Sir!

As you must by now be very well aware, it has - in the past - frequently fallen to me, as an unpaid and largely unappreciated guardian of this country's morals, to write to you on certain heinous trends in our beloved Malta's unstoppable slide down the slippery slope of dissipation and depravity. (That's some sentence... ed)

On this occasion I am turning my eagle-eyed gaze on an aspect of our country's decline that should both disgust and repel any decent-minded, God-loving citizen. (With you obviously at the top of the list... ed)

You see it has come to my notice that in certain - shall we say - ghettoes and slum areas like Sliema and St Julian's, a number of Eastern Europeans of the womanly persuasion have been plying their trade as pros... pro... no, it's no good, I can't bring myself to type the word - so let's call them ladies-of-the-night.

Now I am well aware that this fact - and I am reliably informed that it is a fact - will certainly shock and appall both your readers and your good self but I can assure you that it is, undoubtedly, the case, or so my informants assure me.

I can also tell you that when I first received this disturbing news, I found it very hard to believe that the powers-that-be could possibly stand idly by and ignore the fact that such activities were going on under their noses; yes sir - under their noses. As I observed to my personal therapist, Miss Fifi La Grope - I visit her on a regular basis for her highly efficacious herbal rubs - it is both abhorrent and an affront to the pristine morals of the vast majority of my countrymen, and even one or two of my countrywomen.

How can they permit such nauseating acts of wanton degeneracy to besmirch the honour and integrity of the gilded youth of our once great and mighty nation?

Speaking as a man of the world (Yes but which world?... ed), I am becoming increasingly inured against such abominations. But what about the callow innocents among us - those citizens who make up the vast majority of the population? They deserve better. When I look out of my study window and observe the good lady wife's rear framed in it as she weeds the petunia bed, I am forced to wonder what this sweet and chastely womanful female would think if she knew what was going on under her nose.

The good lady wife is a lady - yes sir, a lady of untainted and steadfast virtue: I well recall an incident of the most unsavoury nature, that took place in the games room of the officers' mess in Simla, back in '47. On that distant and unlamented occasion, the good lady wife was pursued relentlessly around the card tables by a rampant old brigadier from the 14th Hussars, with rather more on his mind than inviting her to make up a foursome at bridge.

But, as ever, the good lady wife stood firm and, with just one flick of her ebony tipped riding crop, she both cooled his ardour and qualified him to run in the upcoming gelding's plate.

That is the kind of spirit that is lacking today! (So, what has that got to do with Eastern European prostitutes?... ed) Tell me sir: must our sons, fresh from a decent Catholic education, return home to a land fit only for pimps and pros; ladies of easy virtue?

Is this puny self-serving government aware of this? Do they care?

I - don't - think - so! (Governments are not there to care, they are just there to get very, very rich... Ed)

What next? I ask myself; what other abominations will we have to endure in this putrid decomposing hovel, this once-great morally incorruptible paradise; this home for heroes such as the late, great Wing Commander Jean Parisot de La Vallette.

And so I call on all my compatriots to rise up... rise up and fight this all-engulfing tide of wanton decadence that is sweeping everything great and good from our shores.

And to do it now ... today! Before it's too late.

Yours in eternal revulsion;

Brig DG Hardly-Breathing Gatt KONR Ret'd.