A debate is taking place in another section of the press about the desirability or otherwise of having the George Cross removed from our flag. The deluge of correspondence about this subject surprises me. Given our fondness for waving the flags of other nations with pride and triumph, I had not thought that we understood the significance of any national flag.

The furore was resurrected by a man best known for writing against illegal immigration – as though there is anyone in favour of it – and by a woman in her 20s, who claimed that she spoke for her entire generation when she said that the government should remove immediately the George Cross from our flag. Forgive me for inflicting them on you, but I quote here from their letters, one of which was liberally spattered with dots and 13 exclamation marks, and the other with five exclamation marks and four question marks. That is to say nothing of wince-making phrases like “who was responsible to put” and “are adamant to understand my point of view”. So here goes, with a quote from letter number one, written by the man from L-Iklin: “My point is pure and simple! There is no other flag in the world like ours... it’s true and it pains me so much! Our flag has a reminder of King George... a foreign king! A reminder not only of a foreign country, but of a foreign person! That cross belongs in our museum... granted... but not on our flag! To this day I ask: who was responsible to put that cross on our national flag? Such short-sightedness! Throughout the centuries, Malta and the Maltese endured a lot and on many occasions stood tall to show their bravery! Symbols and rewards of various epochs do not however feature on our national flag... thank you very much!”

Are you ready for a quote from letter number two? Here it is, written by the woman from Zabbar: “It should be removed at once! It is a constant reminder of foreign rule and the symbol per se relates to a foreign person... King George of England who died about 60 years ago! Where was the Maltese opposition at the time of putting this cross on the flag? Where is our identity and patriotism? Who decided to put the cross on our flag? Our flag should be kept pure! The eight-pointed Maltese cross, which does not relate to one particular person, does not feature on our flag! Then why should we allow the cross of King George? The time has come to seriously consider removing it. This is simple to understand and elderly readers can be informed that the younger generation does not wish to see that cross on our national flag. I am 25 years old and most people my age share my view!”

Dear God, where to begin? Perhaps I should start with the exclamation marks, which in good writing are never used except for exclamations between the inverted commas of reported speech. Lots of people here love the exclamation mark and view it as interchangeable with the fullstop, probably because it reflects the way they think and speak. Yet that’s for the sub-editors, who appear to be asleep most of the time, to deal with. There was a flurry of letters in response to those two, a few concurring with their demand to remove it now (!), and the rest fervently opposed to it (!). Yet it was not their request for the removal of the George Cross that worried me, so much as the fact that these adults are the product of our educational system. In terms of writing and thinking skills, general knowledge, and the ability to make a case clearly and coherently, their letters appear to have been written by an over-excited 12-year-old. None of the numerous respondents pointed this out, probably because they have become so accustomed to reading infantile letters couched in poor grammar and decorated with exclamation marks but no logic, that they assume it is normal for educated adults to think and write like this. A typical example from that other great debate – illegal immigration – is the man who wrote in to the newspaper (and his letter was published) demanding to know why the government “kept five of them from the Spanish trawler, including those of the female sex which will breed”.

The woman from Zabbar and the man from L-Iklin are other examples of those whose thought is seriously impoverished. The reason they speak, write and argue like this is because they can’t think logically, and because they don’t have a sound platform of general knowledge from which to launch their views. Blame the schools, blame the home environment, blame individual lack of initiative at self-improvement, blame what you will – the country is now full to overflowing with such people. They are an embarrassment to themselves and to their country. They, and not the government or the Opposition, are the real source of our problems. If the government and the Opposition are to be blamed at all, it is for encouraging – by deliberate action or passive neglect – the development of this state of affairs. Ignorance, made worse by the arrogant belief of the ignorant that they are intelligent, articulate and well-informed, has flourished. It is not the George Cross we should be worrying about; it is this generalised crassness.

I take it that the premise of these two people is that the George Cross on our flag is a national embarrassment, and their conclusion is that it should be removed at once – though I might be wrong, given that their arguments do not follow a logical sequence. Whether you agree or not with their premise and conclusion, you would expect a woman of 25 and a grown man of unspecified age to be able to able to argue clearly, logically, and factually, using language a little more sophisticated than that of the second form. You would also expect them to have a little general knowledge, so that they do not shame themselves by revealing, as does the woman from Zabbar, that they do not know what the George Cross is. Clearly, she thinks that it is the representative mark of the man she calls “King George of England” in the same way that the eight-pointed cross is the representative mark of the Knights of St John. That calls for a whole row of exclamation marks, and begs the question of how a woman of 25, who has been through the schooling system of a country which bears the George Cross on its flag, does not know what the George Cross actually is.

Madam, the George Cross is not the symbol of “King George of England”. It is the symbol of an award which takes the concrete form of a citation and a real cross, and which is named after the sovereign who created it, King George VI, to acknowledge “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger”. Though he has long since died – 54 years ago, and not “about 60” – the George Cross is still awarded. It was awarded only a few years ago to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the extensive newspaper coverage of this in the national newspapers of Britain pointed out that the only other time the George Cross was awarded collectively, rather than to an individual, was to the people of Malta. The man from L-Iklin needs to have it pointed out to him that the George Cross is not a “reminder of a foreign king, a foreign country and a foreign person”, but a reminder that we were once, if not now, brave, stalwart and heroic. We need all such reminders that we can get.

The woman from Zabbar should learn – before she embarrasses herself further – that not only is this “cross of a dead king” still being awarded, but it is even awarded to dead people. The word is posthumously, and they might care to add it to their frighteningly limited vocabulary, along with the knowledge that the Victoria Cross continues to be awarded too, to dead people and living ones, even though ‘Queen Victoria of England died about a hundred years ago!’

There’s more, too: the most recent recipient of the George Cross was a dead New Zealand policeman, and this because the George Cross is not a decoration only for those who are “English” or still colonised by “England”, but for anyone who is a citizen of any member State of the Commonwealth. We Maltese remain eligible for receipt of the George Cross. The person these letter-writers would no doubt call “the Queen of England” will consider the names of individuals who are recommended by the government of Malta for the award. The government does not recommend such individuals, no doubt for reasons to do with sentiments similar to those expressed by our letter-writers, and because the Republic of Malta has its own system of awards – to which, it has to be said, no great value or prestige is attached, unlike with the George Cross.

The continued eligibility of the Maltese for this award makes the call for its removal from our flag, on the grounds that it is a historical irrelevance, an even greater piece of nonsense.

In the Commonwealth, it is only the governments of Australia and Canada that have created their own award for valour, called the Cross of Valour, to be given to the citizens of those countries, instead of recommending them to the “Queen of England” for the George Cross award.

When people write to the newspapers to rage against the presence of the George Cross on our flag (they would do better to rage against those Maltese who wave Italian, British and German flags), they should at least bother to find out first what the George Cross really is. It is not, as yet another newspaper letter-writer described it scathingly, thinking that this is the correct name in Maltese, “is-salib ta’ Gorg”. This kind of gutter-ignorance is painful to behold, but then it is also unsurprising when I remember that a university graduate working in a newsroom translated Scotland Yard as il-Bitha ta’ Skozja.