He never banded about his long string of scientific pearls. But Joseph Muscat? He needs them.

He needs an ever-ending ego-trip, especially now that his credibility is in meltdown.

They are among the first things we learned in primary school.

They are the rudiments of the language.

The realm of perfection is complicated syntax and sophisticated vocabulary, not ‘who’ and ‘that’.

If you have to take advice from your computer, you have a problem.

It’s very simple: people are always ‘who’ and NEVER ‘that’ or ‘which’.

This is like Owen Bonnici’s inability to distinguish between much and many – ‘there are much children’

Having stated this, Muscat is not an ‘academic’ and any such use of the degrees is superfluous to say the least.

It all depends on context and country. If it’s some directory of academics, a business card or a CV, then yes, the degrees are included. If it’s a publication – none of the degrees are included.

If you were an academic, you would know that people are ‘who’ and not ‘that’.

I’m really curious to find out how this business began of referring to people as ‘that’.

‘A man that was walking along the road’ – no, ‘a man WHO was walking along the road’ but ‘a car THAT was driving along the road’.

It’s not you in particularly, Asclepius. It’s practically everybody now – and I’m just so tired of seeing it again and again and again, even in newspaper reports.

Would you find anyone in Germany or Austria that is really someone in his/her field, listing the whole alphabet behind his/her nsme? I am also an academic collaborating with European colleagues that are senior figures on their field, none of them would think of listing scores of degrees, usually listing one or two.

And MPs by default too.

So it’s stating the obvious.