Julia Farrugia dismissed calls for her resignation saying she never meant to give Chetcuti Cauchi any advantage when months ago she gave an “interview” on the passports sales scheme. We saw that “interview” in obviously advertising material published by Chetcuti Cauchi and left there even as the firm’s senior partner Jean Philippe Chetcuti was caught [...]

If you've seen Vanilla Sky you will remember the scene of David Aames driving through a deserted New York and running through an empty Time Square. He was running through a nightmare which in that film was called a lucid dream. Watch this short by Eric Bartolo about our own lucid dream: the streets of [...]

The biggest lesson from the 2008 financial crisis was to act big as early as possible. The hesitation of regulators, governments and central banks had an enormous economic cost that led to hardship that more timely action could have at least in part prevented. That’s the biggest lesson from the world stage borne out of [...]

I’m not an economist, so I won’t comment about PM Robert Abela’s “thirds wave” of rescue measures. All I know is, the amount of questions as to how they’re going to work and what small enterprises, apparently not much represented in the MCESD, are supposed to do, that were raised in a forum I’m in [...]

The commissioner for standards in public life read the only message that was intended by the Chetcuti Cauchi law firm and Julia Farrugia Portelli and the government she's part of: "aħna ta' ġewwa". 'We're buddies'. The videos of the then junior minister responsible for the passports sales scheme in the office of the prime minister [...]

The government wants to have a temporary hospital with at least 84 beds built in the next 8 weeks. That raises a number of questions the government should really have answered before we found out about this. Firstly, when are the government’s calculations telling them to expect the spread of this disease to peak in [...]

Local film producers have asked the Ombudsman to investigate Film Commissioner Johann Grech four weeks after press reports showed he removed the bulk of them from the official list of local producers the Commission makes available to international film makers looking for crews when working in Malta. In spite of evidence published by news site [...]

The government has moved to fix a gap in powers of the superintendent of public health which if not fixed could cause chaos in the courts including allowing persons charged with crimes to walk free because of a technicality. The issue was first raised by this website in a 15 March post, the day after [...]

COVID-19 is today probably the most used word anywhere in the entire world. Whichever TV station one switches to within the hour, one is bound to hear COVID-19. This pandemic is being compared to the Spanish flu historically, but even to a war which some countries like Italy, are said to be losing. All ages [...]

Zhou Enlai (not Mao Zedong as an earlier version of this post wrongly said) was asked once what he thought the impact of the French Revolution was. He replied that it was too early to say. That was almost two centuries after the fall of the Bastille. Trying to predict what life will be like [...]

Is it just me or have we all gone right back into that busy hectic social whirl we’re supposed to be relinquishing? Seriously, quarantine really has upped the social ante. It’s as if we’ve never seen the inside of our own homes before, the internet has become some kind of newly-discovered resource and – horror [...]

The prime minister needs to do more. Now. The prime minister has not spoken to his people for many days. A transmission on the Labour Party radio station does not count. Rather the contrary. When the media of a political party is used we are divided into tribes when we desperately need to be together [...]

This tweet shows a small anthology of exasperated Italian mayors trying to get people to realise that after 5,600 people were killed by coronavirus anyone could be next. One of the mayor complains rather wittily about people ordering their hairdresser to come round to their house because the shops have been on lockdown for two [...]

The leap Marthese Portelli made from parliamentary politics to lobbying politicians on behalf of the construction lobby is unseemly. It’s like dating too soon after your spouse’s funeral. Worse. It’s like dating your late spouse’s neighbour with whom your family has been in a long-standing property dispute. Let’s get some obvious objections out of the [...]

Christo Georgiev's company myPOS that sells portable point of sale terminals for contactless payments was advertised yesterday in a paid advertorial carried by local website Lovin Malta. The feature, marked 'sponsored' by the website, promotes the services of Malta company 247Pay the local partner for Christo Georgiev's MyPOS a company based in the UK. Christo [...]

A slowed down caused by the coronavirus pandemic may be the reason why the sentencing of Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad has been set for five months after he was found guilty by a New York jury of 5 counts of money laundering, bank fraud and busting sanctions against his native Iran. The date of the [...]

As I write this, on Sky News two grinning idiots are being asked why they are out, having a drink in a public space, despite the UK government’s request that people don’t do this. Admittedly, their Prime Minister is himself a grinning idiot, albeit one that has finally started listening to the grown-ups. Their answer [...]

Someone sent me this but they don't know who wrote it. I thought you might like to read it. Stop. Just stop. It is no longer a request. It is a mandate. We will help you. We will bring the supersonic, high-speed merry-go-round to a halt We will stop the planes the trains the schools [...]

Have you ever heard the song of a nightingale? It’s very seductive. Its harmony hypnotic and many are held in awe of it. Poets have dedicated works to it. But allusions can very easily be illusions. It’s not the first time a crow masqueraded as a nightingale and so in King Lear we are warned [...]

Gaslighting was not a term I was familiar with until recently. As film buffs would know, it refers to the 1944 film Gaslight, where perfidious husband Charles Boyer is trying to convince his wife Ingrid Bergman that she is going insane by questioning the reality she sees before her. You would think that was not [...]