Perhaps I shouldn’t have deleted the rest of my comment, which was ‘Is he your office gofer?’

Grown men are referred to by their surname, not by their first name – unless you are among friends and family and talking about one of your own.

The Opposition leader isn’t ‘Simon’. He’s Busuttil.

When people in Britain began referring to their prime minister as Tony rather than Blair, they were being sarcastic and you knew it was over for him.

In any construction project, other than very minor ones, concrete cube samples would be taken regularly.

Some cubes would be crushed 7 days after casting and others 28 days after casting.

The results, in the form of test certificates, are passed on to the engineers who would ensure that the strength specified by them has been achieved.

The 7-day test results would already give a very good indication of the likely strength of the concrete and raise alarm bells.

The 28-day results would confirm this.

I can’t imagine a situation where the engineers would have accepted concrete Grade C20 when they specified Grade C30.

This to my mind implies that the test certificates may have been tampered with.

That is the crucial point.

Hence my comparison to bad plumbing.

There is too much confusion about this.

Police prosecution will neither recoup losses nor make good for a bad situation. Those are matters for the CIVIL courts in which the government has to sue whoever.

Even if there is basis for prosecution, and a crime is proved, and the person found guilty, the only result is that this person is fined by the court and then disciplined separately by his warranting body (if applicable) or, if he is a public officer, interdicted for falsifying documents.

And the situation with the hospital concrete stays exactly what it is.

I’m sorry I keep banging at this, but I’m trying to drive the point home.

People seem keener to have somebody hanged, drawn and quartered for a ‘crime’ then to ensure that the situation is set right financially.

1. The owner and the architect are both subject to criminal prosecution if somebody dies or is maimed.

2. The heirs of the dead person, or the maimed person, sue the owner under civil law, for compensation, while the owner sues the architect.