I have a feeling the Leader also has no clue but is doing an Alfred Sant and will wing it once he is in Castille.

Better still, ‘brodu’ because it is made up of dead (beef) bones, and some of the vegetables mentioned above.

Ara kemm jerhu sugu, Alex (Secret pacts) ST, Karmenu (fakkarni) Vella, Leo (Herr Flick) Brincat, Joe (qatta bla habel) Debono Grech, Marie-Louise, Charlie (DNA) Mangion, Anglu (hares lejja) Farrugia fil-brodu ta gvern Laburista!

Quite a slip that one.

What a Freudian slip.

Mela. Three-point plan, cara daqs il-kristall:

1. Irbah l-elezzjoni
2. Ghamel ceremonja tal-qziez f’Kastilja
3. Imbaghad naraw

Meta jarawk targumenta, kif tridha ma tinzilx il-percezzjoni tal-korruzzjoni, Ang?

He did such a good job of scuppering his own credibility that nothing Simon Busuttil said could do more then he did himself.

If he had been given less time to speak then perhaps he could have just weathered the storm of being pulled apart by someone else.

Apart from being flummoxed, flustered and utterly clueless at various stages, he seemed to have a very tenuous grasp of basic matters of fact.

It seemed to take him a few seconds to remember what indirect taxation was. When he finally remembered, the only example he could give was VAT, to which he had no response at all as to what Labour planned to do with it.

This is apart from the obvious flaw in his reasoning – if the government’s income from VAT is increasing, surely this is by no means a bad thing in itself, as it is a sign that people are spending more and that the economy is moving.

At one stage, when asked about how much Labour’s tax plans would cost, he actually said: “They will cost however much they cost”. Very reassuring.

Things got even more bizarre when he referred to Malta’s standing in the Corruption Perception Index, claiming that it was behind both Zambia and Colombia and “many African countries” and “every European country”.

In reality, Malta is 43rd, while Zambia is 88th and Colombia is 94th. There are several European countries behind Malta; Italy is 72nd.
http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/

What is hilarious is that he actually produced the piece of paper he he didn’t refer to Colombia, Zambia or European countries or even “African countries”. The best thing he could fish out was Bhutan.

Shortly later in the debate, he stated that where Malta was actually behind Colombia was in the World Bank’s Doing Business report. So he knew Malta was behind Colombia in something important, but he wasn’t sure what.

Anyway, Colombia has moved on a lot since the drug cartels had a stranglehold in the 1980s and is one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America.

Which is not to say that Malta’s position in the Corruption Perception Index is not of concern, but what is also worrying is that the person who is blustering his way through a discussion about corruption, taxation and business, like some whisky-soaked Labour Party kazin blowhard, spewing out half-remembered, muddled facts, is very likely to be the next Deputy Prime Minister.