I was just referring to something we’d discussed years ago on this blog. The Maltese seem unable to have a relationship, even in a professional environment, that’s anything other than erotic or condescending/grovelling.

I’ve seen it happen to me, viz. women will come over all flirtatious and then turn vitriolic when I give them the old Baxxter stiff upper lip at the office.

Thank God he didn’t rape a cat.

I might have misunderstood what you are saying, Baxxter, but If truth be told the office mating ritual is not necessarily limited to Malta.

Given the distances, it is quite common for couples abroad to meet at work and whilst it can be frowned upon in a number of the larger institutions, it does not by definition make it sordid.

In the same way that people meet at university, in large cities, meeting people at work tends to be a given, as long as it is not in your face or have repercussions if things go wrong, which it can and I am sure in a number of cases does.

This case however, is far removed from a work-related romance. A teacher/pupil relationship is a no-no everywhere with the teacher, rightly so, being fired if there is so much as a shadow of doubt as to their behaviour vis a vis their pupils.

I do agree with you however, in terms of the pseudo Maltese feminists comments. The number of women working is immaterial, if women will allow themselves to be ‘taken advantage’ of. The reality is that in the work place the sex of the person should be secondary to the work ethics of each individual person

And yes, our law should be more sophisticated so as to give harsher sentences the larger the age gap. Two people of 18 and 17 should be not be punished in the same way as, say, a 60 year old and a 14 year old. The 18+/- works for things like voting and driving, but when it comes to punishment for crimes, more sophistication is required.

It doesn’t escape me that the theatre group/clique that Tanti was part of very much seems to be a boys’ club. And of course a boys’ club will always stick up for one of its own.

Most of his defenders seem to be the usual poseur-intellectual types, nerdy and barely capable of talking to or about women with a modicum of respect.

They bang on about being anti-establishment and ‘sticking it to the man’, yet when an incident like this occurs, there’s barely a shred of moral decency to be found, and they sound exactly like those shrill right wingers you see on Fox News in the States.

The appropriate term is rapacious.