No. The fact that he drinks so much concerns us all.

The Nationalist Party has said that the Economy Minister’s alcohol expenditure is “an insult to workers”. I’m sorry? How about the rest of us? Some of us who are not toiling away on the minimum wage are probably the angriest of all, because we’re the ones who understand what’s happening here more clearly than anybody sitting at a supermarket checkout till or loading boxes in a warehouse.

The Nationalist Party should separate the issues, but I’m thinking that it probably hasn’t even separated them in its own mind. That Chris Cardona is profligate, spending as much on alcohol in three nights as a labourer earns in a month, is just one of those issues. Yes, it’s insulting, offensive and in terrible taste. It’s the sort of thing people do when they were raised with nothing and think they’ve hit the freebie, good-time jackpot. But it’s not worrying.

What is worrying is the fact that the Economy Minister appears to be unable to control his drinking, that he drinks heavily even when alone in his hotel room, and that he spends most of his free time (and even some time when most people in his position would be at the office) in bars of the worst kind. This mans sit in cabinet, for God’s sake. He has an important portfolio to look after. And he can’t get through the day or night without knocking it back.

That’s the real problem. Even accounting for the fact that drinks in their Dubai hotel were “expensive” – Cardona’s excuse this morning – and that there were three of them, the others being Dana Farrugia, his (clear the throat here) private secretary, and Mario Azzopardi, his business partner who is also his chief of staff, you’re still looking at a minimum of 50 to 60 drinks, which means a nightcap of six to seven drinks a night for each one of them. And quite frankly, I don’t think Dana would have chucked six alcoholic drinks down her neck every night for three nights, largely because that means several hundred calories which she can do without after the struggle it took her to drop two dress sizes in the thrill of working for the Minister. Cardona and Azzopardi almost certainly drank the lot between them.

And the other point to be made, of course, is that these crooks palmed their drinks bill off on the public purse without the slightest qualm of conscience, which tells you that we’re probably paying for their drinks and liquid lunches back home in Malta too, only nobody’s found out yet because this Dubai thing was just a random test by the National Audit Office.