Since April 2020, Prime Minister Robert Abela has sat on an experts’ report that told him about practice in Malta’s construction industry that “is nothing short of playing Russian roulette with the lives of third parties”. This refers to the current practice of excavating flush with the party walls, creating a vertical face of rock [...]
People are receiving cold sales calls again from public officials salaried by taxpayers asking them if they need anything from the minister contesting their constituency. Residents of Siġġiewi have told this website they got phone calls from someone working in Roderick Galdes’s ministry. Roderick Galdes is the minister for social housing and MP for the [...]
I'm not sure what Mario Galea means with this post. Is he happy or unhappy? Is it a quirk in the local language that cannot distinguish between humbled and humiliated?
As has been established, our two-party system is vulnerable to corruption. It has been established for longer that it is exposed to the whims of loud lobbies. Each party needs to secure the support of at least half the voting population. That’s a lot of differing views. It gets ugly. Consider Robert Abela’s appalling conduct [...]
Lovin Malta is reporting that Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi are no longer under police bail. The police will not confirm it because they say the law prevents them from discussing individuals who have not yet been charged. Other countries have a register of people who are under investigation. The register is public and once [...]
The PN said today that its former leader Adrian Delia has refused a job in Bernard Grech's new shadow cabinet. No doubt Adrian Delia will write some poem to give us his reasons. Whatever his official story will be, the man who was never elected to parliament by any vote is sitting on an opposition [...]
Chris Fearne told Lovin Malta he didn’t break any Covid shut down rules when he visited Construct Furniture during lockdown. That’s because manufacturing activities were allowed to go on and Construct is a manufacturing plant. As Lovin Malta pointed out showrooms (as non-essential retail outlets) were ordered to shut down. Chris Fearne didn’t visit the [...]
What is similar between the inaugurations of the President-elect of the United States in 1861 and the President-elect of the United States in 2021? Abraham Lincoln and Joe Biden both had to change their travel plans on the eve of their inauguration for security reasons. Biden was planning to travel on an Amtrak train from [...]
Photo: Evan Vucci/AP In this little pond of ours, we see things tribally, condone anything one of our team does. I used to think it was just us. That it’s because we are insular, small-minded, politically immature. Then I had a long conversation with a highly intelligent, articulate, usually value-obsessed American man who [...]
On 11 November 2020 Magistrate Joe Mifsud recused himself from hearing the case brought by the police against Jonathan Ferris and Maria Efimova on the back of complaints from Joseph Muscat because he was also hearing a stalled case by the police against Maria Efimova on the back of complaints from Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad. [...]
In our small island, kissed by the sun, we have been also graced, maybe with the succour of St Paul or St Luke, with a genial prime minister who sees light when it’s dark and is upbeat when the whole world is in a dismal situation because of the coronavirus pandemic. Our own Robert Abela [...]
When Joseph Muscat gave evidence in Adrian Delia’s case against the government yesterday, he said that the notorious €100 million termination clause in the deal with Vitals Global Healthcare – later transferred to Steward Health Care – “was included as a way to guarantee a bank’s loan without violating EU state aid rules”. In saying [...]
‘Investment’ is one of the most twisted terms used by politicians here. It somehow sounds better than spending. Investment suggests there would be a return somewhere down the line. It is a loan you give to fate, fully expecting it to be repaid with interest. Spending on infrastructure can be an investment. If you’re building [...]
Daniel Mercieca is an individual who is claiming on Facebook that he used to work at Construct Furniture. You know the one. That's the guys who hosted Joseph Muscat in their expensive kitchen at the end of 2015, recording a "New Year's Message" pretending to be poor families made good as a result of some [...]
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From my article in The Sunday Times today: "But there’s more to a collapsed house than criminal responsibility. There is political responsibility and the need to learn from mistakes and change rules to make things better next time. That’s what having checks and balances in a democracy is all about. "If we had a half-way [...]
Two days ago Robert Abela told journalists they could ask him 100 times whether he sat on the cabinet meeting that decided on whether to pardon Vincent Muscat, il-Koħħu. His answer would remain unchanged. He’s bound by cabinet secrecy and you couldn’t get the information out of him whether you threw a light on his [...]
Chris Said wrote yesterday on his Facebook page that Gozo General Hospital will return to public ownership in short order in an agreement with Steward Healthcare to quit Gozo’s only hospital. It has been in private ownership since it was sold together with St Luke’s and Karin Grech’s hospital to the obscure outfit VGH in [...]