And to make things even more ironic, the Carabinieri caught them outside one of the world’s most famous ‘roofless theatres’

Published: August 23, 2013 at 12:37pm

A comment posted beneath a Verona newspaper report about Maltese shoplifters surrounded by Carabinieri in that city:

i maltesi, quella brava gente che manco soccorre gli immigrati alla deriva in mare…




10 Comments Comment

  1. osservatore says:

    We had a reputation in Italy, particularly in Sicily (which was the more affordable destination by ferry for most people) in the bulk buying defecit days of Mintoff.

    Living in Italy, some 20 years after his heyday, I was to find out how Mintoff was still mentioned as though a politician from yesteryear. I could live with that and laugh it off saying that Mintoff was Mintoff.

    Muscat, who has instigated the recent wave of xenophobia and anti-migrant sentiment with his words and actions, has already been forgotten. Instead, it is us, the Maltese people, who are being tarred and feathered in his place.

    • Bubu says:

      On a holiday in Paris a few years ago, we were scouring those old picturesque shops nestled in the so-called passages between the boulevards and at one point we ended up chatting with one particular sexagenarian shop owner who was selling every variety of man’s belt.

      A soon as we explained to him in our broken French that we hailed from Malta, his immediate response was “Ahhh Mintoff!”, complete with clenched fist a-la Socialist International.

      Leave it to me to bump into a French Mintoffian in Paris!

    • Last Post says:

      You remind me of an incident I witnessed directly. It was the day it was known that Labour won the last election. I was at the airport restaurant, sitting close to a small group of Italian women when the argument drifted towards the noise of cars waving Labour banners.

      One of remarked that the names of our political parties are so confusing. She recalled reading that the Labour party, which styled itself as liberal and socialist, was in fact more ‘nationalist’ and xenophobic than the Nationalist Party which was open-minded and pro-EU.

      Not that this surprised me but I had passed through that same mental process myself a long time ago, immediately after the 1976 elections (with all the burning and total destruction of PN clubs) – for those that remember those terrifying days.

      • gil says:

        Yes, the PN is a Catholic Labour party and the PL could possibly be deemed a National Socialist party, or at best a Rightist party although both have factions in either directions of the political spectrum within the party.

        It is very confusing for foreigners who don’t know that the predecessor party of the former were originally pro-Italian in the sense of preserving Malta’s Italianate culture whilst that of the latter was founded on the urging of the British as a pro-Imperial party that would try to earn the coloniser some lackeys. It sure worked. They had a similar effect on Malta as the Orangemen did in Northern Ireland.

  2. TinaB says:

    Che vergogna.

  3. Critical says:

    Only yesterday, on Times of Malta, in the comments relating to the airport hold-up article, some readers wrote about increased crime being the result of migration. But of course, increased crime has nothing to do with the diligent, hard-working, respectable, righteous and upright Maltese people.

  4. David says:

    A senior Maltese official recently stated that crime increases in Malta in summer owing to the increase in the population since there are many foreigners in Malta. In italy immigrants increase the crime rate.

  5. Joe Fenech says:

    The Arena di Verona was not built in 2013 and neither was it built to serve the same purpose as the Valletta Tennis Court.

  6. Joe Fenech says:

    What irritated me in this whole roofless theatre / parliament business is the way most people focused on the wrong issue. Rather than saying “hey, we needed more cash for these projects to make them fully functioning” they went on about Valletta Baroque City and mixture of architecture which only showed how poor their basic geography and general knowledge is.

    Have people ever seen these (‘m just sticking to Paris)? :

    http://www.chrisillusion.org/photo-1620684-008-colonnes-de-buren_jpg.html

    http://3rdeyedrops.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/the-louvre-pyramid/

    http://www.linternaute.com/savoir/grands-chantiers/06/diaporama/architecte/renzo-piano/12.shtml
    (the latter a kilometer or so from Notre Dame)

    http://www.paris-traveltips.com/pics/les-halles.jpg
    A mid-19th century construction with a 16th century Basilica (St Eustache) in the back drop.

Leave a Comment