Tghid zdiedu lil Astrid il-pixxikalda ma' dawn l-istatistici?

Published: March 23, 2010 at 7:17pm

Chlamydia Now: Astrid Vella leads the march against syphilis

Chlamydia Now: Astrid Vella leads the march against syphilis

timesofmalta.com, today

Increase in sexually transmitted diseases

A total of 143 cases of sexually transmitted diseases were reported last year, Health Minister Joseph Cassar said.

Replying to a parliamentary questions by Labour MP Anthony Agius Decelis, Dr Cassar said there were 61 cases of chlamydia, 63 cases of gonorrhoea and 19 cases of syphilis.

He said the numbers were higher than in the past five years.




36 Comments Comment

  1. Alan says:

    I’ll take one from my kids’ …

    ROTFLMAO !

  2. PAL says:

    I can assure you that the numbers are much higher than those. They may be the official numbers from the GU Clinic, however, many family doctors say that most of their patients refuse to go to the GU Clinic for fear of being seen or due to sheer laziness on their part. What happens then? They treat empirically in hopes that it’s only the ONE disease they suspect. However, these patients are a risk to the rest of the sexually active, repelled-by-protection population. And in Malta, the use of protection is still really really low!

  3. kev says:

    ‘Zdiedu’ – they increased; ‘Ziedu’ – they added

  4. john says:

    Dr. Cassar forgot to mention the 32 cases of Phtirius pubis I spotted crawling along behind the placards at the demonstration.

    • I just FAA-rted says:

      John, if you add the Minister’s 143 to your 32, you get to 175, approximately the number of demonstrators in Valletta on Saturday 13 March.

  5. Whoa, there! says:

    But why attack people like this, Daphne? One may disagree on your views on certain issues but very often even when one agrees with your views, it can be quite difficult to shrug off the sort of labels you try and stick on people.

    Using the colloquial term of an STD in the case of Ms. Vella is not fair and does not do your arguments any justice.

    [Daphne – It’s called mockery, Whoa. Oh, but I forget: this is a literal society.]

    • Allan Gatt says:

      Il- parodija huwa riskju li wiehed pjenament jassumi meta jadotta kariga pubblika.

      ‘Putting on a public mantle puts off a private person’. Meta jridu jifhmuha din?

      Il-gurnalist mhux hemm biex jilghaq jew jintghogob jew ikun il-kanjolin ta’ dal- kiriketti politici.

      • Overestimated Shakespeare aka Nostradamus formerly Avatar says:

        Allan, your Maltese is highly… ingenious!

    • Twanny says:

      I imagine “Whoa, there!” knows what is is – it’s the rationale behind its use he is querying.

    • Charlie Bates says:

      Dear Ms. Daphne,
      I believe that Astrid Vella should not be the butt of more writings and comments until the day she squeals into a microphone with her pontifications.

  6. Twanny says:

    You are being very silly, you know. The metaforical use of “pixxikalda” as “a troublesome person” has been well established in Maltese for a very long time,

    [Daphne – ph, Twanny, not f.]

  7. Karl says:

    Jesus come on. It’s quite funny. Keep them coming.

  8. Overestimated Shakespeare aka Nostradamus formerly Avatar says:

    But is she otherwise transmitted?

  9. claude says:

    Today I passed by Australia Hall and recalled the article which was published in The Sunday Times last Sunday (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100321/local/labour-demands-shipbuilding-property-in-return-for-australia-hall) in which we are told that the Labour Party is trying to take back property that they had given up some time ago and for which they were given Australia Hall and some other buildings.

    What was surprising was that it seems that the contract states that the Labour Party had the right to request the return of the property they gave to government “The contract had specified that if the PL lost any right to the Pembroke buildings it could request the Marsa property back – provided it adhered to a number of conditions”.

    Now I know this should not surprise us because we all know the standards of fairness and law abidance that the Labour government had in those days but I cannot fathom how anyone in the civil service could agree to that.

    The government – and here one must praise Hon Azzopardi for the way he is dealing with such hot potatoes – did well in requesting that the Labour Party takes good care of property which at the end of the day belongs to us. If the Labour Party has neither the finances nor the will to take care of a historic building then it should give it up.

    One would have expected the Labour Party, after years of neglect, to at least feel some shame and return the property to government without any hassle. But no! Because – after several warnings – the government is doing what it should have done ages ago, the Labour Party is asking for a property in return.

    Great! so I’m given a property which I neglect for years and is currently “roofless” as some would say, and in return you give me back a property which you maintained. This is the level of fairness we are to expect from the government in waiting….

    The disgusting way things were done in the past under Labour are best described by the Maltese word hnizrijiet (I don’t think there is a better way of describing it in English) and by the way the party is acting at the moment more is yet to come…

    • attent01 says:

      …not only neglect but they were going to make a huge profit out of it when they had entered into a konvenju with a now bankrupt food chain supermarket. Are the MLP going to reinstate the building to the glory it was including the original timber roof or are they offering it to the government so as to have a “roofless” theatre ready for use instead of the Valletta old theatre. Hon J Azzopardi – keep pressing what your predecessors failed to do and get the property back without giving the Marsa property since all conditions have been broken by none other than the PL itself which had drawn up the contract when in government. Give the Australia Hall back to the people.

      • Twanny says:

        When is the Hon J Azzopardi going to give the imposing Gov. building in the best part of Paola Square – occupied by the PN as a club – back to “the people”?

        PS: I thought it was only permitted to refer to “the peeple” on this blog. Or is that only when it refers to the Piano Project?

      • Claude Sciberras says:

        @ Twanny. Vera thawwad il-hass mal-bass. Did I say that all state property occupied by the PL should be taken back? What I said is that this property was neglected and almost ruined and instead of restoring it or returning it to its rightful owner the PL wants another property. Do you see the difference? If not I give up!

  10. Genoveffa says:

    hahahahaha …… try Astrid Hotpee, she might feel less offended. Actually figuratively pixxicalda means “pest” in Maltese.

  11. woman from the south says:

    Some people say it but it is used in a totally wrong context and it makes people who know Maltese well cringe with embarrassment. It always was and still is a name for an S.T.D.

  12. Twanny says:

    Aquilina (hardly one to cringe at using Maltese) gives this definition:

    1. Venereal disease (syphilis gonorrhoea)

    2. A troublesome person. (dak ta’ x’~ fih, jekk jaqbad miegħek ma jerħikx – he is a troublemaker, he won’t leave you alone if he turns against you)

  13. A woman from the south says:

    Yes Twanny. Something or someone difficult to get rid of.

  14. Twanny says:

    But a perfectly acceptable term and in common use. I expect the people who “cringe with embarrassment” when they hear it are the same kind of people who will not say “moxt” because it sounds like “poxt” and say “skużi” whenever they use the word “xkupa”.

    The same kind of people who think it is cool to say “fuck off” but would rather cut their tongue out than say “mur inħexa”.

    [Daphne – I’d better set you straight on this, Twanny, before you end up getting yourself into a spot of trouble. ‘Mur inhexa’ translates as ‘get fucked’ and not as ‘fuck off’. There is no translation for ‘fuck off’ because ‘fuck’ in this context is used as a ‘cuss word’, like bloody and damn – as in ‘what the fuck’, abbreviated by kids to WTF.]

  15. Twanny says:

    You are missing the wood for the trees. There may be a slight difference between the phrases (one is transitive, the other intransitive) but the point is that they are equally “vulgar” and I find it amusing that some people see nothing wrong in using one but would be horrified to use the other.

    [Daphne -I imagine that you are completely unaware that those who swear most in, for example, Britain are at the two extreme ends of the social scale, while everyone else is horrified at being thought vulgar and so doesn’t. The difference in meaning is not slight but complete. Telling someone to fuck off is not an instruction to go and get laid, just as telling someone to sod off is not an instruction to go and get himself buggered. English is very specific in this respect. If you wish to tell someone to ‘mur inhexa’, the correct expression to use is ‘Get fucked’ and not ‘fuck off’. ‘Fuck off’ is a contraction of ‘get the fuck off’, fuck here being used in the same way as it is in ‘what the fuck’. This in turn would translate as ‘X’iz-z*bb’, which – even you would understand – has nothing actually to do with the male reproductive organ, it being used here only for emphatic reasons.]

    And I’m afraid you are wrong about the cultural content of “mur inħexa” in Maltese. It is used as a “cuss word” exactly as, and with the same meaning, as “fuck off”. You probably do not frequent people who have that register and vocabulary.

    [Daphne – ‘Mur inhexa’ means exactly what it says, Twanny: go and get fucked. This does not mean that the person who says it actually expects the other person to find a hot date right that minute. ‘You probably do not frequent people who have that register and vocabulary’. Exactly how do you think ‘people like me’ live, Twanny – like those with pretensions to the mittilkless?]

    • Twanny says:

      I don’t have time to write a thesis about the nuances of idiomatic phrases and how they do not have to be literally the same to have the same connotations in different languages.

      [Daphne – I think I know the nuances of English swear-words a good deal better than you do, Twanny. English is not my second language as it is yours.]

      In any case it is irrelevant. We are not discussing precise meanings here, just the fact that some people see nothing wrong in using a phrase in one language but not the same phrase (let us say a similar phrase, to avoid argument) in another language.

      [Daphne – Those people you mention, Twanny, are the Mittilkless your leader is so keen to attract. So I wouldn’t be mean to them if I were you. I, on the other hand, am perfectly at home telling somebody ‘mur inhexa’. I believe there might have been an unfortunate policeman who discovered that the other day, but I can’t remember for certain as there was a great deal of confusion at the time and I might actually have been referring to the magistrate who dispatched him, and for whom that sort of thing tends to be a favourite pastime.]

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