Signorina Buontempo launches the Bugibba summer carnival with the garden gnome from the Arts Council

Things have come to a pretty pass in this country when the executive chairman of the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts is reduced to helping launch a local council carnival in a tourist resort. The executive chairman has not escaped from a garden centre compound for plaster garden gnomes. He is Albert Marshall, whose wife Jane starred in the Malta Taghna Lkoll campaign video chanting: “JIENA NEMMEN F’JOSEPH GHAX JOSEPH JEMMEN FIHA.”

And why is Signorina Buontempo there? Because he’s Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government, and the carnival is organized by the St Paul’s Bay Local Council.

How sad.