completely extraneous third party out to make a quick buck after she was already dead?

[Daphne – That’s exactly what I thought. After all, when that motorcyclist crashed and died some months ago, somebody took the trouble to go through his things and steal his wallet even before the police arrived.]

Did she have a cell phone and was it used after she went missing?

[Daphne – It was switched off.]

I know that clues and CSI type investigation are not the forte of Malta’s finest; they rely on a confession, either they browbeat or literally beat it out of you (Nardu Debono finished up dead at Police HQ and was then dumped in Qormi Valley).

Bob: What exactly do you mean by your comment ?

The rule of law should prevail. There is no law that says anyone should be roughed up during interrogation, though the Golden Years champions would have had us believe otherwise.