Two things are required of a columnist for a national newspaper
The first is that he (or she) writes in an engaging manner. The second – and of equal importance – is that he (or she) knows what he (or she) is talking about.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona, in Times of Malta today, turns his attention from politics to yet another subject about which he knows next to nothing: illegal drugs.
Legalise them all, he says. It’s the only solution. And after a brief period where everyone will be walking around drugged up to the eyeballs, the novelty will wear off and everyone will begin to ignore the cheap cocaine and heroin on the supermarket shelves.
And the drug barons (he says they’re not called lords, but actually they are, barons being the smaller fry) will have nothing to kill each other about.
The only reason trade in illegal drugs is not legalised, he says, is because there are too many vested interests and too many people are making too much money.
Oh right. So that’s it, of course!
It’s not only drugs and politics about which he knows nothing. It’s also the laws of the market. It’s the major criminal drug syndicates which have the greatest vested interest in getting their stock-in-trade declared legal, because they’ve got a head start in the market already and control all the plantations.
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Who the hell even made him a regular columnist?
Not that the others are any better. Reams of newsprint just stating the bleeding obvious (Joe Borg, Alison Bezzina..), boring on about nothing (Lino Spiteri, Ranier Fsadni, Martin Scicluna…) or cutting and pasting from The Economist (Anthony Manduca).
Bar our Daphne and Mark Anthony Falzon, none are worth reading.
I disagree Baxxter…. all are worth reading. And Ranier…?…. are you serious…?
Ranier Fsadni has written excellent pieces about Muscat’s immigration policy.
And those are the ones I can remember.
And I even enjoy Manduca’s writings from time to time. To his credit, he does sometimes say things that The Economist does not.
Have to disagree with you on this one (too). Ranier Fsadni is on a completely different level from the rest of the columnists and often writes some very good contributions.
Mustn’t forget Beck, I mean if you don’t like this guy then you might have issues. But I just love his stuff…
Beck is all right. Rather limited in his choice of topics but he doesn’t faff about.
Fsadni’s got that ole’ Father Peter quality. By the time he’s examined all angles he’s run out of column space, so we never get his opinion. I suspect he considers sitting on the fence as some sort of academic’s requirement. He writes well but damme if he isn’t befuddling sometimes.
I didn’t mention all the bores, or I would have run out of space myself. Who can forget such classic bores as Gejtu Vella? Or the sempiternal Alfred Mifsud? Or Clyde Puli? Or David Casa, who sounds like the Brussels Newsletter (which nobody reads)?
I suppose it’s the editors’ fault. They want more Malta, Malta, and Malta, by lawyers, lawyers, lawyers, politicians and more lawyers.
When I scan the papers with my groggy, bloodshot eyes on yet another blimmin’ morning, I don’t want to read the bleeding obvious. I want to be entertained and educated.
Our Daffers does both.
Thought I’d lost u for a moment Baxx. Agree with your reply ;-)
I have to disagree with Baxxter on ‘the bleeding obvious’ writers. We should all realise by now just how many people in Malta require the bleeding obvious to be spelt out for them.
Daphne and Ranier are the ones I wouldn’t miss. Any input by them is cultivating, even years later upon a reread.
Bocca’s style is apart from the rest, all his own and totally welcome.
I find Carm’s views solid, dependable and a societal necessity.
Lino has always had a set agenda and undisclosed interests.
Martin seems to go where the wind takes him, belatedly.
Ditto HP Baxxter. I can’t read Mark-Anthony any more now, since I won’t pay the subscription just for one Sunday opinion piece a week (no insult to Mr. Falzon is intended). It would be good if he posts his articles elsewhere as well.
Around two weeks ago, I decided to fill up a lazy summer afternoon by exploring the blogosphere of Malta. It is so dull and full of egomaniacs.
These bloggers all cross-reference each other, they advertise each others’ blogs by adding a link at the bottom of their blog, and interview each other. What a bore.
For some unknown reason they think that they are the intellectuals of Malta. In a nutshell, I realized that I did not miss anything out there so far by sticking to this blog.
Well I’m glad someone agrees with me.
The problem with Maltese columnists is that they are uninteresting people leading uninteresting lives, who’ve lived and worked in malta all their lives. So they write about uninteresting things.
Columnists should give us new insight. The handful who do write about stuff outside Malta don’t quite cut it.
So you write that we “should do something about Syria”. Tell me what should be done, by whom, when, where. Tell me who’s fighting whom, give me the lie of the land. Run me through different scenarios. What if we de invade? What if we don’t. And that sort of thing.
Again, you write the EU should “something about the economic crisis”? What, exactly? How? What caused the crisis? What is the endgame?
It’s either that, or writing at the microcosm level, in an engaging way. Find some debauched chap who’s been around and give him a weekly column. But no Maltese paper will ever have its Sebastian Horsley.
We need one of two things: experts or interesting people, both writing in an engaging manner.
I remember when Matthew Muscat Inglott had a few pieces in The Times. He’d been through P Company before he went to 4 Para, and had written about it. Damned fine stuff. Interesting. New. First-person. Engaging and all that.
It’s wall to wall Malta. Maltese politics. Maltese society. Malta Malta Malta. Southern Italian morality and Catholic hand-wringing everywhere. “We should do something about Syria / the economy / handicapped people / birds / horses / children / battered women / our youth / the education system.” But it’s never something interesting, or out of the ordinary. Or radical. Something that makes interesting reading.
I’m actually surprised that any of Malta’s papers kept Daphne. Is there a niche market for her sort of writing? Or is there a wider market, whose existence the editors just won’t admit?
And here’s Martin Scicluna, mixing apples and oranges but the conclusion is very much enlightening, hopefully in his regard too.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130730/opinion/The-accidental-diplomat.480074
There went Lynne Zahra’s stand against the tide of racism. Sounds like she was whopper-whipped to back down.
Perhaps our cultural guru can look up a drug colloquially called ‘Bath Salts’. It is perfectly legal and the ingredients can be slightly changed whenever necessary so as to escape the long arms of the law.
It is destroying people’s lives and is completely legal thus making it cheaper and more accessible than heroin etc. It is used by an increasing number of people due to its availability. There are countless videos on youtube that he may be able to take a look at. Try explaining to the parents of those children, or the homeless man whose face was eaten off by a man on bath salts, that legalisation is the answer.
‘because they’ve got a head start in the market already and control all the plantations’, yes but they cannot control back gardens and allotments! Anyone will be able to buy seed on the internet and grow his own plants. I am sure these barons will soon lose their monopoly once drugs are decriminalised.
I am still undecided about the decriminalization of drugs.
Try growing coca in a northern climate. Or opium poppy. Or tobacco for that matter.
Afghanistan IS a northern climate
No it isn’t. It’s Central Asian. Summers are hot and dry.
Depends where… it’s a large country… Besides with global warming northern climates in Europe aren’t what they used to be.
More rubbish thinking. The reason we don’t grow our own food is that it’s more expensive than buying it. That’s aside from the fact that you can eat a tomato straight off the plant, but drugs have be processed before being consumed.
Decriminalisation argues that the place of addicts is in rehab and not in jail. But that’s not the end result, is it? Addicts need help, yes. That means they need more help, not more addiction. Decriminalisation doesn’t mean rehabilitation will be automatic. The only way that could work is if drug possession remains a criminal offence but a jail sentence could be commuted to joining a rehabilitation programme.
I was only referring to plants that grow in Malta and for personal use. A few people were caught by the police growing cannabis.
Ah now you should have said so.
The problem here is that growing weed is just like growing daffodils or petunias – too much bloody trouble, when you can buy them off a professional outfit. You’d need an not inexpensive greenhouse kit to grow weed with any appreciable THC content. Sure, the stuff can be grown in fields, but smoking it would be like inhaling the fumes from your burning pants (and weed was used, once upon a time, to make yarn).
So you’ll go looking for some better-quality processed stuff from your high street pharmacy. Which will have bought the stuff in bulk. From some drug baron with plantations in Morocco and Pakistan. Who’s now floated his totally legit multinational on the stock market and is making gadzillions more, without the police bothering him.
And we’re back to where we started. The user beholden to a drug baron.
If they legalise weed, they’ll have to legalise snus outside Sweden. Do you really want John Dalli getting any richer? Think on that for a moment.
Cannabis-growing policemen? That’s all we need.
Some of the people you’re talking about weren’t growing cannabis for personal use, hence their conviction.
You’d be surprised at just how many people grow the stuff (female plant) and process it for own use, in a basement, in sealed greenhouses designed for cellar used, with grow lights and extractor fans etc to control the stink….The ‘harvest’ is enhanced or pure. So many variations… for what really?
I’d hate to think of a world where people were dependent on stuff that makes every item they own and every nook and cranny of their living quarters stink.
The problem is that it’s so available and depending on the variation, cheap, that talk about making it legal or not is a bit of a laugh.
When people cease to respect others, what’s the use of asking them to respect themselves?
Spoken like the pampered git he is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWy51DGdp1k
Legal in the US, the 38 year old who chomped half a man’s face was on a high. 17 year olds cooking their brains, entering schizoid paranoia for life.
Best title of the year award goes to you for once addressing him as dak il-Pufta bic-Coff.
[Daphne – Oh you’re mistaken. That’s not what I said about him; that’s what I reported as being said by others whose political admiration he thinks he has. I don’t think or speak in terms of ‘pufti’.]
“The only reason trade in illegal drugs is not legalised, he says, is because there are too many vested interests and too many people are making too much money”.
Erm, no. Some of these drugs are also very very very bad for you. In simple terms (which I believe it what’s needed here), many of us don’t want to send our kids out with some pocket money for a packet of polo mints and have them decide they’d rather give the golden brown a go instead, just for today likes, easy as that.
But of course, it’s all about money with people like KZT so they start to forget that decisions can be or may ever have been based on other significant criteria. What a sad, stupid person, really, I’d rather prop a barbie doll up and discuss current affairs with that.
Catherine, I would assume that in the unlikely event that drugs would be legalised, I would still presume it would be illegal to sell them to minors.
However, considering the harmful effects and addictive properties, it would clearly be a very bad idea, especially in the case of hard drugs.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona is actually misquoting AD and Giovanni Bonello. Neither of them is in favour of legalising drugs.
He’s confusing decriminalisation with legalisation – a common mistake.
Next week, Kenneth tries his hand at the constitution and proposes a transcript of the British one.
As I skimmed his column Id thought, what the hell does Kenneth Zammit Tabona know about drugs, junkies and pushers. He really should stick to painting his cartoons.
Just imagine what it would be like if every time you wanted a drink or a cigarette, you had to get involved with the criminal underworld and then you were never sure what type of alcohol or tobacco you were being sold?
Alcohol and nicotine are controlled drugs and people do die of complications from them.
[Daphne – A false argument. More would die if they are legalised, just as more people have died from the cigarettes to which they have become addicted because they are legal. The comparison to alcohol is doubly false. Most smokers are addicts. Most people who drink the occasional glass of wine or whisky are most certainly not. You do not have an occasional fix of heroin in the way you would an occasional glass of wine.]
There is a tendency to demonise all drugs except prescribed ones. Lumping all classes of illegal drugs together is not going to help in demistyfying the myths and old wives tales.
Some smokers give up and not all drinkers become alcoholics. Sometimes addiction has more to do with one’s personality than the drug itself.
It’s not so simple.
First of all, look up Portugal’s success story with drug decriminalisation: Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal a Success, Says Report – TIME
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
[Daphne – Portugal did not legalise the trafficking of drugs, which is what we are discussing here. It decriminalised possession for personal use, which is what Giovanni Bonello, in his law reform duties, has just recommended for Malta. The two things are not the same. Decriminalisation of possession for personal use is a victim-protection measure. Making trafficking legal is a whole other ball-game and no country has done that since opium ceased to be a freely-trade commodity more than a century ago.]
And to understand how making drugs illegal creates a black market and empowers drug lords, you only need to look at how the prohibition on alcohol in 1920s US resulted in the rise of the mafia in the country, including the infamous Al Capone.
[Daphne – That argument is hackneyed and besides, it is a false comparison. A more accurate comparison of what free and legal trade in addictive drugs will do is to tobacco cigarettes: an absolute disaster, and the consequences with heroin and cocaine will be much worse.]
And here you have it from the horse’s mouth. Mexican Drug Lord Officially Thanks American Lawmakers For Keeping Drugs Illegal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/mexican-drug-lord-officia_b_179596.html
[Daphne – That’s called reverse psychology.]
Don’t tell me this is not an indoctrinated brain. I cannot spot one single pristine thought. This is regurgitated bullshit all the way. And yet what MojoMalti wrote is kindergarten criminology. I can’t blame him. You can’t explain calculus to someone who’s been taught that 1 + 1 = 11.
Imagine trying to explain WHY prohibition still exists. Too esoteric for the brain-dead. There are three whole levels above kindergarten, you see.
[Daphne – Stop it, Kevin. It’s possible to debate matters without using that tone.]
I had tried to, Daphne, remember? The above explains why I will not bother again.
You are doing a huge disservice to society as it is, don’t add to the misery caused by the ‘war on drugs’. Let Kenneth do his bit. After all, everyone knows you despise him and everyone knows WHY.
[Daphne – I don’t despise him at all. I would be the first to help him if he needed it. We go back a long way. You don’t know ‘everyone’ so you can’t possibly know what everyone knows.
‘You are doing a huge disservice to society’ – that was actually you and your wife Sharon, trying to deny us all an EU passport and EU membership, something that it is impossible to either forgive or forget, and you still persist in error. If you think heroin and cocaine are so great, why don’t you encourage your sons to take them? Or take them yourself? Your wife’s friends need no such encouragement for the latter.]
Erm, in calculus 1+1 can be anything but 2.
At least I’m never libellous, Daphne. There are acquaintances and there are friends. Stop shooting from the hip.
[Daphne – I’m not either, Kevin. I have no doubt your wife isn’t into that kind of thing. She doesn’t strike me as the sort. As for some of the people she hangs around with and is photographed with, that’s another story entirely. None of us can be blamed for our friends’ (or acquaintances’) habits, but then again…]
1+1=3 without a condom.
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to imply that legalising all drugs is the solution. I just wanted to say that the matter is more complex than we’d like to think and that there are likely to be benefits to be considered along with the negatives.
Regarding cigarettes, you have to qualify the words ‘absolute disaster’ because it could be very much worse if cigarettes were illegal. Unbranded black market cigarettes could be much more dangerous than the ones we know because (for example) there is no telling what makers could cut their tobacco with to make the cigarettes more enjoyable, addictive or what have you.
You could call alcohol an absolute disaster too because it also destroys many lives, but bootleg alcohol is a potentially much more dangerous thing and many people do in fact die in countries like India and China from cheap alcohol that is either cut with poisonous alcohols or not manufactured to appropriate standards.
And, of course, a lot of deaths from drugs like heroin or cocaine are due to variable purity leading to an overdose, so being able to buy stuff of known quality from a chemist is another obvious advantage. You’ll hear it often said that in the US, it is easier for underage youth to buy marijuana and other drugs than beer, simply because street corner pushers don’t ask to see your ID. And supermarket staff don’t try to upsell you to harder stuff like liquor when you’re buying a bottle of wine, but drug pushers do that all the time.
The bottom line is that when something is legal, it can be regulated to a greater or lesser degree, while illegal stuff is one big free for all.
[Daphne – No, Mojo, the bottom line is that when something is legal, it has society’s tacit approval and the law’s outright approval. And that makes it entirely acceptable for people to go out, buy it and use it. THIS is the bottom line: with legalisation of heroin and cocaine increase consumption by widening and faciitating availability and making their use more acceptable? The answer is yes. I repeat: look at cigarettes. They’re killers, but half the country is addicted because they’re legal and have society’s approval.]
Again, I know I am not informed enough to form a definite opinion either way. I’m just debating for the least-favoured position here.
And to think that he convinced other enlightened people to vote Labour.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona has no logic; zero, none, zilch.
He starts at one point and immediately goes off on a tangent without ever bothering to come back to his main point, when he has one.
Take his article about the British monarchy. First he told us to thank God it’s a boy and then, after just two paragraphs, he gave up trying to argue in favour of kings and spent most of the rest of the article telling us how wonderful British queens have been.
By the end of the article, he had stopped writing about the gender of the royal and started writing about the relevance of the royal family.
His articles are a bunch of jumbled thoughts put together. I read them because I find his lack of logic weirdly fascinating.
You just need to look at what happened when Switzerland legalised hard drugs in the early nineties. It led to the closure of the infamous Zurich Needle Park, which became the mecca of European heroin addicts.
If you don’t like what he is writing, that’s fine. If you disagree with his arguments, that’s fine as well. However, to imply that he should not be able to voice his opinion (ie there are 2 requirements for being able to publish an article, he fails on (at least) one score) is not on.
[Daphne – You are confusing issues. Everybody is free to voice an opinion, but writing a newspaper column is a job. Therefore it has to be done professionally, viz. write well and engagingly, and know what you are talking about. Mr Zammit Tabona is not voicing his opinion around the dinner-table here.]
The legalisation of drugs is complex, and cannot be seen in a national context only. If one country legalise drugs, it may import other countries’ problems. If legalisation is to work (and I am not sure it would), there would have to be an international arrangement to do so in place.
From the comments under your article it seems that a lot of people would be happier if KZT stopped writing. I would suggest that they stop reading him instead if he annoys them so much.
[Daphne – Again, you confuse issues. It is not Kenneth Zammit Tabona’s politics which annoy readers so much as his amateur approach to writing that column. Much better is expected of a columnist for a national newspaper, who is paid for his services.]