The argument on MEPs living in Brussels but still qualifying as residents of Malta was actually used by the prime minister

Published: January 30, 2014 at 4:56pm

Super One reporter Charmaine, I now realise, took her lead on her catastrophically stupid argument about MEPs living in Brussels but still being residents of Malta from the prime minister himself, who said it at his press conference yesterday.

The difference, of course, is that the prime minister knows full well that MEPs and diplomats are subject to different definitions of residency and are not, for this purpose, in the same category as any other Maltese citizen who lives and works outside Malta.

I really cannot bear the cynicism with which Joseph Muscat manipulates general ignorance. He takes a spurious and faulty argument, which he knows very well to be spurious and faulty, and feeds it into the mix, knowing that people will repeat it all over Facebook in their seminal ignorance.




23 Comments Comment

  1. watchful eye says:

    That is the norm with Labour. Alfred Sant did it ad nauseum with buzz words.

    Now we have Joe Muscat doing the same and the herd obviously and unfailingly follows.

  2. Eddy Privitera says:

    Do you think that Simon Busuttil should withdraw the judicial protest now that even the Commission has given its approval to the IIP ?

    [Daphne – Mr Privitera, I start off from the point that there should be NO ‘IIP’. All else follows from there. Unlike many people in Malta, I am not easily distracted from the original premiss.]

    • curious says:

      Kultant meta thossok naqra minn fuq, tersaq ‘l hawn, Privitera.

      Issa jmisskhom taqbdu xi mitejn immigrant li ilhom hawn sena u tatuhom passaport. Naqra token tal-qalb tajba u l-genwinita’ taghkom. U malajr taqbzuhom il-1800. Mhux dejjem tiftahru li taqbzu ghal-fqir u l-batut.

    • watchful eye says:

      Interesting to hear what the CNI has to say about this IIP. Whilst we are still witnessing the crusade against the EU, one of the CNI’s frontliners is too happy to sell off, not our independence but our IDENTITY. How about that, Eddy Privitera?

  3. Fran says:

    He is a devious man.

  4. Tabatha White says:

    The next step is that the 1,800 + families will qualify for voting rights, courtesy of Henley’s pre-packaging services.

  5. jack says:

    This coming from the PM who was himself an MEP.

  6. Daisy says:

    Well Daphne nothing new. Labour always played these tricks on its own followers and hence that’s why we always said; Vote Labour Get Labour

  7. Ian says:

    Apart from the fact that those MEPs were born in Malta, lived in Malta, have families there etc.

  8. Grezz says:

    Ignorance knows no bounds.

    Kevin Plumpton would have been my last choice as an MEP candidate, but now he won’t be getting any vote whatsoever from my end.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140130/local/pn-candidate-says-citizenship-scheme-is-now-in-the-national-interest.504829#.UuqCkRRwbIU

  9. Dez says:

    MLP always depended on mass ignorance to gain power. In time it changed to depending on people’s ignorance and greed which is found in abundance in Malta.

  10. C Falzon says:

    Now don’t give him ideas or his next amendment to the passport sale act will be to automatically appoint the buyers as diplomats.

  11. Matthew S says:

    Daphne, a new study confirms what you have been saying for years about people like Dom Mintoff and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando:

    Being short makes you prone to paranoia. Power makes you feel taller.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140130/world/Shorter-people-prone-to-paranoia.504769#.UuqLwz1dWSo

    [Daphne – It doesn’t really explain Mintoff and Pullicino Orlando, no, because this study is all about RELATIVE height. Mintoff and Pullicino Orlando are (were) exceptionally short, yes, but they are not exceptionally short for Malta. They are surrounded by equally short men and much shorter women.]

  12. vanni says:

    Facebook – the modern propaganda tool.

    Came across this:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda

    Certain things will seem unoddly familiar.

  13. La Redoute says:

    The term is ordinarily resident, as in “absent for a reason but still officially resident here”.

    Fortunately for Muscat, the concept is a little bit complicated for the chicken-brained.

    There’s the ugliness of the man: beyond the corpulence and the physical shortcomings that are not all of his own making, Muscat’s characteristic amoral manipulation of the ignorant, even among the educated, is his most repulsive feature.

    His intelligence extends to knowing what he’s doing while being unable to understand the depth of his own depravity – a dangerous combination when he himself is amorally manipulated by his puppet masters.

    • Tabatha White says:

      Considering his spoilt brat nature, the fact that he is allowing himself to be amorally manipulated has to mean that the advantage of doing so has been weighed in his calculated favour.

  14. anthony says:

    Joseph Muscat does not address the masses but the idiots.

    The fact that the two terms happen to be interchangeable is just a Maltese phenomenon.

  15. Clueless says:

    Perhaps this article by timesofmalta.com adds greater perspective to Muscat’s ludicrous argumentation.

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140130/local/EU-let-Maltese-citizens-abroad-vote.504699#.UuqrsvldWa8

  16. Victor says:

    I despair!

  17. Fido says:

    Could it be that those who have already applied or have shown some interest might have such distinct talents (remember that this was one of the justifications put forward by Edward Scicluna?) that Muscat already knows that he will be granting them a diplomatic passport implying that the special consideration regarding residency will apply.

  18. I do not apologise for repeating what I have pointed out a number of times. Peter Mandelson, addressing socialist university students in the UK, had exhorted them to “create the truth”.

    The only meaning that can be given to that phrase is to twist, pervert and undermine the real truth. He followed this advice himself and, twice, he had to resign a cabinet post when the UK parliament felt that he had deceived them.

    At least, he had the decency to accept the consequences of his action without much ado.

  19. Gaetano Pace says:

    What a coincidence. Charmaine`s syllogisms coincided with the investiture of her previous master now the Ambassador of Malta to Belgium. The maestro must be very proud of her beating the drums round the bush.

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