And standards continue to slip further into the Labour gutter

MA’ SEWDA: mank ma’ mara sewda, le – ma’ sewda, because it’s an object.

And to those of you who retort that in English, it’s ‘black’ – well, not quite. The Maltese ‘iswed’ does not mean ‘black’. It means negro, nigger for short, two words that are now well beyond the pale in the English-speaking world.

If you must specify colour at all, which really isn’t necessary, then ‘iswed’ should be used as an adjective and not as a noun: ragel iswed; mara sewda. This puts it in the same class of descriptors as ‘ragel bjond’ and ‘mara gingrija’.

I can’t bear having to explain these things. It makes me feel like I’m living in the backwoods of the toenail of civilisation.