Just last week Clyde Caruana sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He was launching the national employment strategy, a subject on which he has considerable background having run Jobsplus before he was co-opted to Parliament and made finance minister. Read this report of his speech at the time. The general gist is [...]

There is little doubt the budget speech seals the Labour Party's lease extension on political power. It was designed to do that no matter how aggressive the assumptions and doubtful their plausibility. What we can't forget now is that the issue on the lease on power is secondary. The crooks fully expected the election result [...]

Yesterday's budget speech was designed to irritate no one and please everyone. On the back of barely spoken bold assumptions of pumping economic growth, the government told itself and everyone it could afford to be generous. And so it was. An economist would want to examine those underlying assumptions. They would look at the numbers [...]

The headline item from yesterday’s budget speech is the news that a year from now bus fares will be scrapped for residents. Tourists will continue to pay. The finance minister estimates that for a regular bus commuter that uses public transport to go to work everyday this will amount to a saving of some €300 [...]

No government, however hard-pressed, will want to face the electorate with bad news on the eve of a general election. Yesterday’s budget speech was bound to be a bonanza of gift-giving because no matter what we say about our democratic maturity we still think of the government as some form of Father Christmas and the [...]