Funny that – it’s exactly the example I used elsewhere: that girls and women are programmed to be suspicious of men (or anyone else, but men mainly for obvious reasons) who seek to pay for things for them, but men have no experience of other men wanting to buy them things, and so when they are in a position where it happens, they just see it as a free gift. I’ve never actually sat down and thought about it, but it’s true: men really do take certain things at face value when women don’t do so because of our different gender experience.

Bir-rispett kollu. Politics didn’t “plummet”. It was Dr Cassar himself who plunged head first into this undesirable situation.

He should have known better. And don’t give me any of that only six years in Parliament stuff. Even a thirteen-year-old girl knows that if a man showers her with gifts it’s being done to entice her.

Cannot agree more, well said.

A government minister accepts a bribe – for gift by a multi-millionaire is precisely that – and then, when he resigns his parliamentary seat after someone else reveals the whole story, we all gush at this magnificent display of honour and integrity. How about not mixing with the likes of Gaffarena in the first place? I don’t. A lot of us don’t. Because we’re not in the inner circle of the rich and powerful. So we’ve never ever met the man, and we never got any gifts from him.

Talk about the parable of the prodigal son.

Cassar resigned and that is the right thing. But to call it honourable and decent is overdoing it.

His position was untenable.

There aren’t any court proceedings or investigations.

Joe Cassar said that if this is what politics plummeted to, he doesn’t want to be part of it. I believe those words should be framed and displayed at Castille.

This is a lesson women learn at the outset of life in regard to what they let boys/men pay for, and what this means in terms of the relationship and what is expected in return, but I’m assuming that men don’t have this natural advantage when they reach a position of power and find that suddenly other men want to buy or pay for things for them.

When a man wants to pay for something for a woman she understands immediately that there is some kind of understanding involved, but men who receive similar offers just see a free gift or something for nothing.

And that is exactly how it should be.