Standards in Public Life: the latest

How really embarrassing this is for the Malta Council for Science and Technology. The board should vote for his removal, remembering always that they are there to safeguard the best interests of the Council and not to protect their own interests and those of an executive chairman who is singlehandedly destroying its good image.

Either that, or they can pass the hat around and buy him some of this – though of course they will need to get a prescription first.

This kind of behaviour seriously embarrasses the Prime Minister and weakens his image in public perception, too – but I’ve begun to think that the Prime Minister no longer gives a damn about how he is perceived through his poor choices of people and the way they behave without reprimand or control.

During just such a manic episode last year, the executive chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology was cautioned by the police, who called him down to the Mosta station, after he messaged me repeatedly with insults, slander and even a threat over the course of several hours. He was warned not to contact me again by telephone, text message or email.

This sort of behaviour is a sacking offence, but Malta under Labour – Malta in general, really – operates to different standards in public life, I suspect largely because, as a reader commented on this website, “Malta does not have a lunatic fringe. It has a sane fringe.”