My memoirs state clearly who I am, my background, and my social and professional contacts both in Malta and abroad, including England, Libya, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, etc.

I was a teacher and a trade unionist for 20 years before I became a diplomat. As a diplomat, it was my duty to take note, and report on, local situations. I have seen and experienced riots both in Malta and abroad.

I have seen electoral results that mirror the same faults that we see in Malta. I have seen back-biting and social snobbery, crime, vindictiveness, as well as love and nobility in all countries.

I am experiencing them in the country where I live now, England.

The only difference is that in a small community like Malta the social effects, good or bad, are more likely to be felt than in a far larger community as is likely to be the case abroad.

Mr Saliba was a diplomat, Edward. I think it’s safe to say that he saw the better side of the Maltese civil service, and the better side of the Maltese in general. I wasn’t talking about education but general standards.

I would add that it is infinitely worse for those born post-1980. We were born IN the hamallocracy and atavism. Our parents at least had a civilised childhood, and were born into something larger than the self-obsessed speck of rock.

I am hamallu born and bred, and I never realised how bad it was until I turned sixteen and had to choose a path in life. Suddenly, all the avenues were blocked, including the social avenues. I ended up an outcast – unable to communicate with my hamalli and shunned by the professional classes because I wasn’t one of them.

But with foreigners I found I could connect. The barriers seemed to disappear. They would relate to me on a human level, and we could talk about things outside the confines of Malta.

So there must be something weird about the Maltese. There has to be. Arabic-speaking island micro-states aren’t the norm.

I would have to agree with Baxxter here. If you were brought up by professional people, a doctor, lawyer, etc, then it’s likely that you only ever experienced that environment.

Your parents probably told you how certain things are bad, put pressure on you to get your exams done, and valued education and a certain value system.

I am guilty of this too. I spent much of my childhood and teenage years thinking everyone cared about O-levels, but they don’t.

I’ll come across as terribly patronising, Mr Saliba, but I don’t think you have any idea what the real Malta is like. You probably spent your life among the more intelligent and sophisticated of the Maltese, so you saw the best of the them. You must have, or you wouldn’t be saying that other nations are not all that different. They are different, and the Maltese are an aberration.

I disagree. Boredom is not laziness. Some people really do want something to do but have nothing to do.

And it is boredom that can be what motivates people to get involved in something that may not be all that worthy.

When you have nothing else to do, kids and teenagers turn to some other sort of activity like getting friends together and building a home-made bomb for fun and letting it off in a field.

Running around in a park throwing stones at cats, and more importantly creating some sort of war against another group just so that they have something to do.

I mean no choice as in livelihood.

Well, by that same token, those who voted Labour may safely claim they had no choice either.

Bored people are not easily prompted to take an active role in what is of no interest to them.

Let’s stop talking of “the Maltese” as if we are an aberration of humanity. Yes, we have our faults, plenty of them, but I do not think that other nations are all that different.

You’re assuming that those who left had a choice.

I don’t wish to sound melodramatic and fulsome, but this blog is really all that’s left to us.

To some of us, it never was about parties, or even about politics. The War, such as it was, was a War Against Stupidity. And we lost.

Whoever was in power, the War went on regardless. When the Nationalist Party was in power, nothing changed on that score. Because in the end the thought processes never really changed. All that changed was that more and more people had more and more money, and a louder and louder voice. So now they’re everywhere. They dominate the cognitive space.

I despair. I do. We are living on the cusp of history. For the first time since Man stood upright, parents can no longer guarantee a better future for their children. That’s how bad it is. And yet here we are, oblivious to everything, doing politics as it was business as usual, and indulging in trivialities. Even worse, they are the trivialities of an island micro-state.

A few days ago some self-righteous wordsmith writing in the Malta Independent accused some us of us claiming we are superior to the rest. But we are. We are because we have turned our gaze outwards, and because we know there is a entire world outside these 300-odd square kilometres where history is being written.

If we’d stop discussing Malta for a moment, we could all be superior. I’ve never seen such a self-obsessed nation. Except perhaps Israel. But then, we have more in common than we like to think.