Early retirement schemes for dockyard workers announced:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080806/local/dockyard-early-retirement-schemes-launched.219703

Most dockyard workers find alternative jobs:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110821/local/Most-ex-drydocks-workers-find-alternative-jobs.381081

1,484 shipyard workers apply for early retirement:

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081001/local/1-484-shipyard-workers-apply-for-early-retirement.226949

337 who have left the drydocks did so because they have already found other jobs:

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2008-09-07/news/the-337-who-have-left-the-drydocks-have-found-work-212846/

There is much more coverage, should you wish to read up on the facts. Just Google ‘drydocks Malta early retirement schemes’.

Your reasoning is fallacious in a far more serious way, too. It was Prime Minister Mintoff who kept the entire workforce at the Drydocks on the state payroll even though they, and the docks themselves, became completely redundant on 1 April 1979, when Malta ceased to be a British naval base.

As a result, Mintoff had to turn to Muammar Gaddafi for money to meet the Drydocks payroll and loss of ship repair business, changing the course of Malta’s political destiny by tying it to Libya’s.

Those drydocks employees, thanks to Mintoff’s FAILURE to renegotiate the British military base contract (he tried, but over-reached, and they told him to keep his base and stick it up his wotsit) remained a burden on the Maltese taxpayer for the next 30 years, bleeding the country of hundreds of millions of liri and holding back development.

You should be blaming Mintoff and his attempt at touching the British for more rent (typical of that usurer’s son), as he was the one who created the disastrously problematic situation in the first place. The Nationalist governments which followed had to DEAL with the problem. They certainly did not create it.

Your perspective on history is a little short.

As for ‘Joe Tabone and the Avro liners’, I think this really shows where you are coming from. If you look into the background, you will see things that you, as a committed Laburist, would rather not know.

And I find it interesting that something that happened almost 30 years ago – yes, 30 years ago – is the only stick you can come up with to try to beat your political opponents.

I find Labour Party propaganda extremely dishonest, and the way you people swallow it hook, line and sinker astonishes me. I always wonder what it must have been like to grow up brainwashed in favour of either the Nationalist Party or the Labour Party, for people to end up this way.