At a time of year epitomising a secular conscience of faith, hope and trust, deliberations on on-going socio-political instinctive exploratory ventures are the embodiment of a well-meaning political society manoeuvring without a sense of direction. The culmination of political cautious imperatives towards a penumbra of righteousness. Indecisive wishful determination for which the bibles offer a [...]

Someone to claim us, someone to follow, Someone to shame us, some great Apollo, Someone to fool us, someone like you, We want you Big Brother, Big Brother. From "Big Brother" by David Bowie (1973).

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2019, we found ourselves at what may very well turn out to be the beginning of the end. We were in Magistrate Axiak’s court, into which a couple of hours earlier, Keith Schembri had strode, flanked by his pretty high-powered legal team, [...]

We’re finishing 2019 but we’re half way through the most intense, most critical chapters of the history of independent Malta. A wrap up of the news at the end of the year sounds hollow. When one is half way through something it hardly feels the right time to be looking back. This 'Top 20 posts [...]

Labour’s leadership hopefuls are busy letting us have the benefit of their wisdom about everything under the sun.  They carefully calibrate their sublime utterances with an eye to the electorate that will be elevating them or casting them out into the wilderness, where there will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or some such [...]

The forces of decency are slow to anger, but if you do manage to piss them off their power is awesome to behold. Despite the grim, continued bleakness of our current national crisis it has at least been gratifying to see the old, the young, the ‘I-don’t-care-about-politics-but-this-is-too-much’ brigade, all expressing their anger at the corruption [...]

On the 19th December the Slovakian Republic began the process of healing itself after the cold blooded double murder of Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend in 2018. The court case against the murderers and the mastermind who ordered it and the ministers involved begins. Listening to the commentators both from within Slovakia and from outside [...]

If there’s to be change, we must perceive the difference. What the crooks have done to Malta over the past 6 years is a horrible crime against our history, the respect we used to enjoy in the rest of the world, our own self-awareness as a nation and a society ‘based on work’ rather than [...]

In a statement this morning Repubblika, #occupyjustice and this website said they were angry and deeply concerned about what is going on in this country. It is clear to everyone that this pretence that everything is normal is really a cover-up for the institutional collapse of our democracy. The country needs a new vision for [...]

‘Provocation’ is a word cowards use. They resort to it when they run out of any reasonable argument and they’re getting ready to respond with violence instead. When there is no longer an excuse to twist facts and make the insane look reasonable, they place a deposit in the advanced justification of the punches they [...]

Maltese energy consumers are set to stuff the pockets of the owners of Electrogas with larger profits in 2020 as the global market price of liquid natural gas (LNG) is set to tumble due to a glut of supply and overproduction of LNG in the US, Russia, Qatar and other supplying countries. Although Malta’s energy [...]

This website has received multiple unconfirmed reports that Keith Schembri, the ex-chief of staff of disgraced prime minister Joseph Muscat, is travelling out of Malta with his family. At the time of writing, they are reportedly waiting to travel out of Malta at the airport's VIP area. Keith Schembri is, according to the police, the [...]

Following Lovin Malta’s report that Joseph Muscat accepted a Bulgari watch worth an undefined number of tens of thousands of euro from Yorgen Fenech, Repubblika today filed a report asking the police to investigate this as a bribe. The wristwatch was handed over when Yorgen Fenech’s Electrogas Consortium needed most desperately the government’s good will. [...]

Joseph Muscat has tweeted his wishes for Christmas. Il- #Milied it-Tajjeb / Merry #Christmas -JM — Joseph Muscat (@JosephMuscat_JM) December 25, 2019 The disgraced soon to be former prime minister of Malta behaves like a dying regime that stubbornly refuses to understand what is going on around it. Joseph Muscat is not alone. Even as [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Now everyone says they regret Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were not fired three years ago. It’s too late for that. But what we’re doing now is lining up for the regrets we’re going to express three years from now. "We will regret not reforming the partitocracy [...]

I’m not going to join the bandwagon of the shocked and disappointed. Ivan Camilleri was thrown out of The Times because his former employer has reason to believe Ivan Camilleri used information he became aware of at work and tipped off Yorgen Fenech that the police were after him for Daphne’s murder. Shock, disappointment and [...]

When soon-to-be (but not soon enough) ex-PM Joseph Muscat had done his snivelling big-girl’s blouse act after he had published the conclusions of Magistrate, now Judge, Bugeja’s report on the ownership of Egrant Inc, many were signally unimpressed. You see, when a judicial officer uses words, these are used with precision (and quite a bit [...]

Chris Cardona is saying the Labour Party should kick out Keith Schembri now. Presumably because he lost his phone? Because you'd have to wonder what changed now. A lot of people need to trace back what they've said about Keith Schembri even very recently. These are Robert Musumeci and Emanuel Cuschieri. Do they still think [...]

The current state of play is truly disconcerting. Keith Schembri remains free in spite of the fact that his contortions on the witness stand fool no one, except it would seem, the entire police force. His excuses are childish. ‘I was reading and did not know I was supposed to be in court.’ ‘I lost [...]

My piece in this month's edition of the Money Magazine.   Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad is a household name in Malta. It was not always so. When he walked into the finance minister’s office in 2012 he was unknown. And he would remain largely anonymous outside the corridors of power until much later. Mr Nejad [...]