For your consideration this morning

The prime minister with a professor at another diploma mill

I live quite close to a populous college near Targa Gap (Mosta). Has the presence of large numbers of students done anything for businesses in the area?

No, not at all. I would know because the shops clustered close to the Targa Gap roundabout itself are my local shops. They get no business from the students – not even the stationery and the pharmacy.

A couple of years ago, a single basic coffee-shop opened up – when the college had been there for years already – and some of the students make their way there in term-time, buying perhaps a coffee and at most a sandwich and sitting there for ages chatting or using the internet. Outside term-time – which is almost four long months between early June and end September, the place is practically empty bar the occasional random shopper. Lots of the time, it’s closed.

And this is within walking distance of the college. The students never make their way further down that shopping street, which ends in the Mosta Civic Centre and the parish church. They couldn’t be fagged to walk the distance and let’s face it, they have no reason for doing so.

It’s the same around the Junior College. What sort of business do you get there? There are a few cheap bars, but then again, they’re empty outside term-time. Students at the Junior College don’t go down to Johnsons to buy fans or cupboards to put their files in.

Then we have the most salient example of all: the University of Malta, with its large campus of many thousands of students taking the full panoply of courses, and hundreds of academic and non-academic staff. How is business at Tal-Qroqq? There are three or four busy copy-shops-cum-stationeries, Mireva Book Shop which has been there unrivalled (because the market won’t sustain another one) since the dawn of time, and a couple of basic cafes.

And again, the whole place is virtually a ghost-town between June and September.

Yet the prime minister wishes to drive the point home that his friend’s Jordanian Diploma Mill of Baksheesh will be good for business in the Cottonera area. What is he suggesting here – that the ‘students’ will spend their time eating round the clock at the restaurants on the marina? That they will go to the weekly market in Birgu? That they will buy their clothes at Simon’s down the dock? Or that smart shops will suddenly sprout up to meet their needs?