If only that last bit were true, but alas.

Harry, if this what they mean when they put up Lawrence Gonzi with his hands to his ears, he has my full sympathy.

The question here is whether the PN intends to face the situation, verbalise it to crystallise the forms required to identify the challenges and point to the way forward.

Labour’s yes to everything and then even more of what it is we’re supposedly missing, has lost everyone the plot.

I’m sick and tired of listening to the moaners taking centre stage everywhere I look. On TV, newspapers, even being invited to dinner has become for me, a mental health hazard.

What with their slapdash idea of liberal views, which to sum them up, amount to an intolerance, to anything seasoned, constant, caustic even.

Here we are, creating controversy simply because Boris Johnson made his dig at us Maltesers. It’s the alibi why we shouldn’t use the bus, too GonziPN you see.

I call it the saturation point, where basically we can’t get any sillier, because you know what? We’ve never had it so good.

So there, I’ve said it, and who gives a toss if those who can’t get round to get their ass off their comfy isolated indolence happen to think being anywhere identified with tradition is such a big no-no. The tradition of common sense and unassuming perception of life and everything ie.

When a Luciano Busuttil keeps posting his glibs to how much time he spent in his car to get to work, and everyone posts their comments to their realtime experience, it seems like there’s this undisclosed agreement to an artificial inflation of distances. Forty five minutes by car is, in our minds, such a long way away, so European, so real world. BOLLOCKS.

“Silvio Zammit is a canvasser like many hundreds of canvassers that I have. That is the relationship with him. And with him I have the contact I have with other canvassers. When they need something and when they have some friend who needs something. It’s the usual political game in Malta.”

In other words, it is perfectly OK to use his position and influence to do favours to friends and friends of friends. Typical Maltese village ethics.

Ah, but in Malta you do

C you are right; Dalli acted unethically because he made use of the services of an unregistered ‘lobbyist’. There are reasons for requiring lobbyists to register and the situation Dalli now finds himself in is one of them.

[Daphne – No, wrong. He acted unethically because he allowed his constituency canvasser from Malta to hang around him in Brussels, trying to trade in influence.]

More than that, people in senior positions have a responsibility towards the post they hold. Not only should they act in a transparent manner but they should act in a manner which does not put their credibility or that of their office at risk.

Dalli claims that he allowed Zammit to arrange meetings and that Zammit was not charging for such a service. That too was unethical. Irrespective of what Dalli may think of Zammit, other people will not believe that Zammit arranged these meeting for free. This undermined the credibility of his office and hence, by allowing it, Dalli acted unethically.

Most Labourites, and regrettably some Nationalists, do not understand this concept. The ethical standards of John Dalli are way below those of European institutions and that is what led to his downfall.

Dalli’s weird description of his canvassers/middlemen quiclly brings to mind Jonathan Swift’s description of ‘Yahoos’ in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’.

The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with ‘petty stones’ they find by digging in the mud, thus representing distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism.’

Hence, the term ‘yahoo’ has come to mean a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person.

Oh, as an aside, Yahoos are also very numerous among the reds on the rock.

I can imagine Zammit boasting about his connections. This in no way absolves Dalli, as he should have smelt a rat the minute Zammit came onto the scene.

Dalli intimated that he allowed his ‘gallopin’ to act as an unofficial lobbyist merely to massage his ego and keep him happy.

How he expected Barroso and Co to understand that kind or reasoning is beyond me, especially after it became known exactly what Zammit’s intentions were.