Oh, yes of course, that too, Catherine – at the time many Sicilian men also used to come to Malta looking for one night stands, knowing full well that those fools would never disappoint them.

Others entering shops with hardly any clothing on, others eating in restaurants with their swimsuits soaking, other mocking locals, others parking everywhere they feel like. This is Malta. These are the Maltese.

So that’s how Lorna Saliba explains our behaviour, eh? Typically Mediterranean, one of a kind, loud and hypocritically Catholic. And that should include (besides the Italians) the Spanish, French, Greek, Tunisians, etc.

I’ve met and observed a lot of these people’s behaviour in Malta and I still feel the Maltese (whether in Malta or abroad), generally speaking, behave far worse.

It is perhaps a question of numbers. Malta being so tiny you would expect to meet such coarse behaviour only very occasionally. But we know (why is it so hard to admit it in public?) that this is not the case, particularly when we’re in a group, even a small one.

You need not be a sociologist or anything of the sort to notice that too many of us act and behave like a bunch of immature adult teenagers all out to impress their peers as well as outsiders. This happens every so often not only abroad but also in Malta, on our streets, the buses, at the beach, etc.

Lorna Saliba says we’re hypocritical Catholics because we indulge in blasphemy and all sorts of obscenities. Those are merely the symptoms not the cause of our coarse, uneducated, sub-cultural behaviour.

Our hypocrisy lies somewhere else and that’s because we’re unprincipled, dishonest opportunists. We don’t know the meaning of tolerance and compromise except where it touches our pockets. So we become macho, arrogant and bullish to achieve our egotistic aims.

Talking of pockets, this is the most absurd, superficial statement in this comment, namely that prosperity has made us what we are. I have lived long enough to notice that in previous days prosperous people were the ones we looked up to for their behaviour, education and culture. Even those of us who came from a working-class background were generally raised to emulate their behaviour and possibly their education and culture.

From a re-reading of our recent past (since WWII) it seems to me that our malaise stems from our political history where some of our leaders, indeed their whole party organisation, projected the image that arguments, debates, negotiations don’t lead anywhere and therefore only physical might is successful, indeed right. So right in fact, that by making the people happy with their ‘prosperity’ you can ride roughshod on ‘other’ people’s rights.

How’s that for a hypocritical (doublespeak), dishonest and opportunistic attitude translating itself into coarse, uneducated and sub-cultural behaviour?

They were very conspicuous in the otherwise silent marina and were obviously silenced by the marina management. So it seems the Maltese creme de la creme invaded Sicily last week.

[Daphne – I have never owned or driven a white convertible car. Other than that, there is no such thing as ‘parking modestly’. You got the wrong girl, my dear.]

The PN has not gone in sleep mode, they are just reasoning that if such a great majority voted for these scoundrels, then let the Maltese enjoy them in peace.