The Maltese referendum vote is interesting precisely because it affects European bird populations.

I’m currently studying in the UK and as I was walking through my department, an Austrian student jokingly yelled, “SO YOU WANT TO KEEP KILLING THE BIRDS, RIGHT?” in front of other academics.

I had to stop and explain how almost half the people who voted are actually against spring hunting.

It is the height of idiocy for a microstate to create regional boundaries. The result was to drive a wedge between the two islands, and to make the people of Gozo think that they are somehow different, not Maltese, that they can behave and think differently because they live in this fabled separate region.

Political decisions do determine personal choices. This is a case in point. Just like this “South” nonsense.

The demographics in Gozo do not help, but the politicians only made it worse.

Maltin u Ghawdxin indeed. We are Maltin, fullstop.

Voting in embassies wouldn’t solve the problem. Out of the Maltese living abroad, only a few live within easy commuting distance of a Maltese embassy.

I say postal or proxy voting, or internet voting.

This is 2015, not 1987.

There were no ‘farmers’ in Malta, Sampei. There were gabillotti, peasants eking out a living from scrappy fields carved out of land owned by others.

They certainly didn’t have the money for guns and ammunition. They slept on the ground on piles of straw, sometimes with their animals.

They trapped birds, not shot them.

Unfortunately, the word ‘farmer’ is used too loosely in Malta. It simply does not translate from the British context into the Maltese.

Also we can’t forget the priests’ revolt in the 1700s which had been fomenting for some time but boiled over when preists were stopped from hunting. Thus there is a bit of tradition involved.