I found this somewhat lush word ‘tushy’ on the Internet, used to describe a part of the anatomy... well... that is often described in cruder language, a part of the anatomy appertaining to the posterior. Are we that kind of Nation, the Tushy-Licking type?

Tushy Lickers may be found in most nationalities. There is an old and hoary chestnut notice that goes 'As we have to kiss your Tushy every day to get you to do some work – please make sure you scrub it well every morning', and can be found pinned on most office walls from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. However because we are Maltese we of course take matters to the maximum limit and also to both extremes.

Take our adulation of politicians and political party leaders. Whilst international voting figures on national and local polling days continue to decline in a bathos of apathy and mistrust of politicians, our figures continue to crash the 95% barrier. Much of that voting cast is pinned to the fawning loyalty shown towards politicians and hence, political parties. The syrupy, sugar-saturated licking shown towards party leaders during most election times is stomach-wrenching. Whatever the Leader says has to be correct; whatever the Leader does has to be mimicked and followed to the letter of being assiduous.

In terms of individuality and body language this misplaced adulation amply underlines we are not a Nation of individuals but a Nation of sheepish, goat-like deadheads ready to plunge into any precipice just to follow the dear, trusted Leader. There are precedents to this in the historical and political world that may underline a disturbing trend running through our bloodline.

Despots and murderers like Adolf Hitler, Stalin and more recently Saddam Hussein relied and thrived on Tushy Lickers just as Dracula relied on his blood supplies for eternal rejuvenation. On the strength of the Tushy Lickers around them, these despots became at one with the political party they led and then fused with their Nation to become at one with that too. Just as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, the pigs became men and the men became pigs.

We have not plunged to those depths in Malta (well not yet anyway); nevertheless the sometimes similar adulation and unfettered fawning show most disturbing traits that are nothing less than dark omens.

As extremists we have naturally taken some of this adulation to breaking points and both our main political parties have their own radio and television stations to continue piling on the honey-like manure of sheer and unadulterated hero-worship with unquestioned loyalty. Have you ever heard or seen anything on a party station that has actually criticised it's own party, or indeed its own Party Leader? To make sure this is a broad spectrum and leave no stone unturned, our political parties have their own newspapers and therefore more Tushy-licking manure to heap on a dunderhead population.

But then, because we are Maltese, we also swing both ways! Where it really matters and where it is important to be Tushy Lickers, we are the other way round. In the tourism and service spheres we are surly, uncompromising, downright rude, uncaring and anything but amiable. Take our telephone mannerism.

How often have you been on the end of a telephone line (before the days of machines because nowadays we have fallen into line with the internationally rude habit of making machines answer people) where the first word you hear is that acidic word 'Yesssss?'.

None of the quaint and cissy-like 'Good morning Sir or Madame how can I help you?' nonsense. That kind of dignity seems to be well below our buffoon-like macho imagery. No, just a plain 'Yesssss?' and that's the kind of similar response you often get in quaint old shops where shop assistants, or owners, still persist in taking the place of supermarket trolleys.

It seems that being in employment where one has to provide a service and be nice is looked down upon as being non-macho so we have to re-emphasise that macho image - and I am not just thinking of the male gender either - by being plainly rude as if this somehow balances the equilibrium of having to be in any way servile.

So, what is at the basis of it all? Where does it all spring from? For centuries upon centuries we have been pushed around like goats by our colonial masters. Saint Luke classed us as 'barbarians' and pinned an international label on us by sticking that unpleasant fact in the Holy Bible (more to the point he was right because we still are!). The British tarred and painted us with an equally wide-brush and referred to us as Maltese 'goats' or Maltese 'gem-gem' meaning we were always moaning and complaining (tragically enough also true).

When we came into our own and invented a battery of national days to illustrate our new-found freedom - even though to-date we cannot actually agree as a Nation on the precise day, date or event that took us to that freedom - we began to swing the other way round by showing one and all that our freedom is real and liberated.

We started making life unpleasant for visiting tourists by being uninhibitedly rude to them just to show we are no longer colonials and to let them know how free we are. Now that we have managed to thoroughly ruin our tourist image our mentors run around like headless chickens trying to put the situation right, as if more lamenting and wringing of hands will right all the environmental and service wrongs that we have compiled over decades.

For indeed how can we ever forget all the letters and attitudes in various media that put about the popular notion that if a visiting tourist had anything to complain about in Malta (like over-pricing, bird-shooting, dirt, surly taxi and bus drivers etc) we don't need them in Malta and they should take their holidays elsewhere...

It all boils down to a total lack of education, totems to a Nation that attaches more importance to having a Paceville rather than a rebuilt National Opera House, to cutting a good figure in the lush and transvestite Eurovision Song Contest than to having a proper national orchestra and choir. And it is a sad indictment that most of us do not even know the words of the first verse of our National Anthem. Sad indeed.

That is the way we are. Tushy-licking is in our blood and it will take more than a few decades to eradicate it because that which has been compiled over centuries cannot be washed away in a few years.

Under our colonial masters, the population occupied a broad base at the bottom of the manure pit. The colonials topped the pile and the population paid token to priests, magistrates, lawyers and notaries who controlled every aspect of life because only they had the Holy Flame of Knowledge, and they made sure it rarely escaped their grasp and their tightly-knit circles. The only possible way forward for a struggling manure-worker was to find a good and suitable Tushy and to lick it for all it's worth.

These memories linger on, indeed will be hard to eradicate as a national disease.

I have refrained from dealing with office Tushy-licking because this is not restricted to our Nation, it is equally common internationally. Each office in each corporation in each country has it's own brand of crawler, fawner, licker, call them what you please. These are individuals whose only perceived way forward or whose only job security is to carry out these various functions with a well-spread tongue.

The ideal method is to kow-tow to the boss, depend on his/her every word and do as much damage to fellow colleagues by whispering, muck-spreading, demeaning and besmirching and be a real goody-goody in comparison. No doubt each and every one of us will recognise these specialists in our own individual and particular spheres.

However, yet again we go to extremes because as a Nation we want to swing in every possible way. So when a person in our own sphere does the decent thing and brings to light a misdemeanour that threatens to cause a structural defect, we are quick to label them as being a 'gakbin' which translates into being a 'traitor', or a 'collaborator'. Therefore if as an employee I see another employee smashing up a Company toilet and consequently doing a disservice to all other employees, and I go and report that person, that is classed as being a 'gakbin'.

In other instances, the fawning and licking takes the form of being so crassly apologetic, it is downright sickly.

Taking a reality overview of the 'Tushy' situation, the whole point really is that whilst the gilded tongues are many and prompt to salivate, the size of the overall cake is relatively small and only the most professional lickers finally get their just reward - but at what price!

Which all smacks of us being a Nation of schizophrenics, pocked by a mental disease of total disconnection between thoughts, feelings and actions, underlined by delusions and a poverty-stricken social life. In this way we have managed to make a total hash between distinguishing rights and wrongs and inverting them. Thus a right becomes a wrong and wrong becomes an absolute right.

N.B. This article was commissioned months ago.