Five years ago today was the most triumphant day of Lawrence Gonzi’s premiership. As the EU was cutting down on its 7-year budget, he pushed and secured a considerable increase in the allocation of funds to Malta. 1.128 billion euro for the subsequent seven years. Labour governments got to spend it. That’s fine. It’s the [...]

‘Laburisti sal-Mewt’ is a Facebook group for people who think support for their party is a life-long commitment. Or perhaps they think it’s a terminal illness. Either way they congregate there to live in a world where everyone agrees with them and any traitors in their midst can be made to walk the plank. It’s [...]

Update 19:49 Adds clarification from Frank Psaila. Frank Psaila wrote a moving piece on Eddie Fenech Adami. So moving he moved himself to tears. That is not remarkable in itself. What is remarkable is Frank Psaila felt he needed to thank himself for having brought himself to tears. It's something to will yourself to cry. [...]

US News Magazine The Atlantic published a detailed report on the aftermath of the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia remarking that "the murder of a journalist in Europe, at a time when democratic institutions face severe tests worldwide, risk making Malta the weak point that could threaten the entire bloc". The enormous ramifications of this [...]

Conflict of interest is not an absolute. It's not like virginity: you either have it or you do not. Which is why it is always so controversial. There are lines you should not cross in public life but however real they are, they are invisible. Standards and expectations change over time and normally, one would [...]

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has assured the public she would exclude the National Health Service from any free trade agreement with the United States. A UK The Times story (you'll need a subscription to read it in full) reports on questions from Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable to the prime minister demanding she "confirms [...]

Do please read today's leader on Times of Malta. It warns off Jason Micallef, Ray Azzopardi and others who think that since Valletta is Tagħna Lkoll, no one has the right to protest against the government. Here's what they had to say about the vicious clamour to "clean out" the people's memorial to Daphne around [...]

I have no problem admitting that I am a fan of Joseph Calleja. I am no expert but I like his singing. But more than the honeyed voice and booming roar he's famous the world over for, he's a boy from home so I don't mind saying, he's my excuse for wrapping myself in the [...]

Of all the many ways that media freedom is compromised by state intervention in Malta, the most glaring is the false adoption of the term 'journalist' by propagandists of the state. They not only pretend to be journalists whilst serving the interest of their regime. They actively work to exclude genuine journalists and seek to [...]

Glen Bedingfield is a man of many hats but only one really counts. He's a blogger. He's a back-bench Labour MP. But those are auxiliaries. His core function is at the Office of the Prime Minister, at a desk no more than 10 metres from that of Joseph Muscat. As a source he is as [...]

Watch this speech by Jason Azzopardi. He makes the case on how Pilatus Bank and Henley and Partners appear to be fingers attached to the same hidden hand. Another finger is Joseph Muscat who is reported by MaltaToday insisting he had no prior knowledge of Pilatus’s Arizona SLAPP lawsuit against Daphne Caruana Galizia. https://youtu.be/5Dwtea2wrAI Actually [...]

Guest Post by Vicki Ann Cremona If you had to go into a café in Valletta Capital of Culture and ask for a coffee, you would need more than a euro to pay for it. However, I think each and every one of us would have a euro to spare. And had the government offered [...]

A Jason Azzopardi Parliamentary Question asking Chris Cardona to list direct orders committed by his Ministry returned one rather odd reply today. A 01/02/2017 direct order for 10,000 euro is listed in Chris Cardona's reply as having been paid for "provision of escorting services". The "services" are listed as having been acquired by Malta Industrial [...]

Written by Lizzi Eldridge. Produced by Pia Zammit.

Jason Micallef used Labour controlled media to support that woman filmed using her walking stick to clear out flowers, pictures, messages and candles left at the Great Siege memorial in Valletta to remember Daphne Caruana Galizia and demand justice and an end to impunity. He follows a chorus that includes Joe Brincat, Ray Azzopardi (the [...]

There wasn't much hope to begin with. The talks between the doctor's union and the government today were unlikely to reach a satisfactory conclusion given how the two side disagree on the direction of the privatisation of hospital management. The government is not likely to budge. There's too much money at stake flowing into pockets [...]

It can be trying to hear people admit the only reason they cannot bring themselves to be angry about the government's corruption is that the explanation on how they do it is too complicated and they're too jaded, too tired, too distracted to understand. More people than ever accept as a given that Joseph Muscat [...]

Guest post by Charles Schembri: Luigi Pirandello’s acclaimed play “Six characters in search of an author” comes to the conclusion that the only pathway for these destitute individuals to find a meaning for their situation is best explored if these characters were themselves to be the authors. And still the dramatist through inference does not [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Confined as he is by constitutional and legal limitations, Magistrate Bugeja is also marked by a stark warning from Muscat, who on television, in an evening that will be remembered as the kristallnacht of this regime, warned him of unspecified consequences should his findings not be to [...]

I’m going out on something of a limb here. I do see the funny side of the hekk jgħid il-Malti figures around Valletta. Seeing Jason Micallef on the happier side of a glory hole, unveiling everyone’s favourite statue of the bent over androgynous onion-head was hilarious. And the memes were never ending, in a good [...]