“Topping the list for extravagance” is not a compliment
He and Pope Francis topped the list for extravagance with their gifts to the British prince. It’s easy to be generous with other people’s money.
I hate having to explain these things, but so much is ‘lost in translation’ between two countries speaking the same language that I feel I have to.
The Malta Independent reported yesterday on the gifts received from heads of government and heads of state on the occasion of the future British monarch’s (three people have to die or abdicate before he ascends to the throne) first birthday:
According to a list carried by the Sunday Times (UK), a gift from Malta’s prime minister tops the list for extravagance in the prince’s first year.
Dr Muscat is reported to have given the prince a silver breakfast set for the christening.
Nearly as extravagant is the present from Pope Francis – a precious stone globe with a cross.
President Barack Obama may have got away cheaper – he gave the prince a blanket.
Extravagance is not a compliment in British culture, and it is reflected in the language. ‘Extravagant’ is a pejorative term and not one of praise or admiration as it might be in, say, Italy. The only exception is when the word is used to describe the clothing of notable eccentrics. Eccentricity is highly prized and much admired, and eccentrics are permitted their extravagance in clothing and gestures, and even in their spending as long as it is on something like replanting an 18th-century garden in a mammoth and life-and-money-consuming project and not on bling.
In British culture, extravagance is associated with Latin-type people and Papists, extravagance of decoration, dress, behaviour, thinking and language being the notable and much-valued distinctions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
It is no coincidence that the Pope and the Maltese prime minister top that British list of extravagance. They don’t know that Malta’s is a Near-Eastern/Middle-Eastern culture and not a Latin one. Most people don’t until they have lived here long enough, and even many self-deluding Maltese themselves call themselves ‘Latins’.
Incidentally, isn’t that child the very image of his father at that age? No red-hair issues there.
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-07-22/news/pms-gift-of-silver-breakfast-set-to-prince-george-tops-the-list-5928747008/
Ħamallati tal-Labour. Probably the gifts of former PN Prime Ministers to the Pope were just as kitch and ħamalli – the baroque mentality and the usual arselicking of the Pontiff. Photos come in handy for election leaflets.
Maltese gifts to foreign potentates (mhux hekk huma?) usually take the form of slightly tacky dghajjes tal-latini in the ubiquitous and frankly rather annoying filigree. Museum of Modern Art my baroque arse.
Ray, you obviously jumped in without checking on your own comments first.
You should have researched first and you would have found that gifts to the Pontiffs by Nationalist governments were never ‘kitch and hamalli’ and Popes are respected, if no longer revered, but definitely there was never any ‘arslicking’ as you crudely inferred.
Photos with the Pope will outdo photos with Chinese Communist dictators, or with Gaddafi, any time.
Now we have video on demand, youtube, etc.,. I wish I could live another 20 years, but then if I did and watched Joey delivering one of his inept speeches, I would surely die laughing!
All gifts from Maltese Presidents and Prime Ministers to Pontiffs and HM The Queen were very tasteful when the PN were in government. They were often beautiful watercolours, or icons, or replicas.
Is this all because the prince’s mummy is the one chosen by the British Monarchy or protocol to ‘grace our fair Island’ as the representative of the Monarchy for the 50th Independence Anniversary Celebrations of ironically a Commonwealth Country? In my opinion Charming though she may be, we got rather a cheap deal there with just Her Grace the Duchess of Cambridge being sent over. For the 2005 CHOGM the reigning Queen herself came. We could at least have got the current heir to the throne, The Prince of Wales this time round.
Her Majesty will be in Malta for CHOGM 2015. I had it from someone who knows someone who knows her butler.
The Queen will be 10 years older in 2015.
The Duchess of Cambridge is HRH. Her Grace is reserved for non-royal duchesses.
Sir or Madam
HM The Queen was born in 1926; she will be well over 85 in 2015.
A couple of years back, a well-documented and publicised decision was taken that all foreign trips will be carried out by other members of the Royal Family, to preserve her energy and well-being.
I would not be very much surprised if HM were to come to Malta on a Royal Visit prior to CHOGM as Queen Elizabeth has expressed a wish to visit Villa Guardamangia again.
The residence used by Lord and Lady Mountbatten, and then TRH The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (Princess Elizabeth was not Queen, yet), is in a very sorry state. I should recommend that HM Government buy it from the Maltese owners and use it for a formal purpose.
The ginger one turned out looking very much like his grandfather at that age, so no red-hair issues there either.
I mean the royal ginger, not the republican one.
And what’s with the eight-pointed cross lapel pin? Is Muscat a Knight of St John or what? If the Maltese PM really wants to wear a lapel pin it should be a Maltese flag. Some secular republican, he is.
More suitable would have bee a white Labour Taghhom ilkoll flag. The colour of surrender white as it may does not suit him whose tongue never gives up fibbing.
Mr Baxxter
I should suspect that the ‘buttonniere’ (or ‘rosette’) is in fact the Maltese ‘Companion of the Order of Merit’ (‘KOM’). The Maltese republic has ridiculously enough usurped the insignia of the Order of St. John (dit ‘de Malte’).
A genuine SMOM or Venerable Order of St John rosette would be black not blue and red (the GC on our flag has a blue border or ‘tincture’ around it as in heraldry and vexillology, ‘silver’ cannot stand on ‘silver’).
Fenech Adami, de Marco and so on, have all worn it since 1990.
That’s not a boutonnière but a lapel pin.
If it is indeed the “mess dress” version of the KOM medal, then please take out the civil servant who came up with this blasphemy, and shoot them. If you haven’t got a gun, just club them to death. Medals are medals. There are miniature versions that you can wear with mess dress, and ribbons that you can wear when you’re not wearing the medals. But a lapel pin is just peasants trying to play at running a real country.
P.S. I know exactly what a SMOM rosette looks like. Sarcasm, my dear Conservative.
Rigal ta’ cacu.
” They don’t know that Malta’s is a Near-Eastern/Middle-Eastern culture and not a Latin one.”
As I read this post the salient thought was that this type of extravagance is modern Middle Eastern “type”: An overflow to try and compensate for the backwater effect.
Not in the style of the opulence of old either.
As to the Middle Eastern reference, even the Middle Eastern equivalent has adjusted to a new balance and updated to refined taste and aesthetics.
‘Silver BREAKFAST set’ ! Dan bis-serjeta?
So as he’ll be better able to smell the coffee.
Please, please for the love of God stop using that picture of Joseph Muscat! It’s been giving me nightmares. His face looks like a bag of spanners. Either that or he’s been chewing a wasp.
The pope’s gift sent a clear message rooted in Catholic social teaching, an image of the kingship of Christ (an orb surmounted by a cross), with the insinuation (reminder?) that it’s the historical bedrock of any anointed monarchy, whether they like it or not. That’s what I think the snide remarks are about, rather than a “papist” dig. After all, nobody beats homegrown High Church Anglicans when it comes to camp extravagance.