Robert Abela has been pressuring judges and magistrates to hand down harsher penalties for crimes. He’s said people are disappointed by the courts and it is thanks to their lacklustre performance and their lenient attitude that he’s scared to let his daughter walk the streets alone. He said judges and magistrates should stop giving light [...]

I’ve been told before, that when I feel like using foul language on my blog I should pace around the room for 20 minutes before I look up less colourful alternatives than my intuitive original expression of my fury. It’s advice I find myself in situations like this fucking unable to take. Just a few [...]

You will have seen reports of the Transparency International assessment that confirms Malta continues to be perceived as corrupt, more so now than even last year. Transparency International gives one clear and simple reason for this. Five years ago, a journalist was killed in Malta for investigating and reporting on corruption. By now, we should [...]

Pilatus Bank was set up in Malta in 2014 to launder money for embezzling tyrants and tax evaders. When Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed them, they sued her for $40 million. They threatened every newsroom in Malta who dared write about them. Until the European Banking Agency shut them down. And yet, those responsible, have never [...]

Look at this headline. It says an NGO, a professional association, and a non-Parliamentary party said something about something. That would sound like the beginning of a joke, except that the humour, such as it is in this case, is about one other entity who said nothing. There was a time when the opposition Nationalist [...]

The Chamber of Advocates issued a statement to react to Robert Abela’s comments yesterday about a chat he had with an unnamed magistrate about decisions taken by the judiciary in criminal cases which the prime minister thought were too lenient. I found some comfort in a couple of observations the Chamber of Advocates made with [...]

The prime minister said yesterday in his speech that he discussed what he considers as lenient decisions of the criminal court with an unnamed magistrate. Robert Abela worked in the law courts for years. He knows that the idea of questioning a magistrate’s decisions and urging different decisions in private conversations with that [...]

Here’s some free tax advice. If you get yourself registered with the MFA as a football player, whether on a full-time (pro) or a part-time (semi-pro) basis, the money you earn is taxed at an attractively low 7.5%. That’s not just for your salary, mind you. Whatever allowances, bonuses, and special payments you get from [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times: "The strategy document says we will have cleaner air and a “net zero” economy, which means our carbon footprint will be nothing or less. Yet, the document says the government will be looking to increase flights in and out of Malta. "And the document does not say the [...]

Do read Kevin Cassar’s article of today where he spots, while apparently the Opposition wasn’t looking – does it ever? – a new law presented for Parliament’s rubber stamp that will remove any doubt, if any still existed, that the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology is under the absolute control of the government [...]

The following is a letter sent today by Repubblika's president Robert Aquilina in reaction to a draft strategy document prepared by the government on a Sustainable Development Strategy for 2050: Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your document. We share your view that any plan for our country’s future must not merely be [...]

In a few minutes the radio station owned and operated by Malta’s university is hosting Michelle Muscat, our very own freakish mashup between Imelda Marcos in exile and a hypothetical Evita Peron if the Argentian original had lived beyond her political sunset, to whimper and whine on the airwaves. I have no idea what they [...]

Different times: Jesmond Gatt, standing first left, then chief officer at the Central Bank and soon to be Chairman of MFSA, overlooking Edward Scicluna, then and now Governor of the Central Bank and lowly director on the board of MFSA. Times of Malta reports today that Jesmond Gatt will be replacing John Mamo [...]

A Central Bank of Malta statement announced that one “Dr Sir Narcy Calamatta KM” has been appointed chairman of the bank’s advisory board for its charity initiatives. I don’t know much about Narcy Calamatta. I remember him vaguely on TV in the days of the state monopoly in the 1980s particularly because at age 8 [...]

Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that the two men accused of killing Sion Grech 18 years ago are innocent of the crime. Due process demands from us to presume even the most obviously guilty as innocent until proven otherwise. Which logically means that if they are never proven otherwise, beyond reasonable doubt, [...]

OK, that heading is a poor attempt at click bait shlock. But if you thought you could convince young people to join the police force by tickling their sense of community service, their desire to be helpful, their wish to protect weak members of the community, their solemn keenness for fairness in society, and for [...]

You may have seen Robert Aquilina’s reaction to a decision by the constitutional court rejecting Repubblika’s claim that our right to a fair hearing was breached by Nadine Lia’s repeated refusal to recuse herself from hearing Repubblika’s case against the police for not acting on a magistrate’s findings about crimes at Pilatus Bank. Half-hearted apologies [...]

I am as angry, as shocked, as saddened as the next woman or man about the horrible killing of a woman by a car driver fuelled by cocaine and by some inexplicable pathological evil. I think that man has earned the status of most hated person in this country. And yet this wasn’t the opportunity [...]

Quite apart from the morbid gift delivered by a delegation of well-dressed bird-killers, why is the prime minister in his casuals at his office? If anyone visited the prime minister in the office of the country's chief executive wearing those clothes, you'd have to call them rude. If the prime minister is the one that [...]

Increasingly, there’s a generational moral disassociation happening within the Labour front. It’s not new. Dom Mintoff repudiated his predecessor vehemently, even violently. Alfred Sant took a platform to call Dom Mintoff a traitor of the Labour movement and that's after presenting himself as the polar opposite of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. Joseph Muscat accused Alfred Sant [...]