Whenever consequences are demanded by the angry and lonesome few with a conscience left in them, the government buys time by claiming confidence in the institutions. When it is the government that the institutions are supposed to investigate and expose, the government’s confidence in the process is far from reassuring. Yet, one cannot ignore the [...]

Last Sunday I wrote a piece about needing a government that plans for a new economy that makes sense in a world pushing back on climate change. I called for imagination to outgrow our dependence on the evasion of tax levied by other countries. I pointed out that the givens of our past economic successes [...]

Four years ago today I looked for the first time at the audience measuring tool that comes with a blogging website. The previous morning, I had published my first ever post in a Google blog app hurriedly put together for me by a tech savvy colleague at work. The piece, called unimaginatively “It hurts, doesn’t [...]

I trust this is sufficient notice to remind members of the Board of the Planning Authority that the Board is due to meet this Thursday at 10am to discuss the application by the dB Group to “develop” (as they insist calling the erection of concrete Titans on relatively unspoiled land) the former ITS site in [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "We can raise our angry fists at these realities of the changing world and stubbornly cling to an economic model that, like slavery or textiles, is past its date, or we can get real, be part of the global deal for reform and find a new role [...]

The police and the prosecution service are attempting to persuade a court that Keith Schembri and his associates committed a list of crimes in the Allied Newspapers imbroglio that included defrauding the State entity Malta Enterprise. Some of the money to pay for Allied’s new printing press came from taxpayers. An internal Malta Enterprise report [...]

https://youtu.be/BgPYkMwATgA

I don’t think anyone will believe me when I say there isn’t even a shred of sarcasm in what I’m about to write. Give the passenger ferry boats a chance. Every new means of public transport will, unfailingly, fail to meet the public’s expectations. Never mind the hyperbolic expectations of over-enthusiastic politicians who justify their [...]

The Maltese government must be earning itself some form of reputation at the Council of Europe’s democracy through law commission. It’s known as the Venice Commission and it is famous for its exquisitely painful politeness. At some point, we can fully expect them to lose it. Whenever the Maltese government gets stuck with some legal [...]

First, a disclaimer. Let it be known, for the avoidance of any doubt, that nothing I write here is intended to suggest that the Degiorgio brothers, as indeed everyone involved in killing Daphne Caruana Galizia, should serve any punishment which is short of what the law says they deserve. Second, as with all lessons we [...]

This article was first published in the current issue of Money Magazine. The Magazine can be found here. My column in this magazine is not famous for optimism. Admittedly, cynicism, skepticism, and warbling doubts about the future are rarely highlights of a business magazine. The fact is we haven’t walked through the gauntlet of our [...]

This interview was broadcast on 103 last Saturday. Read Newsbook's summary of the interview here.

The following is an extract from a speech Alfred Sant gave in Parliament during his last days as Leader of the Labour Party. The speech is from 12 May 2008. Alfred Sant had just lost his third election in a row after 1998 and 2003 and he would be replaced a few weeks after delivering [...]

The reforms being proposed by the Opposition for the prisons restate the traditional contrast between the PL and the PN. The PL is the right-wing disciplinarian with fascist tendencies best represented in Alex Dalli’s mediocre imitation of a director of a gulag and Byron Camilleri’s chilling silence. The PN is the left-of-center humanitarian party promoting [...]

Simon Mercieca posted an anonymous post questioning my reasons for not running around all hysterical about “Freemasons involved in Daphne’s murder”. Someone is annoyed their plan didn’t work. The freemasonry thing came up in court this week. Melvyn Theuma was testifying in the case against Yorgen Fenech and speaking about conversations he had had with [...]

You can hardly have forgotten that in 2010, 11 years ago, a gang tried to rob the vault at the HSBC’s headquarters in Ħal Qormi. Sixty gunshots were fired that day. It wasn’t one you could easily forget. Within the same year, Vincent Muscat il-Koħħu and Darren Debono it-Tôpo (not the football-coaching, fish-restaurant-owning, fuel-smuggling, money-laundering [...]

Restaurant owners will have to delay or phase-in their re-opening because they can’t find staff to serve customers. We’re re-opening for tourism at a crucially make or break moment when recovery is urgent and when we need to put on a good show because our competitors are in a similar predicament and will be making [...]

Rai broadcast a 1 hour feature a couple of days ago on the internationalisation of Italian organised crime and its infiltration in the financial system. There's a Malta segment (in English) that starts at 54' where I speak about the work and the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. View the film here. You'll need to [...]

Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee could be a useful tool in fighting corruption and administrative wrong-doing. If reality wasn’t such a poor reflection of what Lawrence Gonzi must have imagined the PAC could be when he helped design it in the 1990s. Watching sessions of the PAC is ever so slightly less agonising than watching plenary [...]