Parking badly is such a serious crime. Why didn’t he do the decent thing and set up a company in Panama?

The trouble with surrounding yourself with aides who have a low intelligence quotient is that, while they are useful tools in the goon category, they are useless at anything that requires…well, intelligence.

With the whole of Malta talking about his bosses’ scandals, companies in Panama that they tried and failed to hide, shady and shifty fly-by-night operators to whom they have turned over Malta’s hospitals, power stations designed to fill politicians’ pockets, tenders that were pre-decided, and the stink of top-level corruption, Mr Bedingfield tells us that the Deputy Opposition Leader parked his car badly in Valletta and went for a stroll.

Let’s hope that if Beppe Fenech Adami becomes a cabinet minister, he will do the decent thing, get a corrupt accountant to set up a company in Panama for him within days of taking office, and confidently imagine it will remain a cast-iron secret because nobody is ever going to manage to get in to Mossack Fonseca’s server.

I don’t think Mr Bedingfield quite understands the tidal wave of revulsion washing over the island right now. His boss does, though, because he’s far brighter. That’s exactly why he’s lost his confidence and all his bully-brashness, and has shrunk in a few months to a fraction of his previous size.