English in Malta however is developing as a language of its own: few English would recognise, say, ‘parastatal’ – and I can generally recognise the origin of an English-speaking Maltese, not just by the accent – if indeed he has one.

My eyesight is poor so please excuse any typos.

One even finds big inconsistencies in language use on the BBC websites… English has become a bit of a bastard language I’m afraid.

Yes, that would be a compelling case if I were Maltese, but sadly I am not. That said, I consider myself a native Maltese speaker (of sorts) (long story), so perhaps there is something to your fanciful argument.
On enormity, Bryson cites a contextually amusing case (in Mother Tongue, I believe) that is, however, semantically unfair. Indian, or no Indian.

And yes, I suppose that a usage manual can sometimes be a preferable, if not the only, point of reference, although the proper way in which to use a verb is stricto sensu the domain of the grammarian as far as I’m concerned. Indeed, the canon-writers when it comes to style (vide Fowler brothers) invariably formulate their arguments using some specious retroactive application of Latin or Greek rules. If it were all about ‘ears’, as you suggest, then we could argue endlessly about whose linguistic sensibilities are more finely tuned.
Perhaps this debate could be settled with the aid of a classicist, since I am resolutely sticking to my guns.

[Daphne – You may stick to your guns all you wish. The fact remains that languages change over time, and they change first through usage, with the rules of grammar following slowly. That is why we no longer speak as they did in the 18th century, and why certain words, or their usage, are listed in the dictionary as archaic. To get back to the original source of this argument, only Maltese people say ‘he provides me information’. It is, literally, a translation from our native tongue: “Jipprovvdili l-informazzjoni.”]

Uh, I admit you are testing my certainty, but I will still venture another “you are wrong”.
You argue simply that the verb “to provide” necessarily requires the preposition with the direct object where the indirect object acts as a syntactic intermediary. I challenge you to locate that injunction in any grammatical manual. Or to put it another way, if you insist on perpetuating this debate, you must provide me (with) evidence that supports your thesis.
Obviously, I am not suggesting that “providing someone with information” is incorrect, but it would have been stylistically inelegant, ahem, in a sentence already containing the aforementioned preposition. Granted, that being the case, I should probably have gone with your final proposal, although it has the fatal shortcoming of being insufficiently ego-centric.

[Daphne – You will not find all the rules you need in grammar books, Peter. There’s also something called usage. I never learned any grammar, at school or elsewhere. The most useful asset is not a grammar book but an ‘ear’ for a language. That said, I have a small collection of books about usage, the sort published as guides to editors and so on, which are interesting to dip into when I am bored. One of the most recent is Bill Bryson’s (yes, that Bill Bryson) Dictionary for Writers and Editors, which taught me – at last – the difference between ‘to forego’ and ‘to forgo’, apparently two of the most confused words in the language. The first means to ‘go before’ and the second ‘ to give {something) up’. Anyway, Corinne is right about the verb ‘to provide’. ‘With’ is an intrinsic part of it. The verb is, in practice, ‘to provide (with)’. You cannot say ‘he provides me information’ but only ‘he provides me with information’. I admit that it is an easy mistake to make because, coming from another language, we assume that ‘to provide’ must follow the same pattern as ‘to give’ (‘he gives me information’), because the meanings appear the same to us. But no – the meanings are completely different, and the usage is different, too.]

No, I’m not wrong. “Provides me information” is wrong. I don’t blame you entirely, though. So many people get it wrong, it actually sounds right.

Here are a few variations on the same theme:

provides information to me
provides me with information
supplies me with information
supplies information to me
informs me

Or you could simply have said “a link that provides information with which….”, seeing as the link provides information as a matter of course.

…provides me *with* information…

I really don’t want to enter into some gainsaying competition here, but there really is nothing grammatically incorrect as such about attending to a lot of phone calls.
Stating the opposite and (condescendingly) offering a link that provides me information with which I am already quite familiar does not make the argument any stronger.
It is quite likely that Sander accidentally chanced upon a correct formulation, although possibly not the one he intended. Had he simply said he “answered a lot of phone calls”, one might be open to presuming he was working in telephone exchange point. Given the context, he might have been better off saying that he “fielded a lot of phone calls”, which would also better convey the drama of his dreadful predicament. But I’m sorry, the fact is that you can attend to a telephone call and there is absolutely no two ways about it.
The sentence provided is incorrectly punctuated, syntactically inept, semantically confused, and devoid of logic to the point of meaninglessness. But damn it, could people please desist from sniping unless they are in a position to do so.