anthony;

the two expressions ‘piss-up in a brewery’ and ‘orgy in a whorehouse’ sprang to mind when I read your last statement.

KUMPANIJI. That is the correct word.

The ‘j’ at the end of a word is almost always prolonged. See hamrija, tarbija, Bidnija.

Oops .. my reply was meant for erskinmay. I hope I clicked the right link when posting it.

Right .. just like the law is always applied equally to everyone, and all politicians and lawyers are completely honest and selfless, and all magistrates behave demurely, and no public office was ever appointed according to political sympathy, and nothing is ever hidden from the public, etc.

Irrespective of how many legal clauses are written (and often the greater the complication, the greater the possibility of twisting the rules and inventing loopholes – lawyers would be unemployed otherwise), human nature remains what it is.

If you think that anything heavily regularised on paper by the boffins and bean counters in the EU guarantees the epitome of rectitude in practice, then we could take a look at Italy’s track record in public procurement, just as an example.

That’s one of the founding members of the EU, one of the first countries to adopt the Euro currency, and a G8 country no less. So tell me that there has never been any shady business in their public procurement contracts, be it of a political or more mercenary nature. Go on, I can do with a good laugh.

Shall we say that my particular example relative to the number of employees was incorrect on paper? Big deal. I stand corrected on that if that it tickles you.

But all this is just a diversion from the main point, namely that the “haxi” Daphne alluded to, including the variant coming from political pressures, has always been there and will always be in some form or another, irrespective of Joe Muscat’s ideas, be they crazy or not. To summarise it in the vernacular and tie in with the title of this article: “min irid jahxi u qieghed fil-posizzjoni li jista’ jahxi, ha jsib kif xorta wahda”.

Granted, putting discriminatory measures in the rules themselves would be even worse. I’m not saying that Joseph Muscat’s particular proposal is a sane one either, though I agree with the general concept of tax benefits to help employment and the economy in general.

PS: And while this administration finally had the cojones to do away with the dockyard cancer, let’s not forget that it took them over 20 years of being in government to do it. That’s the power of certain political issues for you.

No, JP Bonello, in Italian ‘company’ is ‘societa`’ (also sometimes ente, societa commerciale) not ‘compagnia’. Daphne is correct. It is in fact a loan word, so to speak, from the English language, and entered the vernacular thanks to the Commercial Partnerships Ordinance, which has since been repealed and replaced by the Companies Act.

The ECJ has given us extensive, detailed and volumnious jurisprudence on the subject and challenges to state decisions are frequent. This is so, to ensure that this aspect of public life is transparent as possible. the only caveat, so to sepak, is that for the present time, the ECJ will rule on whether the award was given fairly according to the State party’s regulations – and this is where a State administration has some room to manoeuver.

Spartin Plug(k) should really check his facts before he speaks, for in reality, in a call to tender much more detailed information is asked than merely the number of employees, details such as the state of liquidity of the company, audited accounts of the last five years, evidence of the declared time of effective operation in the relevant market sector, foreign partners and their liquidity, financial guarantees for penalties, technical empoyee declarations of qualification, skill and experience – not merely C.V.s but evidence in support of, allocation of resources for each part of the tender project (in cases of contracts of works – these are the most lucrative)

So, it is silly to think that an award to tender would be profferred on the basis of ‘how many mouths you feed’. It is, in my view, naive at best, to think that that would be the reason for asking the number of employees. The administration would want to assses the robustness of the company or individual tendering to ensure, as much as possible, that it would be able to deliver on its obligations once the tender is awarded, and this assesment is independent of the basic criteria required to award the tender.

In other words, apart from those thresholds that must be met for the tender to be awarded (e.g. lowest in price, most technologically advanced etc) the administration is also under a quasi-obligation to carry out a due diligence exercise to ensure that the winner will be able to deliver. This is especially important NOW in the light of EU Funding for government projects.

When funds are made available under a particular EU Axis and a call to tender follows and the tenderer fails to deliver, not only is the project not completed to the detriment of the public, but the fund allocation will, if the deadline established by the Commission for project implementation would have lapsed, be lost – if not forever for a very very long time.

This having been said, public procurement is a very complex sphere of public life, over which numerous tomes and judgements, making for very interesting reading, have be written. Spartin Plug(k) would be well advised to start reading about the subject so that he doesn’t continue thinking like – sorry to disagree with you here Daph – a fly!

Joseph Micallef, point is, CAN Joseph Muscat count to 10?

You are right that it will not solve his problem. He would not know what to say even if he counted until the cows come home.

Grey matter cannot be generated while you count.

You either have it there or you don’t. It is as simple as that.

He should have been left in Brussels. He would have been completely innocuous there. He would also have been very happy amongst a generally mediocre lot.