Can the government please stop double-speaking? Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo yesterday categorically assured us his government, including the tourism agency, are not "blessing" mass activities over the summer. Certainly not until the public health authorities tell us that it's safe enough to party. Now, look at this "glitch festival". It's being advertised for this summer [...]
The first entry on the first day of this blog was an analysis of the 2017 election written two days after the result came out. Labour was in the throes of irrepressible celebration. And the taunts of vindication were everywhere. The trolls were all over the place. Daphne’s lies and Simon’s lies strengthened us, they [...]
The Toni Bezzina situation is weird. Let’s first speak about the facts. The PN club of Żurrieq is a ramshackle Lego of two and a half rooms on top of each other. The half room at the very top had been a disused dump until Toni Bezzina, an architect working at the public works department, [...]
The national airline Air Malta has sold its name and its brand to its shareholder, the government of Malta, for €21 million in a series of transactions seen as a likely last-ditch attempt to cover up state aid to the ailing airline. Now that Malta’s government owns the Air Malta brand it should also be [...]
Births, for the most part, are a cause for celebration. A brand-new start. A fruition. Today marks the birth of PEN Malta. We should be celebrating this achievement. But really, shouldn’t we be crying that such an organisation is born? That we need to have an organisation to fight for freedom of expression? In an [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "The official reason for the new law is that there are money launderers who create voluntary organisations you never heard of to wash proceeds of their crimes. It is true. These phantom organisations exist. But they are not your local band club, the karate nursery where your [...]
Repubblika reported Carmelo Abela to George Hyzler for spending public money on government-paid adverts sporting little more than a glamour shot of himself. Newsbook yesterday reported that the report found Carmelo Abela in breach of ethical rules. The Labour participants of the committee George Hyzler reports to are protesting that Newsbook had seen the report. [...]
Manuel Delia · Viva l-lejber mela (after James Debono) James Debono catalogued reactions to Marie Louise Coleiro Preca’s plea for forgiveness for the actions of some, from within the Labour Party, over the last few years. The first category of reactions he referred to was mine, which he portrayed as extreme. Rather than think up [...]
‘It’s there,’ Robert Abela declared yesterday. ‘Black on white. The inquiry declared Egrant Inc belonged to Brian Tonna.’ The Egrant inquiry is more than 1,500 pages long. Robert Abela’s interviewer yesterday did not have a copy handy. Mark Laurence Zammit did recall the inquiry report was concerned with establishing whether Egrant belonged to Joseph Muscat [...]
I must make a note of moving to the 4th district. You never go hungry or thirsty there. Before the last general election, Konrad Mizzi and Chris Fearne went into a bidding war on who would make their constituents diabetic or alcoholic first. Now that Konrad Mizzi is unlikely to be on the list of [...]
Magistrate Rachel Montebello threw out today a request by Yorgen Fenech’s lawyer to find lawyers representing Daphne Caruana Galizia’s family in contempt of court. Lawyers Charles Mercieca, Gianluca Caruana Curran and Marion Camilleri accused Jason Azzopardi and Therese Comodini Cachia of defying an earlier order by Magistrate Rachel Montebello about using data from Yorgen Fenech’s [...]
Look, Malta’s vaccination program is doing well. Compared with the rest of the EU it is doing very well. So Robert Abela could go on TV and say his government is acquitting itself reasonably well in the national vaccination effort. Why does he feel the need to lie, exaggerate, and burst his own credibility, such [...]
Note to Aaron Farrugia: if you’re going for gimmicks, make sure they work. The green-fingered minister is mailing a letter to every household with a bag of wildflower seeds and instructions on how to grow them. Several of the seeds that still need to be posted belong to species that are past their growth season [...]
Did I say that even after his resignation in disgrace from the financial services authority, Joe Cuschieri was still a director of a government company? I was wrong. He's a director of two government companies. Apart from the one I reported on yesterday, the Malta Business Registry says Joe Cuschieri is also the director of [...]
You might think I’m asking for it. Think again. Newsbook revealed this morning that the parliamentary committee that reviews reports by the commissioner for standards is tomorrow due to discuss a report after a complaint Repubblika made about an advert run by Carmelo Abela. It was a full-page advert taken out in newspapers, half of [...]
This time of five years ago we were in the middle of the storm after the Panama Papers revelations. Three companies: one owned by Keith Schembri, the other owned by Konrad Mizzi, and a third, Egrant, with an unknown owner. Joseph Muscat excused Keith Schembri saying this had been the private choice of a private [...]
Sent in by someone known to me: President Emeritus Marie Louis Coleiro Preca saw it fit to advise the Labour Party to apologise for the corruption, scandals and numerous other misdeeds committed by them not only whilst in government but also in the run up to the 2013 elections. Without wanting to go into the [...]
Judge Consuelo Scerri Herrera was asked by Vince Muscat il-Koħħu not to hear the case of the 2010 HSBC armed robbery because he has knowledge of the involvement of a sitting (and a former) cabinet minister. Vince Muscat has so far not identified who the sitting minister he has in mind is although suspicion inevitably [...]
Joseph Cuschieri, who resigned in disgrace from his post as head of the financial services authority after the press exposed a tryst in Las Vegas with Yorgen Fenech, is still the director of a government-owned company. The Malta Business Registry lists Joseph Cuschieri as one of three government-appointed directors of Safe City Limited. But the [...]
The Commission on Gender-Based and Domestic Violence has withdrawn a Facebook post that condemned me for what they described as an act of gender-based violence, calling on me to apologise to Rosianne Cutajar for this article I had written about her. The decision to withdraw their statement came a day after I filed a judicial [...]