Don’t be petty, La Redoute. You sound like Jason Micallef on a good day – and I’m being very kind.

The hell it did. He was avaricious and miserly. The two are complementary. Caution be damned.

Oh, and why are you citing NYT? I thought Mintoffjani had an inborn grudge against capitalists.

La Redoute, keep your eyes on the ball: it is that same avarice that made him cautious.

Mintoff was avaricious, not cautious. He wasn’t a particularly well known supporter of free enterprise and private capital – except in his own case, of course.

Dr Marcon Ali

How many more to go? I long to see the final number of new public service employees and their cost to the national coffers.

Seems they want to place everyone in a government job so when the going gets tough they would have their steady job and no one can boot them out.

Just as other Maltese banks, HSBC (Malta) falls under Maltese banking rules and capitalisation guidelines. We’re talking about the system, ciccio, not the banking model, whatever that means in this day and age.

We are safer not because of HSBC’s banking model, but because the Maltese banking system remains diligent and vigilant. Mintoff’s caution in this field has never been discarded – not by Dupuis, nor any finance minister that followed.

Soon, with the advent of the European Banking Union, there won’t be a difference at all.

He didn’t even risk giving him Owen Bonnici’s job as PS for Justice under Manwel Mallia.

I think that the Worzel Gummage and village bicycle blogs you put up some three odd years ago really rubbed off, Daphne.

[Daphne – I doubt it. The prime minister is perfectly capable of having worked out all that for himself. After all, they were very close friends and he was a regular guest at her home at all hours.]