I get your point, but that’s offical UNESCO data, using their definition.

My point is Malta has the worst literacy rate in the EU. The data is official, it’s published, and anyone can see it. Since 1987, Malta hasn’t shifted its ranking.

What would have happened if a Danish government began behaving like Malta’s? Well, exactly.

For almost 30 years I’ve been writing about Maltese people and Maltese society. Politicians right across the political spectrum, and their supporters, bashed me for it. But hang on, I was entirely correct. You don’t change a society for the better simply by giving it more money (materialism) and giving people technical training for a job – even university degrees are seen as technical requirements (not a real education).

I’m sick of saying it, and probably won’t bother repeating it again because clearly there is no point, but I’ve been around long enough to have the perspective to say this: Maltese people are as poorly educated and shallow in 2017 as they were in 1987. Younger people seem better educated because they know about trends and fashions, but they tend to have no depth at all. Their parents, God help them, are a complete write-off. This is right across the social spectrum. It is not a classist statement at all, because in fact the worst offenders are those at the top of the social ladder, because they are the ones who really have no excuse.

With ‘raw material’ like this, the result is inevitable, I’m afraid. The Nationalist Party created the veneer of European civilisation which it sustained for around 25 years, but it was just a veneer made up of laws and systems and administration. It failed to do the right things to change Maltese society for the better in non-materialistic ways.

Throwing money and the means to money at a society which never went through the European stages of enlightenment, industrial revolution, cultural evolution and social evolution was tantamount to introducing an isolated tribe to alcohol and gambling machines.

‘Shame on you’ – very original. Like an old lady at a card party.

Le. Biex johlok klima kerha bejnu u bejn Godfrey Farrugia. Muscat kattiv.

I like the riposte “Shame on you”. I didn’t know that JPO knew what shame was after the Mistra episode.