There’s no shame in begging if you are in desperate need. The shame must lie with people who need to be begged to stop allowing the conditions in which begging is necessary. Jean Paul Sofia’s mother spent the day outside Parliament yesterday collecting signatures to persuade the prime minister to order an inquiry to find [...]
The Malta Film Commission Facebook page has a new profile. Is the Commission diversifying genres or have they replaced the Commissioner with someone more resourceful?
https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-members-of-parliament-to-support-a-public-enquiry-on-the-death-of-jean-paul
Times of Malta works out how much fines the Financial Intelligence Agency has raised over the last several months. It comes to an average of around €360,000 every month. The report also says there are 17 court cases filed against the FIAU by people it has fined, all making the same complaint. The complaint is [...]
Robert Abela’s behaviour in the Jean Paul Sofia case would be worryingly childish if it weren’t worryingly corrupt. Parliament debated a motion yesterday asking for an inquiry to establish if the government had done less than it should have to avoid Mr Sofia’s untimely death. An inquiry would act independently (of anyone, not just the [...]
The European Commission’s rule of law report on Malta finds very slow progress on its recommendations for reform. It is especially scathing on the government’s failure the improve the working environment of journalists. “While the media reform process launched following the publication of the report of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry is still ongoing, [...]
They don’t make racists like they used to anymore. In the good old days, home-grown, genuine article racists wouldn’t mince words about their prejudice, and would justify to anyone prepared to listen and to anyone not prepared to listen, their cruelty and their willingness to discriminate with what they seemed to genuinely believe was their [...]
Photo: Matthew Mirabelli/AFP I have decided to file a libel suit against Simon Mercieca. On his blog he folded into a smattering of half-truths a bunch of lies about my time as a government employee before the 2013 general elections. I have never, before now, had to defend myself from accusations of corruption, [...]
The putrefaction of Labour 2013 stifles the air. These would be heady days of excitement for the promise of change for the better if such a promise existed. It doesn’t. For better or worse there is little to look forward to. What happens after the fall is in the mist. What is happening now, before [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Many people never cared for local councils. They dismissed them as petty and parochial and beneath their daily concerns. It is in the shadow of that indifference that Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela hollowed them out, leaving little more than flags and glorified local clerks working as [...]
Anġlu Farrugia, that erstwhile hollow waste of space famous mostly for incurable ignorance masquerading, poorly, as a speech impediment, has effectively neutralised the law providing for the self-policing of the political class. He’s broken it to the point that it can’t be used unless it’s rewritten. There’s a Commissioner for Standards in Public Life who [...]
So, Joseph Muscat was riled yesterday, poked by incessant questions from the chairman of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, Darren Carabott, insisting he would not be made a parrot, which is exquisitely ironic given the recent revelation that he was billing a parrot trading company more than ten grand a month for a slice of his [...]
They say people should never be allowed to see how sausages are made. And laws. The making of laws is a queasy business. The ongoing debate in Europe about a media freedom law has gotten ugly and has come up on a disturbing juncture. The original draft of the European Commission proposed strict rules against [...]
In 2011, Joseph Muscat, then Leader of Opposition, said he would “address head on the racket of the local wardens system”. Local wardens had by then been around for a decade. In 2001, Local Councils were given the power to dispatch local wardens on beats they desired. If councillors had a problem area they needed [...]
Predictably Simon Mercieca responded to my article where among other things I said he works for Yorgen Fenech. I also said in that article that Simon Mercieca denies working for Yorgen Fenech. He denies it again, this time in an article headlined “If Manuel Delia is convinced that Yorgen Fenech pays me, he can always [...]
Photo: REUTERS/Gianni Mania There’s hardly more welcome feedback than when I’m told that I have found the words someone is looking for to express an opinion they might feel in their gut but haven’t elaborated enough to mouth it. Reading comments on social media during the televised and vain search for five passengers [...]
Simon Mercieca is serialising a drip dripping of extracts from the criminal inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia in defiance of explicit court orders and of implicit norms of basic decency. Simon Mercieca works for the man accused of killing Daphne Caruana Galizia. He denies that claim and says his mission is merely [...]
In 2003 Joseph Muscat talked himself into believing the Labour Party had won their anti-EU campaign. The ‘No’ votes were far fewer than the ‘Yes’ votes and yet he celebrated in the street. I say talked himself into believing it. I have no idea what he believed. I can only look at how he acted. [...]
A court found that in 2013 Edwin Vassallo should have been elected to Parliament. He wasn’t because the Electoral Commission put some of the ballots that would have had him elected in the wrong drawer. The court agreed this was unfair on Edwin Vassallo and ordered the state to pay him the salary he would [...]
Health warning: The word arsehole appears several times in this post. Byron Camilleri and Owen Bonnici announced they are proposing changes to the law to stop the police from pressing charges against comedians and satirists who say out loud that Gordon “sess fil-patata is an abomination” Manché is an arsehole. The Ministers say they want [...]