I watched absolutely nothing of the cortege honouring Mintoff on Thursday and intend to watch nothing of the State Funeral on Saturday. To my mind, if people, Labour supporters in particular, want to honour Mintoff, that's their party and I hope they enjoy it. Perhaps Labour supporters want to make us forget the fact that Mintoff was called a traitor by their Leader-but-One and perhaps they're oblivious to the fact that the whole shebang is making us remember the whole "Mintoffjani" nightmare and relive it.

As I said, it's their party and they can cry if they want to.

Apart from just now, I probably won't respond to the comments I received on or to my previous blog. Suffice it to say that a goodly chunk of them made it pretty clear that my feelings on Mintoff are shared by many, for all the bluff and bluster mustered by the usual suspects. My views were certainly not shared by one particular person, signing "Melvin D'Agostino" (to be fair, the name may be an alias, of course) who wished me death by cancer and cursed my family, no doubt for failing to share his blind adulation of Mintoff and for having the nerve to express my position.

Par for the course with this type, I suppose.

I do take issue, however, with the rewriting of history that is surrounding Mintoff's death. There are many aspects to this that when I heard about them made me shake my head in wonderment at the audacity, the sheer gall, of the people making certain statements, but I will limit myself to one.

It was said that Mintoff had education as one of the things closest to his heart.

Yes, you read it here folks, without a single trace of irony, someone had the temerity to put the words "Mintoff" and "education" together without scoffing, rolling around on the floor laughing or - forgive me - throwing up.

I was as the Lyceum in Form Four when Mintoff was elected in 1971, but did not remain for Fifth Form. When I went to check out my friends during the Xmas holiday following, it was already starkly clear that one of Malta's best schools had been turned into a dump and the Minister responsible, appointed by Mintoff, was Ms Agatha Barbara. Her stewardship of education, under Mintoff's premiership, was marked by the absolute disaster that she perpetrated, not to put too fine a point on it, and there are many who say that it was not without some glee that Mintoff had appointed her in the first place.

I was at the University when Mintoff started his second term in office in the Seventies. Under his premiership, first the Medical School in particular and then the University in general were dismembered. The reasons were blindingly obvious: Mintoff brooked no opposition, and anyone with a brain could not but oppose him by then. The math was done and the result of the equation was that students were beaten, faculties smashed and many lives ruined.

I left the education system at this point, having graduated (no thanks to Mintoff, quite the contrary) but I know about the infamous "twenty point" system and about having to find "patrons" to be allowed to attend tertiary education.

After Mintoff, we had KMB, pictured in the Times' coverage on Friday with a smile on his face while attending Labour's cortege. His continuation of Mintoff's "love of education" and the way the fight was taken to the private and Church schools, and the fall-out, are well known and live in the memory of many, including mine, as I had the privilege of helping on the side of the righteous.

So please, hagiographers and re-writers of history, liars all, don't try to hoodwink us by telling us that Mintoff had anything but a visceral hatred towards "education" and anyone "educated".

Why this was is clear enough to me and I don't think you need a degree in rocket science to work it out.