They’ve thought of everything

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2022-03-15T07:30:31+01:00Tue, 15th Mar '22, 07:30|

By the time the apparatchiks at the Labour Party had reached number 964 in their record-breaking list of electoral promises, they must have felt the target of 1,000 was unreachable. You know the phrase they threw everything but the kitchen sink? Perhaps they held back on the sink, but you'll be comforted to know they [...]

Tangentopoli and proud

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2022-03-14T16:12:51+01:00Mon, 14th Mar '22, 15:17|

The Shift News reports that on the eve of a fund raiser in Gozo Robert Abela met Gozitan construction contractors in an event hosted by Joseph Portelli. The next day's telethon, quite obviously a front to launder the cash given illegally by the contractors to the prime minister, claimed receiving over €1,000,000. Days later Joseph [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: Bread and butter

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2022-03-13T07:23:18+01:00Sun, 13th Mar '22, 07:23|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "It will be an imperative duty of this community to make sure the poor, the homeless, the people sleeping in cars and toilet-less garages, the migrants still finding their feet are sheltered from this eminently foreseeable shockwave ahead. They are a nudge away from homelessness and malnourishment [...]

Bringing out the pro-corruption vote

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2022-03-13T07:14:58+01:00Sun, 13th Mar '22, 07:14|

  Good people’s capacity to seek the good in bad people is infinite. Commenters overflowing with empathy were trying to excuse Joe Debono Grech’s utterances at a Labour Party campaign event. He’s senile. He was joking. He didn’t think it through. He wasn’t speaking for the party. Joe Debono Grech is not some [...]

From the mouths of babes

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2022-03-12T07:20:35+01:00Sat, 12th Mar '22, 07:20|

Will you please stop using children as props for your electioneering. Sometimes it's even more obvious they don't like it. Why do we think they have the right to force them into adult rituals that are of no benefit or interest to them?

The one-party system is here

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2022-03-11T12:54:04+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 12:54|

I’ve been speaking to people who work in advertising to try to understand the imbalance of marketing resources and capability between the two organisations we still describe “as the two main parties”. A “two-party system” implies some sort of balance and equality of arms, a neck and neck struggle where the sides take turns winning [...]

Here’s how to push back on Labour’s online bullying

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2022-03-11T10:13:25+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 10:13|

While the Labour Party and its candidates break the rules and flood your online space with their advertising (see this earlier article on why that’s a bad thing), Google cashes the money. They’re not going to put a stop to this unless enough people ask them. Here’s how you can do your bit. When you [...]

It’s not advertising overkill. It’s digital bullying.

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2022-03-11T09:52:55+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 09:52|

Every time you go to YouTube, every website that takes Google Ads, all over Facebook, mostly wherever you are online, you are repeatedly assaulted by Labour Party adverts. There are a few PN adverts on top of that. When the campaign started, we could have said that was overkill. We could think they might haveunderestimated [...]

Too busy for questions. Have time for selfies.

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2022-03-11T09:21:20+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 09:21|

Watch this point of view film shot by Newsbook’s Monique Agius chasing the prime minister to ask him to react to the near unanimous vote in the European Parliament calling for the abolishing of Malta’s passport sales scheme. His 4 Labour MEPs were the only Socialists to vote against the motion. At any time of [...]

Ukrainians warned Malta government will abandon them if they attend Repubblika protests for peace

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2022-03-11T09:09:21+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 09:09|

Members of the Ukrainian community living in Malta have told this website they have received warnings from Maltese government officials to stay away from protests for peace called by NGO Repubblika. Community leaders have received warnings that should they be seen at protests called by Repubblika outside the Russian Embassy in Kappara, or elsewhere, they [...]

Cameo

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2022-03-11T20:35:37+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 08:43|

I had an uncredited cameo appearance at yesterday leaders’ debate at university. It wasn’t so much an appearance as it was a mention. The moderator, Yasmine Ellul (the star turn of the event) asked the leaders about the implementation of the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry recommendations. In that context Bernard Grech referred to the now [...]

Ovine mantras

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2022-03-11T08:25:50+01:00Fri, 11th Mar '22, 08:25|

Photo: Lovin Malta There were various opinions about who might have done better in yesterday’s leaders’ debate at university. But there’s no controversy over who did worst. Most of the audience was often on its feet, arms raised, shouting Viva l-Lejber like the audience of the daily newsreels in 1984. At the sight [...]

Not Woman’s Day

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2022-03-10T10:51:31+01:00Thu, 10th Mar '22, 10:51|

Times of Malta carries three headlines today on its court news page. “Man charged with sexually molesting estranged wife.” “Husband accused of arson attack on van of his ex’s lover.” “Had sex with a minor girl and filmed it.” Yesterday there was another report. “Rapist gets nine years in jail for ‘cowardly, inhuman’ act in [...]

It shouldn’t be this tough

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2022-03-10T09:41:15+01:00Thu, 10th Mar '22, 09:41|

There was a bit of a happy ending when a Labour Party supporter posted on his Facebook post a photo with Times of Malta’s Mark Laurence Zammit to whom he had apologised after treating him aggressively on the side-lines of a Labour Party campaign event. At Labour’s event, when the guy saw Mark Laurence Zammit [...]

Underage girls with blindfolds on. Can it get worse?

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2022-03-10T09:18:39+01:00Thu, 10th Mar '22, 09:18|

There’s something disturbingly dystopian about this image. As part of his election campaign, Labour candidate Ray Abela, handed out VR headsets to schoolchildren. Here he is posing in a campaign photo with a row of young pupils wearing his branded headsets. In between the covering of their eyes, and the masks down to beneath their [...]

GUEST POST: Hunting the hunters

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2022-03-10T08:46:00+01:00Thu, 10th Mar '22, 08:46|

The piece is written by the same author of this other Guest Post that looked at Labour’s chase for the hunters’ vote. This post looks at what the other side is doing. The Nationalist Party never had the hunters’ vote. Most hunters always voted Labour. So, in a way it is a bit of a [...]

GUEST POST: The hunters’ deceivers

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2022-03-08T16:27:17+01:00Tue, 8th Mar '22, 16:27|

Sent in by someone known to me. What people suspect all along, is usually true. Il-qasba ma ċċaqċaqx għalxejn, as we say. Many have long suspected that the most useless Environment Minister Malta ever had, was on the side of hunters. We know it officially now as he has been endorsed by none other than [...]

12 women, more or less

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2022-03-10T10:56:04+01:00Mon, 7th Mar '22, 15:23|

An appeals court told Arnold Cassola today he has every right to argue in front of a lower court why the new rules ensuring women are better represented in Parliament are against the Constitution. This needs some background because the last thing Arnold Cassola is arguing is that there shouldn’t be more women in Parliament. [...]

Times editorial: Government refuses to understand role of media

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2022-03-07T09:20:39+01:00Mon, 7th Mar '22, 09:20|

Do please read Times of Malta's leader today following up an a Labour Party campaign billboard that featured me who am a candidate, an official, a campaigner, or a propagandist for none of the political parties contesting the coming general election. The editorial says: "PEN Malta said it all when, reacting to the decision to [...]

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