If the cabinet is having fun making outrageous appointments, we can have some fun as well and in the spirit of the song festival vote for the strangest and most spiteful choices that have been made.

My top 5 would be:

Franco – 5 points
John Dalli – 4 points
Jason Micallef – 3 points
Ronnie Pellegrini – 2 points
Justine Scerri Herrera – 1 point

I could only remember a few others because I have little access to information from Malta. I don’t live there, though I’m Maltese. Maybe a suitable award – a golden iced-bun – can be found or created for the one who ends up with the highest aggregate of points.

I am a university graduate myself and, hence, I humbly consider myself as an academic, even though my career did not lead me to an official teaching post at a university.

Daphne, despite your investigative prowess, for which many could / should be thankful, it seems to me that your blog unfortunately often assumes form and style of an obligatory denigration on many an occasion. Please allow me to quote one of your earlier personal interventions, which can be read on this thread:

[Daphne – That’s like saying you have a degree in civil engineering, so you can make cars.]

Would I be allowed to refer you to the causa Javier Solana?

[Daphne – I’m sorry, Leo, but you and I must part company on this one. No, Leone Ganado is not a statistician. And yes, the very fact that he was prominent in the CNi (a loony organisation as well as an anti-EU one) makes him unfit and unsuitable – and inappropriate – for the role.]

On today’s The Times:

Johann Buttigieg is the new chief executive officer of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, a post that comes with a €60,000 pay packet, Times of Malta has learnt.
Mr Buttigieg had been earmarked for the post before an internal call for applications was issued after former CEO Ian Stafrace resigned.
He was one of two applicants and was cho- sen by a selection committee which, sources said, included Mepa chairman Vince Cassar.
The €60,000 salary is actually €5,000 less than what Dr Stafrace used to get.

He gets more than his minister!

I am not at all surprised by his income, and sincerely think that a finance minister deserves that income. For political mileage Joseph Muscat chose that his ministers earn a pittance for their work, every minister knew what he or she was in for.

Just one cucumber short of a picnic.

Have you heard the one about the time when he was at a wedding and allegedly left for home, forgetting his wife behind?

And I have it from the horse’s mouth that his D.Phil was on C* algebra, a branch of mathematics.

Most of the IT stuff he lectures on nowadays wasn’t around when he got his doctorate.

Actually, data in its raw form is useless. What is important is what one does with it and how one interpretes it.

So no, just being able to churn out the numbers as an IT person does not necessarily mean he is the right man for the job.

And yes, mentioning that your political views differ drastically has probably biased your view of his capabilities as a statistician as compared to his capabilities as an IT man, which no one is putting to doubt.

What cost cutting? The numbers published showed that expenditure in the first six months of the year rose over last year. The saving grace was the fact that income also rose, but pertinent to point out that of the increase in income Euro 59 million came from the EU.

Prosit “min jaf”