The last post

I started this blog last June as a fun sideline. Over the months it has increasingly required more of me than I originally planned. Because of its popularity it has also complicated life in my day job, producing and presenting Bondi+.

Blogging is an all or nothing activity. You either say what you think or you say nothing at all. Mark Twain once said that there is no such thing as being a little pregnant. You either are or your're not. The same applies to blogging.

In view of both these two considerations, I decided to stop this blog.

From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank all those who have been following and commenting on it. It was a fun ride and it was great to have you on board.

€54,000,000,000

It has just been announced that €54 billion worth of investments have slipped out of Greece because it failed to keep its financial house in order. To map out some sort of a future they had to go around Europe with a begging bowl. The proud  land of Plato and Pericles now even owes Cyprus money.

The late George Bonello du Puis, a former finance minister, used to say that the light morning dew can make Malta flourish but it can also drown it.  The slightest movements around us can seal our economic and financial fate, one way or the other. What is insignificant and under the radar for other, much larger, countries fills our cup or empties it.

If a country the size of Greece has been driven to the precipice by its financial incontinence, it will take much, much less folly to join her. 

Our island mentality prevents many from joining the dots between what is happening around us and their job, their future and well-being of their families. They prefer to believe in a pie in the sky than to figure how the real pie on their kitchen table got there.

Until, of course, the one in the sky vanishes. And with it, the one on the table.

The paper without balls

Followers of this blog are familiar with my views of MaltaToday and its "journalists". It is nothing but the newsletter of a cult interested only in its private agendas. But yesterday's newsletter dived deeper down the cesspit than I ever thought possible.

This is not a weather report

As soon as Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera withdrew her criminal libel and defamation case against Daphne Caruana Galizia, I blogged that there is no other course of action but impeachment. It is only through an act of parliament that a member of the judiciary can be taken off the bench.

My two JPOs

I cannot fight this feeling. Since Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando announced that he will not be contesting the next elections, a confused sense of pity crept up on me. I'm almost sad he's had to come to this.

Sure, whatever else may have made him gravitate towards this decision, humiliation at the polls must have played a key part. In this narrow sense, he did the right thing.

But my confused sense of pity stems from some place else.

The court of Consuelo Scerri Herrera

The magistrate & the blogger

The blogposts that Daphne Caruana Galizia had published about Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera were jaw dropping. They ranged from saying that the magistrate had slept with half the police officers to having a series of inappropriate sexual liaisons, from throwing parties in which heavy drugs were consumed to handing out judgements in cases in which she had a clear conflict of interest, developing property while pretending she wasn’t, and giving court-related work to her current partner at the time their affair was secret. And much more in between. 

Flash news: our navy has gone Labour

Yesterday afternoon a rumour was doing the media rounds that the Partit Laburista has penetrated the higher echelons of our land, sea and air forces in anticipation of the next election. 

Fearing that the PN would not let go of power if they lose the election, the PL has been trying to strike a hidden deal with powerful elements in all three forces to occupy strategic positions the moment they are elected.

Setting the record straight

Franco Debono MP

In two public instances over the last weeks, Franco Debono MP criticised PBS and Bondi+.

With reference to these criticisms I have no difficulty in stating that the programme never had the intention of offending anyone.  

Toni's Boot Camp Boys & Girls

I don't know what it is about Toni Abela, the PL deputy leader but I keep coming across one howler of his after another. On Sunday he was busy talking about sodomy and denigrating gay men.

Here is another pearl of political wisdom that Toni Abela cast our way. 

The good but not so old days

Reno Calleja

Ah, the pleasures of the internet. Here's an article by Reno Calleja, one of the men brought back into the PL fold by Joseph Muscat. Now that Gaddafi's regime is history it is almost unbelieveable that Calleja wrote these words just a few short months ago. It is a truly surreal read.

Aħna u l-Libja – Malta għad trid tibki

Jien qatt ma kelli dubju dwar dak li qalet it-TORĊA dwar il-missila li kienet sparata lejn Malta. Li kieku din il-missilla ma kinetx interċettata u splodied fuq Ħad-Dingli jew ir-Rabat, kienet isseħħ traġedja f’Malta.