I meant ‘tinkering’ as in ‘to do a job in an amateur way’ or ‘to play about with/trial and error’ which is how the word is commonly used nowadays.

I’ve never heard ‘tinker’ being used as ‘show repairer’ (skarpan) in which case ‘cobbler’ is the word employed by the English.

Joseph Muscat’s playground.

Tinker – Tanker – Passport – Lie.

Joseph surfed in on a (s)tinker
From talking passports he shied
Now whether it’s meter, merit, Nair, police, adoption or tanker
Facts and furrow inform us he lied

mela nesa Joseph Muscat kemm ghamlu hsara lil Malta u lill-pajjizna meta l-lejber kienu fl-oppozizzjoni, ikissru l-Power station ta’ delimara ma sehibhom KMB, u meta riedu jxewwxiu lill-UE biex ma thallix lil gvern malti jibni l-waste serve. u ma nafx kemm ikitar hsara ghamlu lil pajjizna f 25 sena opposizzjoni negattiva … kollox LE LE LE u LE.

The PL crowd were furious during the debate. Muscat was restless, moving to and fro on the podium. Very cheeky of him to mention the clock, since Mintoff received an enormous amount of expensive gifts, which were auctioned recently.

These people are so ignorant that while Dr Cassola was speaking, one of them said, ‘Mela dak favur il-kacca’. I rest my case.

Why should we be surprised?
Lest, of course we forget the times when Bombs were the rule of the day.

Tinkers require brains to do a good job. Do you credit the Labour Party with its leaders, past and present, with that much intelligence?

It’s an insult to tinkers (the Maltese expression uses “skrapan”) to equate them to the present lot in government.

It’s a common denominator since Mintoff.