During official discussions at the European Parliament, it is being said that the financial package for Greece hammered out in the middle of last year is making progress.

The Greek government accuses the International Monetary Fund of needlessly creating difficulties.

Representatives of the European Commission say that after further discussion, agreement will surely be reached between all parties regarding what needs to  be done next.

Then, in contacts with Greek MEPs, you get a completely different picture. They claim that the Greek economy is still going downhill.

In social terms, the situation is deteriorating.

The government is passing the "structural" laws that have been demanded from Greece but they are actually inoperative.

The migration crisis is undermining the one motor in the Greek economy that still functions -- tourism.

The question is: whom should one believe?

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When a loan is not a loan

Here's one way how to totally circumvent the new law about political party financing which sets a limit on the donations one can make to a political party without having to publish one's name as a donor:

Lend the party under a ten year contract, the sum of 10,000 euros at an interest rate of 4/5 percent. Your name will not appear anywhere.

Every year on receiving the interest payment, return it to the party as a donation. That sum will be quite less than the limit set for the publication of donors' names.

When the contract is coming to a close, sign an agreement (or you can enter into such an arrangement very early on, after all) by which over a number of years, you will be donating portions of your loan in such a way that the interest payment and the donated portion fall under the limit set for donations, whose source need not be divulged.

Right from the start, the party would thus be able to consider as at its total disposal, the capital of 10,000 or 30,000 euros or whatever sum you passed on to it, without having to declare names and origins.

The party implementing such a scheme would meanwhile be able to proclaim its credentials as a knight in shining armour all out to defend transparency. Do such thngs happen "only in Malta"?

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Animal care

It’s a good thing that our feelingsof care and love towards animals have continued to grow stronger.

In the past, a different state of affairs prevailed. I remember horrible stories from those days when people would skin a live rabbit, or dogs and cocks  would be primed to fight each other to the death. (Even so, from those days too, I remember the story of the man who drowned when he jumped into heavy seas to rescue a dog, plus other stories of people who would take time out to look after sick and abandoned stray cats.)

It's interesting that among the non-news items published by the media, write ups about animal welfare have become as popular as those about restaurants with the best food or about the most modern recipes.

Yet at the same time that appreciation for animals as our friends seems to flourish, increasingly, the animals themselves have become integrated in the market economy. While previously, you either loved or hated animals, and you bred them and gave them as gifts, today they all go through life tagged with a price.