The chief justice can sell them, but students can’t buy them on campus
A university students’ group has applied to the university senate and the rector for permission to set up a condom-vending machine on campus. It says it has done this after research which shows that just over 70 per cent of students want one.
Clearly, this is not about students’ access to condoms because you can buy them in supermarkets nowadays, thanks to the efficacy of the ex chief justice’s salesmen. Besides, nobody is going to having much sex on campus.
It is hard to imagine a less encouraging environment, except perhaps for one of those food-processing factories where industrial-strength disinfectant fills the air and everyone wears white coats and hairnets.
So no: it is not about condoms but about using condoms to make a statement. What I can’t understand is why an application should have to be made to the university senate for the installation of a vending machine.
Is this done, too, for those vending machines which drop down bars of chocolate and cans of Coke (or take your coins and give you nothing), or are condoms a special case? If there is no special requirement for a soft-drinks vending machine, then there is no special requirement for a condom vending machine, and this students’ group is just playing into the university senate’s hands by behaving as though there is.
I am quite sure that there is nothing in the university’s regulations which says that condom vending machines have to be approved by the senate. I can think of few situations which are riper for laughter and ridicule than the prospect of the senate at its debating-table, cups of tea to hand, discussing whether to permit the presence of condoms on campus or not.
These are the moments when I wish I didn’t write a newspaper column but skits for situation comedies on television instead.
Why don’t those students just go ahead and have the vending machine installed? I’d like to see the university senate send in its dull troops in blue shirts to have it forcibly removed, after scanning the regulations with a magnifying-glass to find some small-print clause which it thinks will strengthen its hand.
So few people in Malta seem to understand that you have to force situations sometimes, because sitting around like a goody-goody and going by the ‘rules’, particularly when those rules are probably fiction, will get you nowhere.
For example, some other newspaper people and I talked at one of those drinks parties the other evening about how the fiction of ‘sub judice’ – which dictated that there was to be no discussion in the media of ongoing trials – had disappeared altogether, after somebody forced the issue by discussing on-going trials in print.
I think it was me, with the full backing of my editor at the time.
I remember thinking how it didn’t make sense to slap a ban on discussion in the media of something that everyone was talking about anyway, and that there couldn’t possibly be a law which laid down that no trials were to be discussed in print or on air (or on the internet) before they had been concluded. In fact, there wasn’t. It was just a self-perpetuating fiction, handed down from one editor to another and encouraged by defence lawyers with rather too much to lose. They are still the only ones who protest, ever more weakly, about this.
As for the university senate and its fear of standards slipping if Durex is sold on campus – what can I say? You know, of course, what I’m going to say.
You can’t play the jolly old hypocrite and tell students that a machine which sells Durex on campus is a Bad Thing and Evil Too when they grew up with a chief justice who sold Durex to supplement his salary (and sundry income from cash-bribes, but we won’t go into that now).
Enough of this condom nonsense – I don’t know who’s being the silliest here: the senate with its objections or the students with their penchant for going by the book that may not even exist.
The drainage inspector knocks
I see that Dom Mintoff, who is progressing fast down the road to utter senility, if his recent appearances in court when I was there to observe him are anything to go by, has visited the Labour Party headquarters which were built by the man he hated enough to bring down his government out of spite.
Alfred Sant’s poodle has turned out instead to have been a viper in his nest – a viper, what’s more, whose self-advancement hinged entirely on Sant’s self-immolation.
I’m beginning to think now, with the benefit of that hindsight which Muscat finds so useful, whether Sant wasn’t aided and abetted on the road to self-destruction by those to whom he was particularly vulnerable and close.
I hope, too, that for the sake of the welcoming party at Labour HQ Mintoff’s current aides, such as they are, ensured that he took a bath before he went because the smell was odious when I had to sit across from him in court.
He insists on wearing that awful green waterproof ensemble with wellington boots, as though he might at any moment be prevailed upon to clean out somebody’s drains.
I thought briefly of emailing Marisa Micallef to ask whether she was with the welcoming party, but thought better of it. She’s too busy these days pimping for Joseph Muscat – I don’t mean sexually, of course, but going about town asking NQLUs with the N missing whether they would like to meet him, presumably because he’s incapable of making his own friends.
Really, I wonder what life was like for Muscat in the school playground. It must have been a peculiar sort of hell.
Give him some Prozac and take him to jail
Is the former chief justice still suffering from depression?
I hear from my spies at Mount Carmel (not Anthony Grech Sant, I hasten to add) that he has taken to walking up and down the corridors muttering the rosary prayers, beads in hand. Next step, beatification –after all, what was good enough for Augustine is surely good enough for him.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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I am going off on a tangent here!
Daphne, you were on a wild goose chase last year.
If you cannot source your geese in Malta and you have friends visiting London, they can get you your geese at Aldi or Lidl, they only cost UK £16.
About the condom machine: Have the students cleared their proposal with the mutawa yet? What about the guy who remonstrated piously with the Rector about the Realta story – has he given his nihil obstat yet or is he too passionately enraptured with his prayers and ejaculations? Perhaps after the Sette Giugno, the Durex revolution will go down in history as the second uprising in which Maltese students exhibited publicly what they’re made of. Let’s wait for the Senate’s prophylactic decision. The Senate, composed of many experienced members, mostly male, is an upright organ of the university and all its emissions will be eagerly imbibed, especially by female students. I bet the thrust of the Senate’s seminal decision will be of climactic importance to the student population. Such sticky matters require prolonged savouring before answers are banged together: answers are not just dished out like creampies by senatorial members. I suspect that canalizing their desires to the Senate was premature and the students should have exercised control for longer as this would have given more satisfaction to both sides – if the Senate decides against, the Rector will be impotent to do anything now. But dialogue and civilized exchanges remain of the essence – frequent intercourse between the Senate and the student body is to be commended.
Students should control their impetuosity. They should preserve their virtue till their wedding night. Sex, especially in the case of males, diminishes the intellectual faculties, may result in scoliosis of the spine, alopecia and even blindness. It will distract them from their studies and involve memory-loss for, as the Maltese proverb goes, “Meta r-ras iz-zghira tkun fil-glorja, il-kbira titlef il-memorja”.
Maybe they should sell those boxers on campus instead of condoms: http://www.webundies.com/images/smmr103.jpg
These ‘chastity pants’ will always remind the poor male students that premarital sex could turn them into some blind, bald and crooked Mr Magoo.
My pun detector just blew a fuse
“Sex, especially in the case of males, diminishes the intellectual faculties”
I’ll print this on a T shirt. That’ll attract the crumpet on the dance floor.
As far as I know the Senate is concerned only with academic matters and the general administration of the university is in the hands of the Council. It is to the latter – or possibly to the Precincts Officer – that the students should have applied.
Don’t be silly. As if the Precincts Officer is going to shoulder the responsibility for an issue that has become so hot. Had the request been made to him it would still have shot up to the highest levels faster than a moon-shot.
Twanny, are you familiar with the administration of the university?
More than you are,apparenttly, if you really imagine that the Precinct Officer would be prepared to shoulder this.
If your question was not simply rhetorical. I am a (part-time) Uni student at the moment.
Naf li m’ghadhux x’jaqsam, imma …
“A donation by the Labour Party was presented by Michelle Muscat.” (In her capacity as …?)
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091206/local/thousands-turn-up-for-presidents-charity-run
What did you expect? Our university doesn’t exactly have a reputation for producing revolutionaries. A couple of serious protests down the years were motivated by self-interest.
Yes, the censorship protest was done just to get the chicks’ attention, I admit it…
And every time I read about the condom machine issue, every article seems to miss a very particular aspect. So there’s no problem having condom machines in Paceville, which I wonder whether they’re soberly made use of, but on campus, where the main idea is to promote safe sex, the prudes tell us we’re degrading love-making.
Some suggested a pharmacy rather than a machine, which can be considered as a smarter move.
Mintoff’s visit to the PL headquarters can’t have helped Marisa Micallef’s mission to make the party less repugnant to the (N)QLus. The man is a walking (well, shambling) vote repellent.
Daph you have nothing els better to do the just keep picking on noel arrigo, do me a favour go ask you kids to come protect you and stick up for mummy and stop looking at other people!! your just a waste of time!! get a life loser!!!
Are you one of those idiots who thinks that Noel Arrigo made a mistake and not committed a crime? If so it is you who needs to get a life and not our Daphne. She is very capable of fighting her own battles especially when such a ‘loser’ as you crops up.
Do you understand the gravity of the crime committed by Noel Arrigo? A betrayal of the Maltese judicial system and all the Maltese. Arrigo deserves whatever is thrown at him, he really got off lightly with only 3 years 9 months prison sentence, compared to 18 years prison sentence handed to a Gozitan farmer last year for growing cannabis.
I am against drugs, but this was a miscarriage of justice in my opinion, the sentence was disproportionate.
He has done unimaginable damage to potential investors in Malta.
If this had happened in the UK, Arrigo would have got a much stiffer sentence and he would have been sent to a proper prison and not a psychiatric hospital, look at the UK cases of Jeffry Archer and Jonathan Aitken, they were handed stiff sentences and shared cells with normal prisoners.
Daphne is right in this case, even though she seems to have gone over the top, but Arrigo is not an illiterate criminal, he is an extremely astute intelligent priveleged man, he knew what he was doing and he exploited the system till the very end. I would have had some sympathy for him, had he admitted his crime straight away.
I hope Arrigo is made to pay for the expensive trial costs and prison and hospital accommodation.
every time I am reminded of Mintoff, a shiver runs down my spine and I say to myself, “I must never vote Labour”
Has he paid his water and electricity bill yet? Or is this the country of two weights, two measures?
Then I would suggest every time you are reminded of Mintoff make sure that you’re wearing a coat or something to keep you warm.
I am thinking you’re not dressed well enough for an early December Mintoff reminder.
I think Mintoff did very well and initiated an economy based on socialism (power to the peepil), which then became obsolete and therefore Mintoff had to go. Shivers down the spine show us that you are completely unaware of the difficulties of starting things from scratch, getting decent social services and infrastructure that incredibly enough after all these years of capitalistic approach we are still dependant on (Marsa Power Station etc…).
[Daphne – Oh, I think most of us are aware of the difficulties of starting things from scratch, especially those of us who were all grown-up in 1987.]
On a side note and something for you Daphne to have a read and a good laugh … did you know that Kim-Jong-Il was sent to Malta to learn politics from the man himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-il
[Daphne – If you think that’s something to laugh about….]
If you want to know what “starting from scratch” really means, you shoulld find out what the Labour Gov which took over oin 1971 had to face.
Just for startesr, not enough cash in the kitty to pay civil service salaries.
The PN Gov which took over im ’87 found a bed of roses by comparison
[Daphne – Yes, right. I lived in that bed of roses.]
Yes sure, a bed of roses and depending on whether you surrendered your mental faculties to the despot or not, you were either at the thorn-end or at the flowering extremity. I’m sure you where enjoying it at the latter… happy to have surrendered the use of your grey matter……..is it still in plastic?
Oh yes of course. Mugabe initiated land reform which then became obsolete so he had to go. Nation of spineless jellyfish. In-nazzjon tal-imbecilli illitterati manipulati minn hamallu nittien bir-Rhodes scholarship. I thought this post was about condoms.
Twanny
“The PN Gov which took over im ‘87 found a bed of roses by comparison”
It wasn’t made up properly: the clique had all the petals and the rest of us the thorns.
I am very aware that the time Mintoff was prime minister was the worse time in Maltese history. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was no better. Malta has a lot to thank Eddie Fenech Adami for, as he brought Malta out of the dark ages and into the heart of Europe, though with some trouble because of Alfred Sant.
In 1971 the labour regime did not start from scratch – more like started scratching, and beating up pregnant ladies, and framing people.
No wonder Mintoff invited the likes of the North Korean monster Kim Jong Il as his guest! He probably thought North Korea is exactly how countries should be run.
People like Twanny make me sick. To actually deny what we went through in the eighties – my European friends still can’t believe how Labour tried to deny me an education by closing down my school and forcing me to study underground.
And Twanny, it was a private school and not a church school. And Labour have the sheer brass neck to say they were pro education!
Twanny, these disgusting comments stopped being funny years ago.
Someone who was studying at the university at that time told me that once KJ II was trying to get a game on the snooker table but kept getting deliberately passed over until he stormed off in a huff. Can you imagine if he had nuclear weapons?
F’dan il-pajjiz irid iqum panic fuq kollox. Min irid il-condoms kemm imur jixtrihom mill-pharmacy jew mis-supermarket. Illum issibhom kullimkien, mhux bhal qabel kollox minn taht il-bank.
Jew forsi l-istudenti huma tant broke li jaffordjaw jixtru wiehed biss u mhux pakkett shih? Taht dan il-gvern issib tixtri kollox mhux bhal zminijiet ohra ma konna nsibu xejn.
Buying a packet from LIDL would be more convenient rather than buying single ones from the machine. The students are just bluffing. Everybody know that university is not the ideal place to have sex.
Ma nafx kif hadd ghadu ma nduna bil-villa mibnija f’post il-barra miz-zona tal-izvilupp (ODZ), fejn ma hemm l-ebda tip ta zvilupp fil-madwar go Ghawdex… Possibli HADD ma nduna biha?? Astrid, Ramblers, etc??
Ghal min jinteressah… PA 1376/01, PA 582/04 u PA 1786/09
Forsi ghax gej minn naha tal-Labour?
For those who might be curious to know what Xandru is talking about, he’s referring to a number of development applications presented at times by Dr Anton Refalo LLD and at other times by Ms Lina Refalo.
Very briefly, the saga of the site is as follows:
1) 1998 – Application to carry out additions to an ODZ building was refused by DCC but granted by the Appeals Board.
2) 2001 – Other extensions not included in the 1998 permit were carried out illegally and an enforcement notice issued by MEPA. The offending structures were (supposedly?) removed by the owner.
3) 2001 – Application to sanction further illegal extensions was refused by DCC but again granted by the Appeals Board.
4) 2004 – Application to build a swimming pool was granted by DCC.
5) 2009 – Application to sanction reservoir and change landscaping was granted by DCC.
The MEPA auditor would have a field day investigating these decisions but perhaps Gozo is outside his jurisdiction.
Granted that the sentence served in a trial by jury rests solely with the judge, I have my doubts whether Noel Arrigo’s prerogative not to be tried by jury and the very lenient sentence served by Justice Giannino Caruana Demajo were purely unrelated or just another rubber johnny.
@Herbs
Your Wiki link says that Kim il Jong came to Malta to study English and was a guest of Dom. It doesn’t mention any politics tuition.
@Twanny
Still at that ‘il-kaxxa ta’ Malta’? Bet my life you believe kaxxa means cash.
Q: Who was the last 18 stone (bl–k) man to ride a Grand National winner?
A: Lester Piggott’s cell-mate.
For those who don’t know, Lester Piggott was (probably) the greatest flat-race jockey of all time. He was sentenced to three years in jail for…tax evasion.