EXCLUSIVE: Pictures of the National Security Minister controlling his household purse-strings by shopping at Lidl, with his aides lifting and packing
In the thick of the general election campaign, I had a text message from somebody I know. “You won’t believe this,” she wrote. “But I’m standing behind Manuel Mallia in one of the aisles at Lidl. He’s got two men with him who look like off-duty police officers. One of them is pushing the trolley and the other one is taking things off the shelves as Manuel reads them off his list.”
I texted back: “FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! WHERE’S MY PICTURE?”
She texted back again: “Come on, it will be so obvious if I do that! Those goons are glaring at me already.”
Well, at least I had my information: stingy Manuel doesn’t only have the household servants fetch water from the public fountain.
He’s also one of those stingy husbands – I can tell – who does the supermarket shop to control the purse-strings and so that he doesn’t have to give his wife, who has no income of her own, housekeeping money which she might spent ‘badly’ or ‘unwisely’. Social workers will tell you that this is not uncommon.
I slotted the information at the back of my mind, because it didn’t seem relevant until now, when the issue of Manuel Mallia’s stinginess, masquerading as cost-cutting, is headline news.
In a post or comment, I mentioned in passing today that Mallia shops at Lidl (for obvious reasons), and that I don’t think he does it to be helpful or to pull his weight around the house. He is not, after all, exactly a new man for the 21st century, but your archetypal chauvinist.
Unbelievably, within hours I had the following photographs in my email inbox. I absolutely love my readers. And now, at last, I know who at least one of the ‘goons’ is who my friend saw with Mallia, doing the lifting and packing: not a policeman at all, but retired footballer Joe Galea, known as L-Olandiz. There he is, right there.
He was Manuel Mallia’s canvasser in the general election, and now has a job with the government as Mallia’s chauffeur.
In one of the photographs, Mrs Mallia (white pants, pink top) is seen receiving orders from her husband.
Red arrows point at retired footballer L-Olandiz, Minister Mallia’s chauffeur, who is seen with Mallia in the other pictures at Lidl. The yellow arrow points at Manuel Mallia’s chief of staff, the businessman Silvio Scerri.
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Fashion note to Manuel Mallia. Tall people wear horizontal stripes. Wide people wear vertical stripes.
Min Jaf, you are correct. Horizontal stripes make wide people look rounder, just like a ball. Who knows, L-Olandiz might one day be tempted to take a spot kick.
Another fashion note to Manuel Mallia. Bright pink coloured T-shirts are a no-no for old, fat men.
Manuel Mallia wears horizontal stripes to imitate inmates in older times.
The stripes were vertical, before he put that T-shirt on.
Ah but when that T-Shirt gets a hole from wear and tear he can adjust it to fit his wife.
Daphne, your secret service personnel are to be commended. The minister can learn a thing or two from your people.
Would it be possible to have someone check whether or not he has a prenuptial agreement.
If he doesn’t, then his wife might need to be told that she is legally entitled to half his income.
Someone asked how come the attractive young Ms Codruta married the stingy old bloated fart.
Answer: he lied about his age. He told her he was ninety.
The girl in pink is his wife. No doubt about it.
Looks like a game of Where’s Waldo….
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BlfksMMdKGw/TTy4HCPl2DI/AAAAAAAAAAw/-TFngU2yBAE/s1600/waldo.jpg
“Mallia shops at Lidl (for obvious reasons)”. Is there anything wrong with LIDL?
[Daphne – An illogical statement, Gahan. I never said there’s anything wrong with either Lidl or the people who shop there. I simply said that Manuel Mallia shops there for obvious reasons: to save money on food so that he can spend it on Faberge eggs.]
Most LIDL products are cheaper and better than their equivalent at our grocery stores and our so called ‘super markets’.
LIDL is the Ryan Air of the supermarkets. It satisfies our requirements.
They made other suppliers run for their money and put in check their monopolies. They made them change their “take it or leave it” attitude towards us consumers.
Now that’s off my chest, I can say that you have the scoop of the year with the Romanian nanny’s posts and this circumstantial evidence which points in that direction.
I do go shopping at that LIDL outlet (Luqa) after work, but I’m not an old reputable lawyer who lives in Valletta and a busy minister, and I don’t have a chauffeur-driven car at my disposal for free and I am not a collector of Fabergé eggs.
If I were in his position I would stay home enjoying my family, send a shopping list by email to a Carrefour outlet, Piscopo’s Cash and Carry or Pavi, and see to it that that someone waits for the deliveryman and tips him.
Or just phone our grocer Mario down the road to send us all our groceries after he closes shop.
Wanna bet Mallia gets it for free?
Daphne, now the big question is: willl the secret service (in particular the new recruits) be spying on you and your international network of spies?
[Daphne – Why would they bother.]
Il-vera ragel qammiel.
Manuel Mallia is probably thinking “To hell with the secret service! I want Daphne’s international worldwide network of spies. They’re way more efficient!”
‘Seriously cheaper’. He couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate aisle.
If the man has time to go to LIDL, then he probably has nothing essential to do.
The queues there are neverending, the aisles are over-stacked, and you have to zig-zag your way though the long lines of people stopping to stare at the ‘cheap’ prices.
This is not the place for ‘important’ people, and people who are in very important careers that require total focus on the country he’s been voted in to work for. Logically speaking, the time spent in those long queues isn’t worth the money saved.
Sometimes, priorities are more important than frugal living.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130630/local/-Minister-s-aide-told-police-to-arrest-me-.475922
The lady in pink is receiving orders from Manuel. Is she Romanian?
Mallia will have his blood pressure touching 200 very soon at this rate.
He made sure he knows who the members of the secret service are , but he has no idea of who is out there enjoying the show and taking pot shots.
Oh no? He can get his new recruits in the Security Service to check out the CCTV at LIDL’s till to see who’s been clicking pics. The opportunities are endless.
And what can he do about it? Arrest the person who took the pics?
I believe Lidl do not have security cameras, at least that’s what they told my daughter when her purse was stolen from her trolley.
Cheapo people.
At this point I have serious doubts whether the Romanian housekeeping slaves were employed legally. Did they have a regular work permit and did Mallia pay National Insurance contributions?
A Prime Minister who speaks of push-backs and vetoes, a senior cabinet minister who cruelly exploits immigrants . . . no wonder Norman Lowell approves.
[Daphne – Romanians are EU citizens and can come and work here freely.]
I think that there was a special arrangement regarding Romanians and Bulgarians (which is about to expire) and that their freedom to move to other EU member states was subject to restrictions.
He should have checked out the fish section. There was some discounted cod and some really cheap skate.
Mallia buying cheap skate from LIDL? Never in a million years. He wouldn’t tolerate any competition at home.
I like the advert Seriously cheaper on top of Mallia with an added arrow to indicate what is cheaper. Well done.
You never know. His wife might hate going to the supermarket, just like me. By time that has become my husband’s duty.
[Daphne – Definitely not. Don’t forget that his wife doesn’t work, and he works long hours. In that situation, hate the shopping though you do, you do it. You don’t wait for your husband to do it on his morning off. Also, you can’t see things in isolation, but in context. Many men control the purse-strings in this way, and on the other available evidence, I would say that he is one of them. They are men who think of the money they earn as ‘theirs’ and when they let their wife have a bit, they are ‘giving’ it to her, and the housekeeping money is her ‘pay’. Many women have no access to money at all. Their husbands do or control the shopping and they have to make do with what is in the fridge.]
Believe it or not I know people with a normal income who do not go to LIDL for the simple reason that they feel downgraded and on the other hand I saw doctors and lawyers myself doing shopping at LIDL’s. They have all my admiration.
[Daphne – I think the real reason people don’t go to Lidl is that it is a horrible experience. Grocery shopping is awful enough without doing a sado-masochistic thing and making it worse.]
Crowded places are a horrible experience.
When one wants to go shopping at say Ta’ Ganza one goes on weekday afternoons if one wants to avoid crowds.
I live in London and I do my shopping mainly in Lidl and Aldi. There are quite a few of them near me and I see many well off people with expensive cars in the car parks. Lidl’s luxury range of products is excellent, their duck especially is delicious. I don’t think they sell these products in Malta.
I despise the traditional supermarkets especially Tesco, they treat British farmers and food producers abominably, besides that, they are much more expensive than the budget (German) supermarkets.
Yes Paul, why not? The point here is not that he shouldn’t go to LIDL. We are talking about the domestic situation.
In a marriage, any marriage, it’s give and take – secret rule.
The husband should give and take, the wife should give and take.
Someone taking over completely in a marriage, shopping, household bills, domestic administration, is either in a marriage of failure or a marriage of convenience.
His wife, Codruta, WAS there. She’s the woman in the pink t-shirt and the white trousers!
[Daphne – On this particular occasion, yes.]
Which means that not only is there money control-freakery but also another type of control-freakery – what she can and cannot buy.
Is that his wife or granddaughter?
The reason I don’t shop at Lidl is not the bad experience but the unethical policies used to manage staff and stores.
This may also be why the likes of Mallia do go there. Not only are the prices low, but they are in their element. This article makes a good read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/mar/14/businesscomment.supermarkets
Please read all the way through to the end.
I have it from reliable internal sources that Labour went around Lidl outlets promising jobs to shop floor employees before the election.
Lidl is great at the quiet times.
I completely agree with your comments, Daphne. Yesterday had to go to one of the few supermarkets that were open as during the week I have no time for grocery shopping.
It was so crowded that after a while I just went to the cash registers with only half the list being fulfilled.
The other option was to leave the trolley in the middle and just leave, but that would have been disrespectful to the employees.
As regards to LIDL, the situation is nearly always like that, and that’s why I stay away from there
Daphne I’m having a f**k-off party at home – do you think I should phone Manuel Mallia to sort out my catering and maybe do my shopping for me?
What a common w*nker he is. Now I understand why some people I know voted for him – stupid misers just like him.
One thing is for sure, this is what I expected. I’m only surprised so many people didn’t see it.
Well Joseph, you sure have a lot of trouble in your party. Let’s see you solve it.
A tragi-comedy is unfolding on Malta.
Now we have Mallia’s chief of staff Silvio Scerri telling police to arrest the man in charge of security, Mr Muscat, at the MTV concert for not allowing his lady friend into the VIP section since apparently she was not entitled to.
Having no grounds to have him arrested on this count the police now query the credentials of Muscat’s employees and the GWU querying his company’s conditions of employment.
Daphne, I find it a bigger sin wearing that (prison) T-shirt than shopping at Lidl. He looks quite bossy there pointing his finger at people as if he lacks vocabulary to express himself in speech rather than hand gestures. It is vulgar and typical hamalli Maltese.
I despair. They miss the whole bl**dy point. Whoever said that waiter service is demeaning?
“The Police Force is made up of people from all walks of life with a very wide capacity base. It is good management to absorb and refine these particular capacities adapting them to the needs of the Police Force and there is nothing at all degrading either in itself or inherently in work ethics associated in the serving as a waiter.” MaltaToday)
This was a reply from the Police Force. Who exactly wrote the reply, the Police Commissioner, the Police Association? Under who’s signature was it issued?
“Reacting to the media reports on the case, the Police Force insisted that…”
That’s your typical Muscatological reasoning.
They will betray their prejudice and miss the real logic.
That this could lead to misplaced institutional roles and cause friction misses entirely.
Is this a scoop? I though he would be naked or something.
[Daphne – Cyrus Engerer is not a member of my international worldwide network of spies.]
Why would anyone want to see Manwel Mallia naked? I doubt his wife does, or ever did.
I don’t think this is a question of not giving his wife housekeeping money which she might spend ‘badly’ or ‘unwisely’.
This is pure and simple control.
She has no money ergo she has few or no options.
She probably has to beg for every single thing and, believe me, there are men who make their wives do that, delighting in showing them who is boss.
She cannot just up and leave. She cannot afford it and he probably has made sure that she would not get a cent.
There is also the question of the children.
She’s always been the weaker party in the marriage and now that he is minister she probably is even more trapped.
What’s the whole point of this story?