I don’t put up this link to Joe Brincat’s Facebook to add to the case that he’s an antediluvian Mintoffian grotesque. That case has rested a long time ago. I put it up because it might answer my question of this morning on why Maltese Eurovision voters behaved differently from all other Europeans and did [...]

Election candidates who fail to get elected are an inevitable side effect of the voting process. Their unhappiness with the outcome is their problem. When you enter any race you dream of glory but you’d better be prepared for the statistically likelier outcome of disappointment. Dignity in defeat looks nice but it’s not mandatory. Candidates [...]

I couldn’t be dragged in front of the Eurovision broadcast even if I had been in chains. The only fun bit is the voting at the end because it’s a bit like watching a regatta, but it’s way too late into the night for me. Since the winner is chosen mostly by popular vote a [...]

I had not heard of Shireen Abu Aqla before she was killed. When I first heard of her death I thought it was sad that another war reporter found themselves between a bullet and its intended target. Then I heard an interview with her former boss who explained that that morning she wasn’t on some [...]

The Civil Court has ordered the dissolution of a film production company half-owned by Keith Schembri after one of its shareholders complained in court the banks were treating him with prejudice because of his link with Joseph Muscat’s former chief of staff. Film producer Oliver Mallia set up Cinebiss Limited in 2007, the same year [...]

Perhaps President George Vella doesn’t see the contradictions in his remarks, nor indeed, the fact that implicitly he is blaming Ukraine for having been invaded by Russia. But that’s no excuse. George Vella is quoted here by TVM making two comments. I am translating them. In 2014 I suggested that Ukraine goes neutral for between [...]

I was writing this morning how disappointing though entirely in character it was for police chief Angelo Gafà to say absolutely nothing about one of his staffers admitting in court that the police knew where Ryan Schembri was 5 years ago but made no move to nab him. Then someone pointed out to me why [...]

Mario Cutajar is leaving the headship of the civil service. The man turned a position that should in and of itself be an institution of our democracy into a loyal branch of the Labour Party. In the process he not only undermined the ethos of the civil service, but he also undermined the basis of [...]

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli I decided to wait 24 hours before writing about the shocking admission of a police inspector who told a court yesterday, he had no idea why the people responsible for one of the biggest manhunts in recent criminal history completely ignored information from the UK police about the whereabouts of [...]

There are paving works in and around the Rabat playing field just outside Mdina Gate. They've been going on for ages. They're still going on and the area is inaccessible. One thing's done though. This plaque says the completed works were inaugurated by Ian Borg on 24 March, two days before the last election. The [...]

(Apologies to Nicholas Cage) I don’t purport to be Greek, like one of our politicians. I don’t pretend to be British even though I am a British citizen by virtue of having been born in the UK. Wherever I go and whoever I deal with, I identify myself as Maltese. How could I do otherwise? [...]

A California Senator, an ancient Greek dramatist, a Chinese military strategist, and several others have been credited with coining the phrase ‘the first casualty of war is truth’. Which is ironic. What’s more ironic is that here in Malta by the time war breaks out truth is long dead. No mourning for sincerity here. Consider [...]

Volodymyr Zelensky is resisting an invasion of his country by the Russian army. He is standing tall while his city and several other of his country’s cities are being bombarded from the air and sustaining the cost of artillery fire. He holds back his tears as he witnesses the bodies of civilians and soldiers strewn [...]

Testifying in court today, C-Planet owner Philip Farrugia said that at the time when a database of the voting intentions of all citizens of Malta was handed over to them, some time in 2012, the source of that data, Ivan Buttigieg, was “an employee” of the General Workers’ Union’s insurance subsidiary Untours. In fact, Ivan [...]

Testifying in court today, Philip Farrugia, Managing Director of IT company C-Planet, said it had been Ivan Buttigieg who had given his company a pen drive that included the electoral register and data of how every individual was expected to vote in the general election. Farrugia said that at the time when the data was [...]

Sometimes I feel this country has its ankle stuck to a time machine that keeps warping it back to the days of King John of England. Professor Carmen Sammut, the University’s number 2, told the Commissioner for Education in the Ombudsman’s Office nobody has the power and authority to examine what the University decides in [...]

Someone sent me a screenshot of a Facebook post by one John Charles Ellul trying to be smart about the opening of Parliament. He asks how it is possible the country appears to have run out of eggs and tomatoes to be tossed at PN MPs on their way out of Parliament. The drafting is [...]

I feel silly having to say this and I’m warned that by drawing attention to things Simon Mercieca, that self-loathing slug who splutters through the slime he excretes and proceeds to ingest, I give him the attention he craves and help spread the lies he spews. It would seem sensible to ignore him, except that [...]

Anya (not her real name) is 16 years old and lives just outside Moscow. I first met her about a year ago as her online English language teacher. She’s bright, articulate, devours the Russian classics and has also read Orwell’s 1984 which, for her, is ‘about the total control of people by the government’, Big [...]