Evarist Bartolo and Owen Bonnici indulged in a bit of inelegant semantic acrobatics when they explained donations they got for their political campaigns from people they appointed on the public payroll to advise them in their Ministerial roles. This is from Ivan Camilleri’s report in The Times: “The ministerial code of ethics lays down that: [...]
To my mind the worst thing that’s going on is that this whirlwind around Daphne Caruana Galizia’s reporting of Adrian Delia’s affairs is creating and solidifying a set of myths that replace reality as it should be obvious to everyone and postpone indefinitely the day when the PN comes to terms with that reality and [...]
I have drawn parallels between Maltese politics and Donald Trump before. When Joseph Muscat blamed the Russian Secret Service for the Egrant revelations – that’s not what he called them of course – I wrote that Muscat was taking a page out of the Roger Stone playbook and imitating Trump’s methods in the interest of [...]
Donald Trump is President of the United States. Two years ago that sentence would have got a good laugh in a late night satire. Climbing up the ranks to secure a major party’s nomination to the United States is an exceptional achievement. But it would have been considered an absurd notion for a complete outsider, [...]
Read this by Mark Fenech asking on Facebook what would happen in the rather likely event one of 3 PN leadership candidates who are not yet MPs is elected to the post: “Let us assume that the PN leadership contest will be won by one of the three non-MP candidates. Naturally, the winner will then [...]
Kurt Sansone spotted a glossy brochure produced by the government giving EU medicines agency employees, details about living in Malta, including, as you would expect, rent prices. His report in The Times digs up some background work on property rentals and quotes Central Bank and National Statistics Office findings that rent prices have been shooting [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Years of hatred and vilification exercised by Labour towards the independent press have nullified its credibility with Labour supporters. That was startling enough in a world of free and open access to information. But it is truly extraordinary to witness entire chunks of PN militants and, quite [...]
This is a BBC radio documentary on Malta’s passport scheme in which: Identity Malta CEO Jonathan Cardona admits flat out the great bulk of passport procurers never invested anything in the country. Henley and Partners MD Christian Kaelin explains his target market for Maltese passports is investors with business interests in the EU who use [...]
Attorney General Peter Grech has several times since his appointment to his office resorted to the excuse of client privilege to avoid answering questions on information he is privy to as an official of the state. I am not qualified to dispute the fine detail of the law. There are experts who do that and [...]
In response to my earlier post where I pointed out that Judge Antonio Mizzi is presumed to be a candidate for the upcoming vacancy of Chief Justice of the Maltese courts, I received the following eminently pertinent comment: "I would add that the Attorney General is also a presumed candidate for the upcoming vacancy of Chief [...]
Judge Antonio Mizzi, spouse of Labour MEP Marlene Mizzi and presumed candidate for the upcoming vacancy of Chief Justice of the Maltese courts, was due today to hear an Appeal filed by Joseph Muscat and the rest of the Panama Gang against a lower court’s order for the Panama scandal to be investigated. His first [...]
It may be useful for those who want to understand what will be happening by the next school run to brush up on the rules governing the election of a PN leader. ‘Brush up’ is a bit of a misnomer because it suggests these are established rules that have been gathering dust after a very [...]
This piece in the Daily Mail is intended to damage its real target – Tony Blair – by his association with two unsavoury characters Ilham Aliyev and Joseph Muscat. The Daily Mail dislikes Tony Blair for its own political reasons. It’s a fiercely pro-Brexit newspaper and Tony Blair’s objections to Brexit are an annoyance it [...]
Over the last 3 days Daphne Caruana Galizia published damaging reports on Frank Portelli’s and Adrian Delia’s outstanding debts with HSBC. Frank Portelli’s were long known. His St Philip’s Hospital has been out of business for years and he has been trying to flog it to the government since even before it closed its doors. [...]
Government is bidding hard for the relocation of the EU’s Medicines Agency from London – no longer a suitable home for an EU institution after Brexit – to Malta. Parliamentary Secretary Deo Debattista gave The Times some details about the concerns employees at the Agency are raising about Malta and how he might address them. [...]
The Times picked up a government legal notice that announces the President of Malta has been paid 478 euro in arrears after she got a pay rise below inflation rates for this year over the previous one. That’s her yearly weekend break in Sicily paid for then. Now our President earns the unpresidential sum of [...]
I don’t know what it is about Facebook that gets the worst out of people. I suppose it’s the almost total absence of inhibition. Also the false security that its infrastructure gives that hints at privacy where there is none. Watching people at each other’s throats over the choice of the next party leader is [...]
An Education Directorate internal report seen by The Times gives background on truancy from compulsory education. The newspaper’s headline is on the low recovery rate from fines imposed on parents whose children missed too much school. Since this is hardly about public revenue – we are not talking about the government failing to collect capital [...]
The pain of despair is palpable and transparently visible among some of the PN voters in the upcoming elections for a new party leader. They’re looking for the man, for there is no woman who would be chosen, that could beat Labour and they’re not entirely sure what would be necessary to achieve that feat. [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today. (Link to full article here). "We have an administration utterly and completely bereft of foresight and an electorate inebriated by the borrowed surplus of the here and now: borrowed, of course, against a future no one is planning for. "The bursting of bubbles is the reckoning of debts, [...]