People got angry yesterday watching Floriana FC fans celebrating in their main square like there’s no virus. Understandably the angriest of all are Valletta FC fans. They don’t like seeing their neighbours in green having a good time and that’s without needing a pandemic to fuel their moans. But people who are indifferent to football [...]

Byron Camilleri said yesterday the reports of hunger strikes and attempted suicides aboard the Captain Morgan boats out on Hurd’s Bank did not get to him. He’s under the impression migrants are perfectly happy to be held on the boats just beyond sight of Malta without any prospect or plan for what’s happening next to [...]

Yesterday’s The Malta Independent had the right headline. “The knives are out: How police chief appointment risks turning into a farce.” The process isn’t inspiring confidence, is it? And this country desperately needs an improved and strong police department. Edward Zammit Lewis seems to think that Malta’s reputation in the eyes of the rest of [...]

Italian home minister Luciana Lamorgese said she sent a video of migrants in distress at sea 6 miles from Malta’s coast as an AFM boat piloted through them, to Malta’s Byron Camilleri and told him she thought Malta’s behaviour was “absurd”. Minister Lamorgese was speaking on Rai Due’s Che tempo che fa: “I forwarded the [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Our relationship with power is a slightly more sophisticated version of the native islanders who show the colonists the way to the gold mines in exchange for mirrors, combs and trinkets. We ignore the rights of others as we cash in on the government’s generosity with our [...]

In case you haven’t come across it, read this report in The Guardian about the unlikely prospects of the New Zealand Opposition. “The leader of New Zealand’s opposition has been removed by his party in a desperate bid to install a figurehead who can match Jacinda Ardern’s star power in the upcoming September general election. [...]

I don’t know what Edward Zammit Lewis’s PR office is drinking but taking out paid adverts in the newspaper to congratulate one-self is hardly a recommendation of his work. In an advert Edward Zammit Lewis ticks off a series of headlines saying that “in less than 4 months this Government managed to move forward historic [...]

International NGO Human Rights Watch joined the chorus of pressure on Malta to allow migrants penned on Captain Morgan coastal cruises outside Maltese territorial waters to disembark in Malta and seek asylum if they choose. The organisation accused Malta’s government of having no legal basis or legitimate purpose for keeping people on these ferries, making [...]

Reno Calleja is a lifetime of humour. He was a minister in Dom Mintoff’s government until he was thrown out for being completely clueless. He’s spent a lifetime of irrelevance hovering around the Labour Party like a living fossil from the time Labour was the platform for Communist China’s interests in the West. He traded [...]

It’s really disturbing to see the government act with such contempt for the Venice Commission process. First they ignore them for 18 months and now they’re trying to hoodwink them with cosmetic and immaterial changes as if they were dealing with a gullible audience that is not specialised by training and experience to see through [...]

This BBC Assignment program by Lucy Proctor seems desperate to hear the other side of the story of the migrant boats ignored by the Maltese government in our area of responsibility over the Easter Weekend. They want to put questions to the Maltese authorities. Why did you ignore boats in your area of responsibility for [...]

Robert Abela does not have the courage of his conviction that in spite of the fact that the risks of the consequences we would face today from a spike in Covid-19 cases are identical to what they were in March, he is the one to carry the responsibility of deciding we should now face that [...]

If Robert Abela is reaching the conclusion that the country is ready to live without Covid-19, he should have some scientific basis to back that decision up. I’m sorry but it is a cop-out to now say the science is too flimsy. The science and the mathematics were extremely compelling when our children were ordered [...]

Why did it have to be the prime minister to deny Charmaine Gauci quit? This feels like an involuntary confirmation. I had been hearing from different sources since Friday that Charmaine Gauci could no longer stomach the fact that she was being used as a prop by Robert Abela to certify advice she was not [...]

Moron Alex Agius Saliba did some rainbow flag wrapping on a European Parliament’s online magazine carving out the empathic ventricle in his heart and speaking about the need to protect young gay people because we live “in a society that places increasing pressure on all of us”. He says that we should prioritise everyone’s mental [...]

The indomitable BugM said this was the strongest case yet for abolishing party-owned media. A 1:50 clip presenting a compelling argument in favour of the immediate shutting down of political tv stations in Malta. pic.twitter.com/gIMNmIG7sw — BugM (@bugdavem) May 20, 2020 And of course, he has a point. Political parties should not be allowed anywhere [...]

Activist Xandru Cassar asked like minded people to join him near Parliament at 7pm this evening and leave candles near the entrance of Parliament as a symbol of protest at the treatment of asylum seekers by Maltese authorities. Since the onset of coronavirus the government has refused to fulfil its international obligations of saving lives [...]

The prime minister, the interior minister and the chief of the army were served today with a judicial protest filed by lawyers acting for relatives of two of the 12 people reported to have died waiting for rescue on a migrants’ dinghy in distress in Maltese waters during the Easter week. The brother and the [...]

Free speech NGOs have filed recommendations today on action the EU can take to reduce the risk of SLAPP suits against journalists working in the European Union. The recommendations are backed up by legal advice prepared by Maltese lawyer Justin Borg Barthet who lectures in the University of Aberdeen. The NGOs recommended a change to [...]