About

My name is John Spiteri Gingell and this is my personal blog.

I had my early education primarily at home by my family, and secondly through 9 years of schooling at St. Aloysius College. My Greatest influence was my grandfather, a self thought man, who beat all the odds to make a complete success out of his life and whose accrued profound insight into human nature and pretty much everything else is very hard to articulate.

I still treasure what memories I have of him. I treasure above all his words of encouragement and advise.

Who can forget words such as ‘is-sabih kollox jixraqlu’ (”anything will suit a beautiful person” in response of grandma’s protestations that I should cut my hair!) or ‘jekk taf tikteb u taf taqra, m’ghandek bzonn lill hadd jghinek. ’ (”if you know how to read and write you need no one to teach you”)

He was what I call a universal man who played the violin and was excellent at painting, who was just as comfortable discussing philosophy, science or Maltese grammar. He was a man who at the age of seventy started learning German and could still quote Ivanhoe and Macbeth at length even though he had last read them in his teens. His universality was a product of a genuine love and appreciation of life. It was a consequence of his natural curiosity and a lust for knowledge or more accurately meaning. He proved to me that the solution of a problem in one discipline can be more easily resolved with knowledge of another – that everything is interconnected, and the true answers of life lie in connecting the dots – they lie between the lines. Knowledge to him was like a damp cloth that put to good use would remove the layers of dust and grime to reveal a beautiful picture – A big picture, in which we would finally see ourselves and appreciate how we fit in the painter’s work – A work that was ultimately derived from a uni-verse ; that is from a single Word.

My parents, I thank not only for their tireless dedication and endless sacrifices – but also for allowing me to be who I am, and by providing me and my brothers with a large and varied library. A library which all of us have been contributing to ever since.

Professionally I work in Information technology and I have worked at MSU, MITTS, Lucent (in Germany) and recently as the CIO in the Ministry of Finance. I am currently a freelancer who specializes in open source solutions and web design. In my free time I pursue different avenues. Given that I can’t stand the socialists that pose as environmentalists, you might be surprised that I have a diploma in Wildlife and Forestry Conservation and studied Natural History and Geology with The Open University whilst I was in Germany. I am very fond of the countryside and rural life in general and that is where I live (Manikata). I consider rural life as bastion of Conservatism. Rural People are generally less insulated from the harshness of life and as a consequence less susceptible to idiocy and folly. This is why Lenin and Stalin in particular, hated rural folk so much.

I am married and the proud father of little baby girl.

OK so what do I stand For?

I stand for limited government and oppose the ever encroaching state.

I believe that a government’s first duty is to safeguard its citizens.

I stand for balance – Between reason and emotion, with a higher emphasis on the former. Too much of either though is generally harmful. Our nature possesses both, so they both have their use.

I stand for Western Culture and Civilization and that includes Christianity without which the former would have no basis. I am against multiculturalism and do not subscribe to the notion that cultures unlike individuals are fundamentally equal.

I subscribe to the conventional wisdom of tradition, evidence and experience and reject the utopianism of ideology.

I believe that cause has consequence.

I am a conservative in as much as I want to conserve all that which is known to be good and true. I do not believe in change for change’s sake.

I stand for the free market – the most progressive and innovative of forces.

I do not subscribe to moral relativism and hence believe in an external morality.

I believe that humanity has a an inherent nature, which cannot like a slate be wiped clean and it is thus wiser to have laws which take this nature into account, and not laws that pretend that it does not exist as liberals want.

I am against equal opportunity but am in favour of more opportunity for everyone.

I do not believe that individuals are biologically equal, but that each individual is special and has its own potential, which should be incentivized and maximized.

I believe that people should enjoy the fruits of their labour, and that coercive redistribution of wealth is simply immoral. ‘Thou shalt not steal ‘ – remember?

I am against the dependency culture. Whilst I believe in welfare I am against the welfare state. I believe that people need tow ropes as opposed to safety nets in which they inevitably get entangled and trapped.

I stand for freedom and prosperity.

I stand for freedom of speech without which there can be no freedom. I abhor political correctness which in true Marxist fashion is simply a tool for censorship and social engineering.

I stand for freedom of association.

I believe in natural justice, which means the rights of a victim should be given precedence to the rights of the criminal. I believe that justice is primarily about safeguarding society and secondly about reforming the individual. I prefer that we build a thousand prisons than ending up as prisoners in our own homes.

I stand for the sovereignty of My Country and its people and despise those who transfer an iota of it without the consent of the populace.

I believe in the traditional family and that marriage should remain solely between husband and wife.

I believe in the meritocracy of the individual and am opposed to ‘group rights’ and collectivism in general. Such ‘rights’ only serve to divide society into ‘classes’.

I believe in natural rights based on natural law. I reject so called ‘progressive’ law.

I believe in the nation state and reject supra-nationalism and world government.

I believe that humanity has a right to improve its condition, and hence reject dangerous policies which are designed to impede it such as the carbon emissions trading, in the delusion quest to stall the so called global warming.

I believe that science is built on falsifiability and not on consensus.

I believe that if we don’t get the facts right, then inevitably the policy would be disastrous.

I reject the so called precautionary principle – if our primeval ancestor reasoned that way, we would still be living in caves and would have never invented fire, electricity or the wheel. I hence believe that it would be wiser if we simply adapted to natural climatic variations, much as our forefathers and the rest of nature have successfully done before.

I believe that  education is the domestication of instinct and not the indulging of it. I believe that educators are there in loco parentis and hence the state has no right to brainwash their kids. I believe that education is about fact and critical thinking and not about making students ‘feel good’. I believe that education is character formation, primarily preparing students to surmount the constant challenges in their adult lives. It is about teaching them how to stand on their own feet and how to deal with the pains they will experience when they fall. I believe that true education is about inspiration, and installing a genuine thirst for life, it is about the inculcation of genuine values, values which they have to fall on in hard times. I believe therefore that public education should be what it now isn’t.

I stand for the big picture, and I hope you enjoy my blog.