A magistrate may recommend hospitalisation, but cannot order its enforcement.

No one can be forced into hospital unless certified by at least two doctors as being a danger to self or others – and ‘other’ means humans, not animals.

With all due respect, but after having lived and worked in the UK for several years, I came to the conclusion that in the Brits, tend to treat their pets better then their kids.

[Daphne – The most ill-treated children I have ever seen are Maltese. Why do you think so many Maltese adults are ignorant savages? Because they were brutalised as children. And it’s still going on today. I can’t bear to be around groups of Maltese parents and their children. I have to walk away.]

I think the press and none of us have the right to grill private people. But then, what should be done vis a vis the Erin Tanti case? Should it go unreported too? Or the cases where hard core criminality is involved?

Maybe this case is a tad different but recently I heard how the bishop of Gozo was talking about our very low birth rate and he said that there is more love for animals then for kids.

Really what has that to do with each other? Yourself dear Daphne, some times also compared the treatment of illegal immigrants to our love for animals.

I do not see any comparisons. Now I am sure that you also love animals as you mentioned a dog you have and the birds that come to your garden.

I remember that when Britain was our colonizer and the British more advanced then us (educationally and economically) the Maltese used to remark ‘they love their animals more then their children’.

[Daphne – It was the usual Maltese racist prejudice to say that the British loved animals but not their children. The reality is that the Maltese of the period treated their children horrifically badly, and many still do. Practically throughout the 20th century there was no notion of childhood in Malta – children were small adults and treated as such. There was savagery and beatings and widespread abuse. And school was thought completely unnecessary. You see a hangover of all of this still today.]

Gandhi said ‘Judge the progress of a nation and its people from their treatment of their animals’.

[Daphne – Gandhi achieved a great deal but in many respects was the most awful hypocrite. You should judge a nation by the way it treats its people. By that standard, Gandhi’s nation failed catastrophically to impress in his time and continues to do so today.]

I always also wondered why the Catholic Church never spoke in defence of animals.

That is present day Times of Malta for you. Mabel Strickland must be spinning in her grave.

Yes, people living with these patients suffer as well. I know since I had a very close member of my family who was diagnosed with this illness at a young age. She lived hell on earth, and worse is that twenty years ago this was a terrible stigma.

These patients, once diagnosed, were locked up in Mount Carmel Hospital, stuffed with pills and given shock treatment, only to become institutionalized for the rest of their lives.

Luckily nowadays there is awareness, so perhaps now people will leave him alone.