So now we even have corruption and abuse in the matter of gifts to heads of government

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat presented Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi with a ‘work of art’ (God preserve us – it’s a print of a humdrum drawing of an Apennine wolf; how tactful) produced by Kevin Drake’s girlfriend.

Malta doesn’t have any great artists but it does have some good ones and it is completely unacceptable that the Italian prime minister is presented with a crony’s girlfriend’s creation because the crony is owed a favour, more so when it is so sub-standard.

Drake was one of the most vociferous ‘switchers’ in the last general election, campaigning for the Labour Party and Joseph Muscat with over-emotional hysteria that made me – somebody who has known him since childhood – literally cringe with embarrassment on his behalf.

And this after the previous government kept him on the Malta Tourism Authority payroll even when he claimed he was too ill to work because of ME, which never stopped him doing other things like this – with the result that his work had to be done by others or didn’t get done at all.