By 2018, Joseph Muscat will have been paid €70,000 for using his Alfa – and he gets to keep the car too

This report in the Times of Malta this morning contains some fascinating information. We knew about Joseph’s money-making Alfa already, of course, but it bears repeating because not many were aware that the man has been taking €7,000 a year for using his own car since he became Leader of the Opposition. That was eight years ago and he still has at least another two years to go under this system.

One assumes that in 2018, whether he is re-elected prime minister or stays on as Leader of the Opposition, he’ll spend some of his own money at last instead of constantly using other people’s, and buy himself a new car which he can then have the Maltese public pay for.

The newspaper report mentions that Joseph has to pay for his insurance and road licence. On an old car like that, they’re not much – around €400 a year max. Lots of people from the insurance field read this website, so perhaps one of them will pull out his or her manual and look up the insurance premium for a 10-year-old Alfa 159 (it was already around two years old at the time he began this scheme).

Meanwhile, there was no mention of Joseph having to pay for maintenance, servicing and repairs, from which you should deduce that he does not pay for them himself but has the Maltese public do it for him unbeknownst to them. And the servicing, maintenance and repairs on an old car like that are huge, sometimes to the point of not being viable. But of course, if you’re not paying for them yourself, they’re always viable.