I would like to draw your readers’ attention to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s article titled Skulls and some very cross bones (TMID, 26 February).

I read the whole article in an attempt to determine what her position was on the issue. To my dismay, but not to my surprise, there was no position. All it contained was a repetitive exercise in cutting and pasting other people’s comments in response to the issue. To add some colour this was usually preceded or followed with either an insult tied up with a description of her thoughts about the contributor rather than the issue at hand.

Her article was all about “... so and so said this and so and so responded with that but this did not stop the atheist/fundamentalist etc. retorting with...” What about her opinion?

Are journalists paid to give opinions or just cut and paste other people’s comments from a competitors’ blog, with colourful commentary on the writer rather than the content – if the latter is the case then any fourth form student, with good spelling, could replace Daphne tomorrow.

Daphne’s attempt at dismissing all of the commentary about the issue as a hanut tat-te is not only disgraceful but self-perpetuating and reflects her hypocrisy. On this occasion she has proven herself to be much worse than the people she attempts to ridicule as she just rants on about them.

In my experience the hanut tat-te conversations are typically gossip about individuals rather than issues. I appreciate that hanut tat-te is also the name of the blog on your competitors’ website – however I am certain that on this occasion Daphne implies a much broader meaning of the word. And she has expressed that broader meaning wonderfully here. How ironic.

Daphne has this time well and truly hoisted herself with her own petard.

Raphael Dingli

Canberra

Australia