Comments on: Today’s progressive and liberal headline from the xenophobic, small-minded party

By: Kenneth Cassar

Kenneth Cassar — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:16:28 +0000

In reply to Mustafa'. Yasser Arafat died on the 11th November 2004. Stop making a fool of yourself.

By: Mustafa'

Mustafa' — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:46:09 +0000

This ‘Foreigner’ was an illegal immigrant in our country…. a PALESTINIAN. So let’s put things in perspective shall we and not generalise for political reasons. Why didn’t Maltastar (?) state that the attacker was a Palestinian. Yasser Arafat would have said nothing if the truth was known.

By: Harry Purdie

Harry Purdie — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:02:56 +0000

In reply to Neil Dent.

Neil, I’ve been here since the early nineties, and understand your point. I am not completely fluent, but do pick up the comments.

I find it’s best to just smile, nod, wink and walk on.

By: Neil Dent

Neil Dent — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 22:44:56 +0000

I’m a foreigner. I’m English by birth – 100%, no Maltese blood, which people find hard to believe, as I happen to have managed to pick up ‘the lingo’, fluently, in a very short time after I settled (and married) here in 1991. Before 1989 I thought Malta was a Spanish island.

I apologise, but I’m not kidding.

Learning the language has meant a massive difference in the way I am treated by the public at large. I say this with confidence having spent years listening to the snide comments and shoddy treatment applied to tourists, or non-Maltese speaking residents for that matter. People here are so generally suspicious of anything ‘foreign’.

As a Brit, the only racial comments ever directed at me with any kind of malice, were when ‘we English’ failed to give any points to Malta in the Eurovision Song Contest, When the bloody awful ‘Little Child’ was Malta’s entry….and I think the year after that…whoever that involved. Not a bad racial record really, no?

What’s the betting that the ‘foreigner’ involved here is rather more ‘swarthy’ than me, with my fair, northern English complexion?