Try telling that to his dear starstruck brother who went all over the news at the time of Mintoff’s death, boasting about hiw well the great Dom could write in English.

Why not exhume his corpse and have what remains of it stuffed while we’re at it? The man’s dead, and not a moment too soon, and here we are still finding ways to keep him alive among us. I knew the Maltese were extreme masochists, but this just beats me. This is self-inflicted haunting.

Don’t know if that’s the first time it’s been written like that, but that is hilarious.

[Daphne – No, not at all. So much so that I was the one whose responsibility it was to collect his articles – from Helena Dalli in Gudja or wherever – and edit them, a task that was next to impossible because they were so very badly written, boring, meandering and pointless. This was in 1992, when I was the newspaper’s associate editor. Dom Mintoff couldn’t write to save his life, and his thought processes were barely coherent.]

Apart from what Daphne is saying up here, this car seems to have been in the hands of an enthusiast. I wonder if any parts have been replaced and whether, eventually, these have been replaced with originals (if not, the car is worthless).

And how many non-preventable illnesses are there? Very few. Or to put it in a rather more Christmassy way, there are thousands of decent citizens who value their dignity more than their wallet and who go through life paying for medical care through their own funds, while the bums, the junkies, the lardies, the slags, the scoundrels, the criminals and the scroungers get all the benefits.

Economic liberalism my tinselled arse. Twenty five years of PN, and Mintoffianism is as strong as ever. The previous lot just called it “ruh socjali”.

Meanwhile, the squeezed middle gets squeezed a bit more.

I don’t know how many Maltese live on social benefits, but one must always be careful not to stigmatize those who are one some kind of benefits because of illness or some misfortune. And by misfortune I don’t mean girls who go round the block having kids, or bums and junkies who choose to be idle.