Ritienne is a perfectly good reason for returning to Malta. Otherwise, I just don’t know. Home is where the heart is. Never was a truer word said. The way I see it, if you’ve no family in Malta, you’re better off starving far away from your childhood acquaintances and schoolmates who’ve since moved far ahead in life.

Life in Malta is a constant reminder of one’s failures. If you haven’t settled in by your mid-twenties, you’ll never grow any roots at all in Malta. And all the while the smiling faces of your peers’ children, their spouses and loved ones, and their own smug satisfaction of the successful executive dance around you like the masks of death mocking that chap Molière. It wears you down.

I’d rather be a pauper in Malta, living in a mental cocoon like an expat oblivious to a lot of things that made me leave in the first place, than lonely and depressed in a foreign country, living in a shoe box, exhausted from long commutes, sun deprived and always on the alert for my physical safety.

I’m afraid the charms of cosmopolitan life and money wore off after a couple of years. .

I am for the very same high standards.

The perspective is simplified with the generalization and a truer reflection of the broader state of affairs. Treatment would have to be pretty radical.

To get rid of weeds, the treatment needs to work through to the root.

When we’re through these 5 years, and let’s pray -since common sense didn’t cut it- that there won’t be another 5 years of Labour to follow, Malta is going to need high doses of shock treatment.

By the end of these 5 years, we might even be grateful for the promise of it.

Ultimately, It’s the responsibility of each individual to cultivate a standards checklist that accepts no compromise, whatever the material cost. People can’t go on blaming others. The buck must stop and start somewhere. This Prime Minister has even less of a clue. He’ll be of no help whatsoever on this one.

There are good and dedicated people in our diplomatic service but inevitably, the good ones are overshadowed by the bad apples i.e. the hopelessly incompetent who join thanks to “filjozzi” connections and the politically anointed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will never get its act together until this is remedied. And it had better try do so rather chop-chop. I shudder to think how this Ministry will coordinate the overall programme of Malta’s EU Presidency in 2017.

The media certainly don’t help. Even this blog has sometimes swallowed the bait, heaping praise on some unsavoury individuals. But that’s by the by.

I see no way out of it except emigration. At least you can start life afresh, a pauper among paupers, a tramp among tramps. Malta is for the inner circle, or those with a family and roots.

“That my countrymen be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me; and that I be not buried in consecrated ground; and that no sexton be asked to toll the bell; and that nobody is wished to see my dead body; and that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral; and that no flowers be planted on my grave; and that no man remember me. To this I put my name.”

Spot on, Baxxter.

Call it what you may, cronyism, old boys’ network…

There is no escaping the truth that it a lot of successful people in the conventional sense get more than a helping hand up the ladder and it is not necessarily the most competent or honest of people who make it to the top.

I just wish those with an iota of common sense would stop heaping praise and worship on others by virtue of their status or money and give credit where it’s due to e.g. the village grocer who runs a business built on solid, hard work and without short cuts.

Unfortunately, I feel today’s concept of what makes a person successful is misplaced. I just happen to have a thing for self-made people not inherited wealth or the well connected.

If Vicki Ann Cremona seems not incompetent, it’s because Malta has become so used to dire ambassadors that anything else seems good in comparison.

The same goes for several other professional positions. But then we ditched all standards at independence.

I want to pull Malta to a higher standard, not bring her down to the lowest common denominator. Our peculiar form of patriotism makes the task virtually impossible.

I believe it was before, which is both part of the point and besides the point.

An ambassador may well report and suggest but it may have been the case of non-action ensuing or blurred crony-supporting strategy being communicated back. If that was the case, the non career diplomat has less of a stand.

Without being totally defeatist, in that sort of environment, being a woman and having no political family connections to guarantee longevity doesn’t give plus points or help motivate, or even envision, the flag-clutching scenario.

I do not agree that connections should count in the decision to stay or not to stay but when the ethical basics are fluid on what grounds does one stay and fight?

Yes, ultimately the appointment should not have been made in the first place.

But for what it was, Vicki Ann had her good points.

And yes again, completely in agreement, the writers are blind to such facts. Cronyism is self-supporting.

That’s right, Baxxter, it’s all about competence. The people who would really know to gauge that about their ambassador or undersecretaries would be the embassy staff themselves.

There is a lot of work to be done and it is mostly the hard-working intelligent staff that makes things happen for the country (and their ambassador, some of whom have been mere figureheads).

I’m suspecting that our Fantastic Foreign Minister of Svizzera fil-Mediterran reputation will be engaging again AST of North Korea reputation, Richy Matrenza, the Thatcher expert and maybe recall Reno Calleja, the China buddy who is carrying the flag of the reputation of the now defunct but utterly crass PP Forace, ex-Mintoffian Ambassador to Australia. Yes it’s all about diplomacy I reckon too.

Alarm bells? Was this before or after the self-immolation incident?

Because after it happened, everyone knew there would be revolution. Except the Maltese government, it seems.

Throughout the revolution, the Maltese ambassador was never in any danger. So why did she have to leave? It’s not as if petrol bombs were being thrown through the embassy windows. I have always believed that the ambassador should be the very last person to leave anywhere, clutching the flag while boarding a helicopter on a rooftop. But perhaps I ask too much of our diplomats.

And don’t come back with the riposte that she was ordered to leave. Ambassadors aren’t schoolchildren, to follow orders blindly. They have some clout with our Foreign Ministry.

All this quite apart from the eyebrows that were raised at the appointment of a non-diplomat to such a post. It’s no damn wonder Labour’s cry of “klikka” struck a chord. The PN may have been fantastic on economic policy, but by god did they screw up on cronyism. And it’s not just ambassadorships either.

Of course I expect the post-mortem report commissioned by Simon Busuttil to contain none of this, the writers being blind to such facts.