Driving down the M40 to visit my elderly mother today for Mother’s Day, there was a sudden whooshing sound and dazzling lights as my car was swept into hyperspace (a bit like that extended cosmic Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Or maybe it was a traffic jam, and I started day-dreaming.

Whatever.

Arriving in HemeI Hempstead I found myself in the strange Parallel Universe of Maltastar.

Here is its banner heading as flickering across my screen right now, at 19.21 UK time this evening:

Highlights: Crawford refuses to answer Maltastar questions

What?

What?!?

I have had no request from Maltastar to answer questions. What I have had amidst dozens of hard-to-follow comments from Malta posted on my blog is an email from one Glenn Bedingfield. (Note: for no good reason whatsoever other than extreme Malta-induced stress I miswrote this name as Dangerfield earlier this evening. It’s spreading! Apologies.) It was sent at 12.36 to the contact link on my site, thus:

Dear Mr Crawford 

With reference to media reports and to your blog on your homepage we would like to call you to get your reaction on tonight’s edition of One News.

Where can we contact you please?

Regards,

Glenn Bedingfield

Political Editor

One News

There was no telephone number, no explanation of what One News is, nor even any indication that One News is in fact in Malta. 

Being at my mother’s house with no computer and having no way to check what if anything this might be about, plus not wanting to get dragged into a fatuous non-story in Malta if indeed that was the subject, I quickly and politely replied from my iPhone:

Dear Glenn
I am running around a lot with Mother’s Day activities, so I’ll let my website say all I have to say on this topic. 
Many thanks,
Charles

Sent from my iPhone 

This message appears to have been passed by Mr Bedingfield to Maltastar and then genetically modified into this:

When contacted by Maltastar.com, the Prime Minister’s consultant Charles Crawford refused to answer any questions, stating that all he needed to say was said in his personal blog.

On the said blog, Crawford says that he does not know many Maltese persons and also mentions Daphne Caruana Galizia, a columnits (sic) who is very close to the Prime Minister’s inner circle. He praises her blogs.

In that same blog entry, Crawford states “Maltese politics and personalities are a subject about which I know nothing.” However he fails to mention the fact that he has been contracted by the Maltese Government to give his expert advice. In his blog Mr Crawford never denies he had a meeting with Prime Minister Gonzi.

Good grief.

For the record:

  • I am NOT the Malta Prime Minister’s consultant
  • I have NOT been contacted by Maltastar.
  • I was contacted by ONE News, part of ONE Productions, whose website does not say that it is an organ of Maltastar (although maybe it is?) 
  • I am bewildered by the Maltastar claim that I have not mentioned on my site that I have been "contracted by the Maltese Government to give my expert advice". This makes it 100% clear that I was asked by the Malta Foreign Ministry to give professional diplomatic communications training, and indeed have done so
  • As for the Maltastar claim that In his blog Mr Crawford never denies he had a meeting with Prime Minister Gonzi, I plead guilty. Why? Because the subject has not arisen! No-one has ever asked me whether I have had a meeting with Prime Minister Gonzi. 

This absurd suggestion seems to be having a life of its own. I have just received another comment on my site from a Mr bUTTIGIEG(sic) asking whether I met the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister during my stay.

Maltastar, ONE News, Mr bUTTIGIEG and anyone else in, from or pertaining to Malta who has not died of boredom by this stage! Please read what follows very carefully:

No. And No.

No, I did not meet the Prime Minister.

No, I did not meet the Foreign Minister.

What I did do was give 1.5 days’ professional diplomatic communications training (official drafting, writing, speechwriting and so on) to a small group of government officials, as agreed with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In a supreme moment of Maltese irony, I emphasised the value of Accuracy in all professional work.

I gave lots of real-life examples of long sentences (bad), short sentences (good), solecisms, infelicities and so on with a view to helping the course participants write brisk English for all official communications purposes.

Oh, and to break the monotony we watched a YouTube clip from Mars Attacks, as it is a witty example of official prose-style when applied to oratory:

Then I walked up to look at the superlative St John’s Cathedral. I had a lugubrious slice of pizza at the airport. I flew home on Air Malta, which showed itself to be punctual and efficient.

That’s it, folks.

Nothing whatsoever to do with parachuting unhappy MPs into government Ministries as per the original Maltastar allegation.

Nothing whatsoever to do with mediating disputes between any political party or faction.

No political consultancy.

Just the sort of normal (but rather well done) Good Writing and other training I have been giving to other governments and the European Commission, to help officials and thereby Ministers get messages across to each other and the public, accurately and clearly and (sometimes) memorably. 

I am loath to say anything else on this subject.

And if people in Malta henceforth want to fight their vivid political battles actually in Malta itself, and not in the Comments section of my website, that will be fine too.

All that said, if anyone in Malta wants cool professional top-end communications or mediation training, here I am.