A couple of weeks ago the Maltese media was buzzing with two apparently separate stories. Firstly, a lap dancer, of foreign origin of course, by the name of Luciana Secan, was accused of offending public morality by exposing her breasts in a private room in the Déjà Vu Bar, Paceville.

When the police entered the establishment at 3 o’clock on one Sunday morning, they were apparently surprised to find not a bar but, according to Superintendent Stephen, ‘super Steve’ to his friends, Gatt, a place with skimpily dressed ‘foreign’ dancers. Alors quelle surprise!! Moreover, in a private room they discovered Ms Secan dancing topless for the edification of a Mr Zagarnejs.

Naturally, the moral and well brought up Super Gatt was horrified as well as shocked – obviously never having heard of how the British Royal Navy was serviced in Valletta by Maltese girls for over 150 years, and no doubt having only met good Catholic grannies in Mdina previously.

Indeed, so shocked were the police about the serious nature of this crime that one Inspector Trevor Micallef even attempted to oppose Ms Secan being granted bail.

Am I going mad but isn’t Paceville full of bars of a similar nature and has been for years? So where have the police been? Apparently sleeping on the job! OK but with whom I wonder? And what about all of those police who go in regularly and expect free drinks while they ogle the girls? Are they so thick that they don’t realise what happens in a ‘gentlemen’s’ club? Well, thick they obviously are but that thick? Come on!

If they want or need cheap convictions and even cheaper thrills of this nature, why not gaze at the boobs discreetly on show in some of the 5-star hotel pool areas on the island – strictly ‘foreign women’ of course.

Once again the Maltese police give the impression of being both racist and sexist. You will no doubt recall the story that I have been running for 18 months about the young lady who, when interviewed, quite misguidedly by police, was assumed to be a woman of immoral repute because she was Russian.

Sexist? Yes. Racist? Yes. Anything more sinister? Unfortunately, yes. And this is where the second story comes in.

Ten days previously, councillors Martin Debono and Yves Bobby Cali were strip-searched by police, Debono naked and Cali to his underwear, before being locked up at Police Headquarters on suspicion of using two council laptops for personal use.

So forcing two men to strip because they might have used a publicly-owned laptop is morally OK is it? Doesn’t it smack of humiliation, intimidation and a complete abuse of power?

So who offends public morality more; a woman who displays her breasts in a private room or the instigators of such offensive and bullying behaviour? I think we all know the answer to that one – even the little piggies down at police HQ might hazard a close guess.

So what is the police explanation? Naturally, it was done to prevent the detainees from hurting either themselves or the custodian officers while they were in custody.

So do you believe that two councillors, whose only unproved crime was to have apparently used a public laptop for private usage, were likely to pull out a concealed hand gun and point it at the duty cops with the immortal words “This is a Magnum. This most powerful hand gun in the world is capable of blowing your head clean off. And if I’m not released immediately I’ll do just that punk”?

If you do – then you must also believe that we all ought to be forced to strip naked when going through airport security. No doubt half of the island’s police would give notice and apply to airport security for jobs if that were the case.

Now to be fair, it has been my experience while living on this island that the uniformed police on street patrol are polite, efficient and extremely helpful. The motorcycle cops can be arrogant and a touch rude – but then they are so the world over. But the real damage is done by the senior officers and plain-clothes chumps in Valletta. They, in my view, not only give a brilliant impression of being sexist and racist bullies, but also guys who are quite capable of corruption and yet quite incapable of being smart. I’m afraid many of them might struggle to get jobs clearing away the rubbish in many other EU countries.

Now just watch my immediate persecution by the ‘old bill’ as a result of writing this. If I have to be strip-searched as result of scribbling such disrespectful, if true, remarks, might I ask that they employ Ms Secan for that purpose?

If women ruled the world!

There is a place in the world that some women have been crying out for – a community of around a million in the hills of northeast India where the women have all the power.

It is Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, one of the smallest states in India, and the tribe is called, in case any downtrodden Maltese gals of St Julian’s want to escape to it, Khasi.

All the men have to do is eat, drink, play the guitar and produce children. Nevertheless they are not happy. They are fed up with being treated as the weaker sex and discriminated against.

It is the youngest daughter who inherits the family home. Children take their mother’s surname. If a family does not have a daughter, it must adopt one to become its heir and continue the line. I joke not − these are the Khasian ground rules, a sort of pre-war British upper class operation in reverse.

Men are expected to live in their mother-in-law’s house and do as they are told. All men are excluded from clan meetings that govern matters, which are conducted by the tribe’s matriarchs.

This uncommon state of affairs is recognised by the Indian Constitution as it was by the British Empire before that. The tribesmen say that this was acceptable then − when hunting took them away for months at a time. However, now with a Christian tendency for nuclear families, men have been reduced to mere idle dogsbodies lying around the home like some kind of family pet.

So, despite their permitted feckless existence, which many Maltese men might initially enjoy, many of these tribesmen are becoming increasingly angry with their lot and have started what is probably the first ‘men’s lib’ movement.

A major goal will be to reverse the fact that the father of the household has no power and, even if he is a man of good character while his wife sleeps around, he is not granted custody of his children.

However, it is likely to be a long fight as the women are reluctant to give up their power and status. They tend to see this movement as men’s desire to steal what is rightly theirs – a bit like pre 1960s American men used to I suppose.

But, we must also remember that we have been told for years by intellectual female pigmies, like the UK’s now dumped socialist minister Harriet Harman, that the world would be a much happier, safer and better place if it was run by women.

So how does society stand up in Khasi after centuries of women’s rule? Old Harriet won’t like the answers. Kids are dropping out of school and drug abuse, alcoholism and violence are rampant.

Well that’s reassuring to know then! So it seems if anybody is governed by a nanny state run by a bunch of men plus Harriet and her friends, or a matriarchal state run by sexist women, the results are about the same. But I could have told you that anyway – it’s called human nature.

Human rights v sexism.

So, remaining with the battle of the sexes, we now turn to the UK. Two weeks ago Sky football’s well-known presenters to those who love the Premiership on the island, Andy Gray and Richard Keys were secretly recorded when they thought they were off air. They were having a private conversation about a female assistant referee – i.e. linesman or, I suppose, lineswoman. They made derogatory remarks about her ability on the grounds that she was a woman. This was pure sexism on their part. However, it was also entrapment. I have said before how the use of entrapment is wrong and, in my opinion, a ‘big brother’ abuse of human rights. I didn’t agree with their remarks but I would defend their right to convey them privately. One can’t condemn entrapment or not on the grounds of whether you like or not the opinions of those being entrapped.

In addition, their remarks were never intended for public consumption, unlike a lunchtime show broadcast in the UK called ‘Loose Women’ where a team of middle-aged hags enthrals the live female audience with a barrelful of sexist remarks made against men – all fully intended for public consumption.

However, so enraged were the hypocritical bra burners and their politically correct friends that Andy Gray was sacked and Richard Key resigned and followed him out of the building. This was the worst case of celebrity witch hunt since Tony Blair got Glen Hoddle sacked as England manager for cheap political gain over the latter’s rather odd religious views.

Then enter that vile Australian snake – Rupert Murdoch – stage left. It turns out that Andy Gray is suing one of Murdoch’s newspapers for tapping his phone – yes, that’s right even more entrapment. And who also owns Sky? Why good old Rupert of course! Hence the ‘off with his head’ command that Rupert made with indecent haste following one of his employees recording the Gray and Keys conversation.

So what can we learn from this sad tale?

1. Don’t have a private conversation in any country where Murdoch owns media unless you are in the middle of a field. 2. No country should allow Murdoch to have the sort of stranglehold on its media the way he has been allowed to in Britain. 3. Women cannot expect sexism to be stamped out until they learn to drive on a two-way street. 4. Entrapment needs to be looked at by governments when it invades privacy as it did in this case.

Ronald Reagan’s century

Ronald Reagan, had he lived, would be celebrating his 100th birthday. So bloody what many people of liberal persuasion may say? Indeed, while the Americans admired Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s, many British liberals repaid that compliment by cracking jokes at the expense of President Reagan’s mental ability.

“Why is Ronald Reagan not allowed to remove his brain and put in a glass of water by the bed over night? The tiny thing may dissolve by morning.” Ha ha ha!’ etc etc.

Ronald Reagan concluded a potentially most dangerous period of world history when he and Mikhail Gorbachev brought an end to the ‘Cold War’. Something that liberals the world over failed to do. So give credit where it is due.

As Mr Gorbachev said recently, “Ronald Reagan was a great man” – and so he was.

Egypt – the world

must be careful

People are delighting in the ‘people’s revolution’ in Egypt at the moment. One word of caution − before you pull something down think about what you are going to put back in its place. We could all live to regret this revolution