During a visit to St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta (picture), I enquired with a foreign-looking, young blonde female guide about a detail of an inscription high up in the nave. She referred me to an expert tile restorer who was busy working on the floor in front of the main door.

I casually asked her whether she could speak Maltese, or Italian, or French. And, being from Leeds, in England, she said she could not; just a weak pupil’s smattering of French.

Living on an island, the British, or the English, are not conversant with other European languages. Most know only English and seem to expect the whole world to know their language.

Well, the Spanish, the Portuguese and South Americans hardly know a word of English, just Spanish and Portuguese. The Italians usually know just plain Italian. And the French speak just French. Only Germanic people, like the Scandinavians and the Germans, can really speak any English because they belong to the same group of Indo-European languages.

We Maltese, well, some of us, are familiar with English and can make use of it.

But for English people to manage and run our cathedral in Valletta is nothing less than anathema. They did not manage to get hold of it in colonial times and they shall not run it today either, especially given their abysmal ignorance of European languages and their lack of knowledge of Maltese.

We do have some self-respect, particularly in view of the fact that, since independence in 1964, we are no longer a British colony.

European Union rules do not give them the right to run our Catholic churches or our cathedrals.