As you wait for the votes to be counted (or don’t) the Sunday online and offline papers will only give you an analysis of the campaign and not the results. One of the points being brought up in most of these analysis is that the campaign was far from being European and that the...

The Luxembourg contingent landed this morning. I drove straight to Evans Building to pick up my voting document which, as it turns out, had already been collected by a conscientious neighbour (thanks John!). Still, it gave me time to go walkabout in a resplendent and vibrant Valletta. It was...

Part I – A Gozitan Juventus Fan in the Yankees’ Court The last big sporting event I had attended involved lots of merchandising, an incredible amount of food and drink, a massive stadium full of families, a team with a glorious history and, oh, the sport – something about bats,...

It looked like a shot in the foot. The Times headline was unequivocal – “Busuttil: Politicians should keep away from spring hunting controversy”. I was lost for words. Here was the leader of Malta’s opposition, still struggling in the trust ratings at the polls, coming...

I have this thing I do every time I get to New York. As soon as I have plonked my bags into my hotel room I rush out again and head for that one iconic landmark – Times Square. Maybe it is because it allows me to absorb the reality of having got to the Big Apple having crossed the...

Racism. It’s a dirty word. In the past seven days there seems to have been some form of virus in the air spreading dirty thoughts across the globe. The latest manifestation came in sporting events. First there was the Diego Alves incident. Barcelona’s colourful (an unfortunate...

There was a time when this blog would devour any news political coming out of the island in a voracious manner. Analyse, chew, criticise and expect viral reaction. Or so went the music and momentum. It’s hard to put your finger on the moment when you stop caring so deeply – for want...

From the moment you step off the plane and go through the average two and a half hours of immigrant screening attrition at whatever “port of call” you have reached you begin to realise that the United States of America is a rather peculiar entity that will be hard to emulate for...

The MADC has just ended a run of Elaine May’s Adult Entertainment – a play that centres around a group of porn actors and their efforts to write their own scripts. Porn was never an easy subject to broach, particularly in a community where the words “tightly-knit”, “gossip”...

The Times reports a PQ about emissions by vehicles. 12,529 reports were made to a dedicated number and of these only 21 failed the emissions test. Someone, somewhere, is doing something wrong. Only this week cities in Europe suffered huge hikes in pollution levels due to the anomalous weather...

The new Lidl branch threw open its doors in Xewkija this weekend. The Gozitans turned up en masse – particularly after the “leak” that the first 100 customers would be able to buy a 399€ TV at the discounted price of 100€. I heard reports of traffic jams as well as...

Listening to French radio this morning (it could have been any radio really) I heard about the gigantic efforts deployed by China in order to locate the lost Malaysian airlines plane. At one point the Chinese PM was reported as saying how important it was for China to find the lost plane...