If by “fathered” you mean “clinked test-tubes” then of course it’s obvious who you mean. HIM. The bloody eminence grise. The Nazzjonalist iktar ta’ veru min-Nazzjonalisti ta’ veru.

I’m not talking about Malta, Danika, and I am certainly not talking about Malta’s civil service.

Real competition is elsewhere – especially nowadays, unfortunately.

Are you sure about that, Daphne? Because last time I checked, it’s the academic part they are mostly interested in, that is, how many exams you took, how many conferences you attended, and how much boxes you’ve ticked on logbooks.

It doesn’t matter at all what experience is or how your manners are. If you have ever had an interview for a civil servant job, you’d know that, and I would guess that includes doctors together with teachers, social workers, pharmacists, nurses, physios, etc, etc.

It would be uber great if they really looked at manners and how you would do things, because then I doubt we’d have the same problems with regards people working in these so called ‘jobs with the government’.

Ghandu l-Oxford hi!

They are not taught by their parents, their school environment or Maltese social culture in general that competition on the wider horizon entails the things they dismiss – like the ability to speak and write well, communicate memorably, make conversation, have good manners, and so on.

You can have wonderful academic results but if you are competing against others with the same qualifications, the clincher at the interview (in both academia and the world outside) will be other things.

Maltese applicants are often surprised to be asked at these interviews about their interests, their views on current affairs, and so on. They say it ‘has nothing to do with it’. But it has everything to do with it. The interview panel is trying to find out how you speak and communicate, what sort of person you are. And when they ask you for a further ‘chat’ over lunch, it’s not because they are nice, but because they want to check out your manners because of what those manners say about you.

Also, purely at the examinations level,O-levels and A-levels are one thing but once you are out of that, it’s a whole different ball-game. Rather too many people think they will do well in life or at university because they did well in their O-levels.