Every so often, in the gaps between stories about COVID-19, the latest corruption and impunity scandal and Brexit, we get chunky headlines about how the court has stopped a nurses’ strike or allowed a nurses’ strike or a pilots’ strike or non-strike. Industrial disputes, especially when they risk inconveniencing a wider range of people than [...]

Yorgen Fenech did not make a legal move on the inquiry into the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Sure, he hired lawyers to write a long letter, quoting laws left, right and centre and a lawyer to sign it with a flourish. But the letter was sent to a host of individuals, none of whom [...]

Repubblika has warned Members of Parliament that should they adopt the draft law they are currently debating to “regularise” persons of trust in the public service, the NGO will challenge the new law in the constitutional court. Repubblika said it has legal advice that the draft law is in breach of the constitutional rule that [...]

I find myself once again retching, reading Simon Mercieca’s blog and peering inside the sick mind of Yorgen Fenech on whose behalf he writes. Like the Christ-killing libel against the Jews, Simon Mercieca digs up the old chestnut that Matthew killed his mother. He quotes an interview Matthew Caruana Galizia gave to my colleague Carlo [...]

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” - Abraham Lincoln Robert Abela thinks that he can foresee the future, and he keeps firing from the hip. He was proved wrong many a time. Take covid-19. He had predicted that all would be fine by Christmas. He was wrong and he has [...]

I’ve brushed shoulders with Anton Rea Cutajar once before. It was last Easter when Repubblika dared complain that acts by the government that Repubblika argued were illegal had, amongst their consequences, the death of 12 people at sea. That’s when I had coined the moniker Tiger King, or, more properly, Tiger Kink. I had borrowed [...]

Jacob Borg of Times of Malta followed up with the local police who confirmed they’re looking into press reports that a Calabrian accountant, Roberto Recordare, used two Malta companies as part of a plan to launder billions of euro for mafia associates. Roberto Recordare denies any wrongdoing, though he has not reacted to press reports [...]

Pieter Omtzigt’s mandate launched and renewed after the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia, now expires. The government of Malta has managed to sit tight and wait out his assiduous insistence that Malta needs serious reforms if it is to climb out of the pit of horrors where the killing of a journalist uncovering the government’s [...]

Like Agamemnon and Menelaus, Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela jumped the ring ropes as a macho tag team in their assault on the independence of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry. Joseph Muscat asserted his imaginary prerogative to define what the inquiry can and cannot inquire on. And Robert Abela is asserting his imaginary prerogative [...]

Breaking news. Several ex-Presidents of the USA, President-elect, anyone who’s anything, known to anybody, Homer Simpson and even Elvis Presley are lining up to be injected with a Covid-19 vaccine in front of the world’s media. Why? Because it looks like it will satisfy anyone who is “not too sure” about how safe these vaccines [...]

Ian Borg, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Capital Projects has a thing for TV and reporters’ cameras. He calls a press conference every alternate day to inaugurate some project or other. He has become a TV figure wearing the famous bright yellow vest and hard hat. I will watch out for his safety shoes next [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: “'The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped,' Hubert Humphrey [...]

From the get-go Joseph Muscat expressed displeasure at the questions asked during the year the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder inquiry has been in business, often trying to blame the family’s lawyers but having no qualms about roping in the judges as well. In some cases, he was particularly concerned about the quality of the witnesses [...]

The reaction of many good people to the judgement that held that It-Torċa had not libelled Pia Zammit was to be expected. Likewise, I stand with Pia, it need hardly be said. I was going to add ‘and some not so good ones’ or use ‘assorted luvvies’ instead of ‘many good people’, but hey, I [...]

While Joseph Muscat the physical person was testifying in the public inquiry this morning, Joseph Muscat the online persona was publishing Facebook posts furiously discrediting he same inquiry he was testifying to. Lovin Malta compared the “unhinged” posts to Donald Trump’s surreal tweetoramas. Matthew Caruana Galizia, rightly, thought Joseph Muscat “must have hired someone” to [...]

Joseph Muscat is facing the inquiry he himself set up to look into the state’s role in the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. But the man still walks around fully expecting to be the centre of gravity. He sought from the outset to turn the tables on the inquiry, putting the trial on trial as [...]

Whoever thought that would be a good idea (from his point of view) is either him or someone who never had a conversation with him. Or they never read the report of my interview with him which would have warned them the man would provide the worst possible recommendation for himself. Prison directors are not [...]

Today’s court decision denying Pia Zammit’s libel suit against it-Torċa appears to be predicated on the idea that taking an acting role in ‘Allo! ‘Allo! is controversial for being flippant about the holocaust or Nazism. This is a blindingly misguided reading of the play. No one should be able to emerge from watching ‘Allo! ‘Allo! [...]