I wonder what Astrid Vella is going to say about this
Published:
August 31, 2013 at 9:36am
She lives in a block of flats five metres away from that building, and has been objecting to any potential development for years.
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This must have been another of those pre-election promises, as I know for a fact that the ‘ family ‘ who own it voted Labour this time.
Maybe they’ll give her a flat to keep her quiet. Or maybe not.
Fancy that, she can hire herself.
Oh dear, imagine pumping concrete up to her floor after dark to have it set the next day.
A tower crane so close she gets to study the wiring diagram on the motor drive from her balcony.
Plasterers peeping into the FAA’s war rooms, erm, picture gallery.
Indians and their curry on a stove at lunchtime.
And those Eastern Europeans, an allegro of steel bars, chasers and safety boots stomping away on the scaffolding.
That’d be 7.00 in the morning, 6.30 in summer.
Kwazi nithassarha.
Such a vivid description.
I’m actually wiping away tears. Of laughter, of course.
Astrid voted Labour to get a change but unfortunately for her some of the Gasans who own that building also voted Labour, and unfortunately for her again, they carry far more clout. Money talks and bullsh*t walks. Issa hu gew fik, Astrid. You should have seen that coming.
Who owns this property?
[Daphne – The Gasans bought it yonks ago.]
What a shame! We could have put our priceless tapestries in there or converted it into a house of parliament or have a ‘roofed’ theatre to compliment our ‘roofless’ one.
Astrid is now busy protecting the trees.
Who cares about historic buildings in Sliema anymore?
No, she’s protecting tree stumps.
It’s all a facade.
Maybe if they can put a couple of bushy trees in front of it, they can get away with pulling it down and replace it with a brick and glass structure.
Which historic buildings? Those were the days that were. We were so proud of our town then.
“Iss, it’s not fair ! I too voted PL.”
http://www.wnol.info/westminsters-greatest-alumni-sir-robert-bellinger-vs-paul-xuereb/
Note the comment from Astrid Vella at the end of the article.
She claims that in the early eighties she was a new graduate from the Royal University of Malta. Could that be true? What was her degree?
[Daphne – Yes, it’s true, but late 70s, not early 80s, unless she went to university late. She’s around 55. Her degree was in English (3 years). There was no BA degree in the early 1980s.]
I knew Astrid both at sixth form, at St Aloysius College and at university. She would have to be around 55 years old as she was a year behind me both in sixth form and university.
She graduated in 1980 with a BA in English but the university was no longer called the Royal University of Malta.
My first year, in 1977, the name had not changed.
However, in 1978, with the government lock-out of hospital doctors and the repercussions that followed, Mintoff decided to eliminate the “Royal” and renamed it simply The University of Malta.
You’re a year off, Linda/Pier. Astrid is almost exactly my age: 54 – though what that’s got to do with the price of eggs is beyond me.
I don’t see how “Edgar” – or anybody – can assume to know how she voted.
As for Uni, if I’m not mistaken, she had to pay her way through her course herself, so as to avoid becoming a student-worker with a useless degree. And her family’s financial situation at the time was anything but rosy.
And no, Daph, she did not go to Uni late at all.
[Daphne – Nobody can assume to know how Astrid Vella voted, but reasonable deductions can be made on the copious available evidence over several years.
She couldn’t possibly have paid her way through her course because there were no university fees at the time.
Almost nobody’s financial situation was rosy then. With few exceptions, everyone was pretty much in the same boat.
Becoming a student-worker was not an option; it was compulsory. At least it was in my time, which was the 1980s. Maybe it was optional in hers, the late 1970s.
She graduated in 1980, so no, she did not go to university late: born 1959 means going to university in 1977 for three years, leaving in 1980. My suggestion that she might have gone to university late was made in response to somebody who quoted her as saying that she graduated ‘in the early 1980s’, which could be anything up to 1984. To me, 1980 is 1980, not ‘the early 1980s’.
Presumably, Astrid Vella knows when she graduated so she should have said so, but unfortunately some women panic as they grow older and try all sorts of tricks to knock four years off their age. She won’t thank you for telling the world that she’s 54.]
“You’re a year off, Linda/Pier. Astrid is almost exactly my age: 54 – though what that’s got to do with the price of eggs is beyond me.”
Chris, I said,”around 55 years old,” which means she could be 54 or 55 years old, somewhere in that general ballpark. As to, “what that’s got to do with the price of eggs.” I was trying to make the same point that you did, that if she is 54/55 years old and graduated in 1980, she did not go to university late. I am not a great fan of Astrid, but I do believe in giving credit where credit is due.
I was at university in 1977,1978 and 1979 and the student-worker scheme had not been implemented yet. It may have started in 1980 but I had left Malta by then.
[Daphne – The start of the student-worker scheme coincided (roughly) with my sixth-form days. We left sixth-form in 1982, and my friends were among the first student-workers. The wrecking of the former system is also the reason I didn’t go to university then: I didn’t want to become a lawyer or a teacher or study ‘public administration’, while finding a sponsor, working six months on and off. There was no bachelor of arts degree by then, and there wasn’t for the next six years until Labour was voted out in 1987. The year makes sense, because the Labour government was re-elected (ha) in late 1981, so I imagine that the crazier student-worker changes were made post- and not pre-election. That is, in fact, the reason why those born, like me, in 1964, 1965 and 1966 were known for years as Generation X, the lost generation. We got hit directly by the worst of it, especially the 1964-ers, who left sixth-form a few months after the 1981 election and faced the most desperate situation of a wrecked university with multiple barriers to entry and a completely stagnant job market with sky-high unemployment.]
It was in the year 1978, that all the changes that would affect the university and the private schools for almost the next decade began. The catalyst was the government lock-out of the hospital doctors, which had a domino effect, that led to a mass exodus of lecturers and university students, particularly the fourth- year medical students that year, and the second-year medical students, the following year.
Mintoff, in his characteristic vindicative and vengeful way, decided to destroy education as we knew it and the rest is history.
University tuition was free in the late 70s, but we had to pay for our books and any other expenses that our education incurred. I too was raised by a single mother and made money to help pay for my expenses by giving chemistry private lessons to O level students.
A block away from this…
They ought to commission Piano to re interpret the Shard on that site. Squeak, squeak and amplified squeak.
Daphne – my first time here. I am always baffled re. your getting all first. Please give the ‘facts’ to your fans here.
1. When did the court rule in favour? Before the election.
2. ‘Fact’ is that ‘the family’ did NOT vote Labour but as historically, Nationalist.
And your ‘yonks ago’ does mean before most of your readers were born.
With this, I open and close my intervention.
In the 1980s I was professionally involved in countless attempts with the then PAPB to get building permits, not only for the ex-Naval Clinic but to construct a six-storey block on most of the triangular unbuilt plot, so it’s not fair to imply that a permit is being sought as if this application has anything to do with change of government.
“‘Fact’ is that ‘the family’ did NOT vote Labour but as historically, Nationalist”.
A family does not vote as one. It’s one vote per person, and everyone goes into the polling-booth alone.
Mrs Ganado, you don’t need to feel responsible for the way individuals in your extended or immediate family voted. What counts is that people know you didn’t vote Labour and that they also know what your political views are. You are not accountable for anyone else, and you must not feel that you are.
However, surely you must understand that others will see significance in the appointment of your brother to the Air Malta board, your niece’s daughter to the Stamp Advisory Board, her husband to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority board, and your nephew’s wife to the board of the Lotteries and Gaming Authority.
It is obvious that people are going to draw their own conclusions from the fact that one of your sisters campaigned openly for Louis Grech, another of your nephews spoke openly in favour of Labour throughout the campaign and afterwards silenced critical remarks about the government by saying ‘we have to give them a chance’, your son’s wife campaigned vociferously against the Nationalist Party in this last general election (and yes, we know how greatly this upset you), and your niece and her husband socialise regularly, as friends, with Elena nee Bagollu and her husband Edward Zammit Lewis.
None of this looks good, but it’s a free country, so expect people to think what they will.
“Gem Holdings is composed of the Tumas and Gasan groups and has partnered with German firm Siemens, the commodities trading arm of Azerbaijan’s State energy firm Socar and UK company Gasol to form Electro Gas Malta consortium. The consortium was yesterday chosen by Enemalta to build a gas-fired power plant and related gas-handling infrastructure.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131014/local/new-power-station-to-have-permanent-floating-gas-storage-depot.490222#.UluR_MsaySM
I know all about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, but our face is battered anyway, so I hope some major bazuzlu with a giant gut and a bull-neck builds a concrete monster [surely, “concrete angel”?, Ed.] right next to Astrid’s antimacassared drawing room. That’ll teach her to trust crooks with her vote.
And why not – Ghar il-Lembi Street looks like a slum anyway and has done since the 80s when Captain Ganado’s house was demolished and replaced by that hideous Alborada block of apartments and shops. I miss living in High Street but I’d never dream of living there now.
Astrid qisa riedet id-debba u hadet il-hmara taht dan il-Movument progressiv. Issa, ma sbieh il-jum ser ikollha tifkira sabieha tal-froga li ghenet fiha.
Daphne, for someone you claim doesn’t count, you sure give Astrid Vella a lot of importance. Who cares if she’s 54 or 55 or when she went to University?
[Daphne – When somebody’s comment requires a reply, and I am able to reply, then I generally do so. This website thrives on reciprocal feedback and that’s the way it’s going to stay as long as I can cope with the demands. It has nothing to do with Mrs Vella in particular.]
As regards voting tendencies, you’re all so busy concocting conspiracies that you don’t see what’s bleedin’ obvious, that someone who runs an environment group would vote AD!
[Daphne – Which amounts to electing Labour. The former AD leader himself, Michael Briguglio, knows this which is why he owned up to voting Labour directly, rather than voting AD, in 2008. And that’s also why this Labour government has treated those who campaigned against the Nationalist Party and said they would be voting AD – The Sunday Times columnists Claire Bonello and Michela Spiteri are two prominent examples – exactly like PN/Labour ‘switchers’ and Laburisti and acknowledged their services with a government appointment. ]
Especially since she often says her father was killed by Lorry Sant. She certainly wasn’t complimentary to Labour in that link posted above and hasn’t been given any of your iced buns when even Din l-Art Helwa’s Simone Mizzi got one.
[Daphne – I have known Astrid for many years intermittently in adulthood and the thing that always struck me about her, other than her truly mind-eroding voice, is her lack of true intelligence. I say this not to be critical, but as a factual observation because I wish to be civilised in my reply to your comment. People with no sympathy for the Labour Party, for whatever reason that may be, do nothing to accommodate it or be seen to be accommodating it, because they are simply not comfortable doing so.
This includes not going on Super One TV to accommodate Labour by participating in discussion programmes which an intelligent person knows for a fact have been planned, organised and executed purely to give Labour an advantage (that much should be obvious) and not voting AD when you are in your 40s or 50s and way too old to be wanting to be ‘different’. If you don’t approve of Labour, the only intelligent thing to do is to vote against it. A vote against Labour is not a vote for AD, or no vote, but a vote for its direct Opposition, the Nationalist Party. In the initial experimentation years of AD, that might not have been so obvious, but now it should be blindingly so. And I have absolutely no time for foolish people who treat the Labour Party’s television discussion programmes as though they are genuine. It’s Labour television, for heaven’s sake: it exists for one purpose only, to increase Labour’s voter-base.]
I’ve seen her in press conferences with that Cacopardo character, I’m sure that if she’s anyone’s secret agent, it’s AD’s.
If you want a PN government, you vote PN.
If you don’t want a Labour government, you vote PN.
If you vote AD instead of PN, you’re voting PL into government.
If you want a vote to go to AD but you don’t want a PL government, you can persuade a PL voter to vote AD instead.
The logic is simple.
Daphne, this has nothing to do with Astrid specifically. How many programmes can you remember on environment or MEPA on PBS or NET? Not a single one. After Xarabank covered every crass subject under the sun, they covered the same subjects again…and again until people were sick to their back teeth … but never a word about MEPA/environment because of course that would reflect badly on the PN. Any environmentalist who needed to get his message across had no choice but than to go on Super One – even Alan Deidun who was a PN candidate, and Vince Attard did, so why are you only lambasting Astrid? and don’t tell me it’s because of her lack of ‘true intelligence’…
Someone who read my comments here was in class with her like Linda & Chris above, and they told me that though she may be annoying, she is intelligent.They said she graduated ‘cum laude’, something that is not possible to do without ‘true intelligence’.
[Daphne – ‘Cum laude’ simply means ‘with honours’. It means you specialise in one subject instead of taking a general bachelors. Look, I am not interested in getting into a debate about a woman who has been setting my teeth on edge as long as I have known her, which is way, way before her sudden self-invention as a building specialist. The main problem is her voice, her self-focus and her neurotic predisposition to sink her teeth into irrelevances and obsess about them, whether it was a problem on the school-bus, a La Redoute catalogue she took door to door, or an article she wanted to write for me, and for which I paid in blood because she rang me 10 times a day about every little thing. I lived round the corner from her, and I am less than fascinated. Suffice it to say that when I saw her approach in the street, I crossed it, looking for something in my handbag. No, she is NOT intelligent. Believe me, I would know. Her singleminded fixation and lack of self-awareness are, as they always are in such people, the by-product of average to low intelligence. Unfortunately, I have found that people in Malta, as a general rule, are completely unable to assess intelligence based on a simple conversation. This is generally because they are not particularly intelligent themselves. The subject bores me. I’m sorry I brought it up on a slow day.]
This person – who won’t post here cos she’s a professional who doesnt want to be traced here – also said that when Minister Philip Muscat had gone to force all the BA students to switch to B Educ,Astrid was the only one who stood up to him and told him in front of the whole packed hall to “grow up” – just like she was the only one to heckle Joseph Muscat at the presentation where you spotted Miliza Micovic. My contact still remembers Astrid being rushed out of the hall before Muscat’s ‘handlers’ could get to her. That’s why Astrid did a BA when all others were doing B Educ,cos she refused to give in.
[Daphne – Your professional friend sounds unreal. Doesn’t want to be traced here? By whom, the CIA? There was no BEduc in Astrid’s time. That was my time. She is five years my senior. In the late 1970s there was a BA programme. It ended after she graduated. I am not impressed at her ‘heckling’ Muscat. She had a simple solution: don’t help him to power. But lacking intelligence, she thought she knew better. If Astrid had problems with Philip Muscat, the best person to discuss them with is his niece, the equally trying and chip-ridden failed newspaper columnist Josanne Cassar, her friend and associate.]
Love her or hate her, you have to admit that the woman sticks up for her principles and that’s what kills you, that when PN lost it’s principles she refused to go along with the pack, even if it meant being ostracised by people like you.
[Daphne – Rubbish. Principles my great aunt Sally. Ostracised by people like me? We were never friends. There was a sizeable age gap when we were growing up, and in adulthood we had nothing in common. Nothing has changed as a result of the FAA and her appearances on Super One, except that when I hear her voice on TV I can switch it off, which isn’t something you can do in a social setting.]
Oh and by the way, you still haven’t commented on why Astrid wasn’t given an ‘iced bun’ when every Labour supporter was and even Din l-Art Helwa’s Simone Mizzi. Says something doesn’t it? And don’t tell me that it’s because she’s not intelligent enough as that hasn’t stopped them appointing a bunch of duds! Obviously because Labour know she didn’t vote for them.
[Daphne – I was trying to avoid being rude, but if you MUST insist, then here’s your answer. I think that others find her just as grating and insufferable as I do and putting her on a board will be interpreted by her fellow board members as their punishment by the prime minister, when what they should be getting is a reward. So until they find something for her that involves no other person who has to suffer her – as they did with Franco Debono – she’s on ice. Men, in particular, are driven insane by the sound of her voice, and I don’t mean wild with desire. I know one man who (and he’s an environmentalist) had to fight down the urge to stand up and walk off during a live broadcast just to get away from that voice. Well, actually what he really wanted to do was leap out of his street and throttle her, but saying that isn’t politically correct, is it.]