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Blowing off the whistle-blower

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2024-03-16T06:57:30+01:00Fri, 15th Mar '24, 10:19|

Whistle-blowers are everything we’re programmed to dislike. They are close to something wrong, maybe even part of it. The chemist who exposed the cigarette makers for putting addictive poison in their products, was a chemist who had put addictive poison in cigarettes. Every day before whistle-blowers decided to blow the whistle was a day when [...]

Collective unethical responsibility

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2024-03-14T08:16:00+01:00Thu, 14th Mar '24, 08:16|

Imagine that. The CEO of a company hands the board their notice of resignation after their position became untenable due to public outcry over their conduct. That happens on 1 December with a notice that expires by the following 12 January by when the board of directors will have found a new replacement CEO. The [...]

Maybe it isn’t a cult, he said, probably sarcastically

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2024-03-13T13:12:19+01:00Wed, 13th Mar '24, 13:12|

The fact that there’s disagreement within the Labour Party about the return of Joseph Muscat is the best thing I’ve heard about the Labour Party in a long time. I don’t mean that in the schadenfreude sense with which some politicians of the PN delighted in the news. Nationalists must feel some relief to be [...]

At first, I thought this was meant to be funny

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2024-03-13T09:57:40+01:00Wed, 13th Mar '24, 09:57|

Clint Azzopardi Flores is running for the European Parliament on the Labour Party’s ticket. He’s a banker who spent time working in Malta’s embassy in Brussels. Judging by this article of his he’s also a nutcase. By that I don’t mean he’s somehow exceptional. Though to be fair these choice quotes from his analysis of [...]

The best of us

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2024-03-12T08:09:25+01:00Tue, 12th Mar '24, 08:09|

The prime minister’s office and the prime minister’s wife gave Times of Malta statements that manage to sound both categorical and hopelessly vague at the same time. The newspaper offered the Abela couple the opportunity to comment about an internal assessment made by their bankers when Robert Abela ascended the throne. That internal report asked [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Making history

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2024-03-10T07:45:05+01:00Sun, 10th Mar '24, 07:45|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "The notion that an academic could have their job threatened by the consequence of their controversial opinions is abhorrent. But the protection that academics rightly enjoy, giving them the space to think freely and critically, burdens them with the responsibility to be honest about the evidence that [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Threatening the courts

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2024-02-25T09:10:15+01:00Sun, 25th Feb '24, 09:10|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Joseph Muscat thought he could saunter into a courtroom and get a judge to relieve the magistrate investigating him because he didn’t like the look of her. His case is not over yet. But his repeated attempts at shifting the goal posts in a game he’s realising [...]

GUEST POST: Ivory Towers

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2024-02-25T09:07:05+01:00Sun, 25th Feb '24, 09:07|

‘Malta's hard-earned neutrality, which is a bedrock of our Constitution, was conceived first and foremost for dark times like these.’ These words can be found in an open letter sent to the Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister in response to reports that Malta may be participating in the EU Naval Operation in the Red [...]

GUEST POST: Waiting for the Messiah

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2024-02-16T06:45:20+01:00Fri, 16th Feb '24, 06:45|

 I am a baby boomer. Born in 1944, I celebrated my 79th birthday last summer. My generation has lived through civil rights movements, the Vietnam war, the Cold Wars, the fall of the Berlin wall, 9/11, and musical and cultural movements, too many to mention, that were rebellious, challenged existing traditional values, and changed the [...]

Who’s funnier?

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2024-02-15T09:06:14+01:00Thu, 15th Feb '24, 09:06|

David Walliams is a funny guy. He’s a world class host, an accomplished artist and storyteller, a charismatic entertainer who, I have no doubt, is worth every penny he charges. But quite why Minister Clayton Bartolo thinks that the fact that Walliams hosted an awards show in Malta could convince a filmmaker to shoot in [...]

GUEST POST: Ego te absolvo

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2024-02-15T09:04:21+01:00Thu, 15th Feb '24, 09:04|

Robert Abela has put on quite a few Edward Debono’ famed hats. He was a consultant to the world’s most corrupt prime minister, and he was the lawyer of several criminals who still adore him and spread his photo on their car bonnet. He is also an able yacht captain and navigator frequently sailing from [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Robert Abela, the buck-passer

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2024-02-11T10:13:12+01:00Sun, 11th Feb '24, 10:13|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "I am not offended by Abela blaming the EU for his failings because I have an emotional attachment to the EU. I am worried at his behaviour because Abela is exploiting his more advantageous relationship with his electorate to undermine other institutions of our democracy. He is [...]

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