(1)        Transport Minister Joe Mizzi has said that there might be a garden in the ditch (if he finds the money, presumably from the €6 million carnival village budget) but that Renzo Piano won’t be involved.

He said it as though shaking off one of history’s greatest architects is somehow a big achievement for which he deserves credit and a gold star from the teacher, rather a major embarrassment.

At this stage, Piano will not be involved even if Joe Mizzi goes crawling to him on Ryanair, as he did with Autobuses de Leon in Madrid.

So if it is a garden at all, it will be a Taghna Lkoll garden, possibly designed by Labour Party official William Lewis, who was responsible for the creation of those unbelievably awful market stalls.

(2)        Young refugees from Africa spoke before the House Social Affairs Committee to talk about their experiences as refugees in Malta (funny how we never use that word, though refugees is exactly what they are).

Their words were heart-wrenching, particularly the 25-year-old who explained how he can’t sleep at night, how he was treated for severe depression at Mount Carmel Hospital, because he is worried about the family he left behind, and because is lonely without them. He feels so alone, he said.

After much more in this vein, the members of parliament on the committee put their questions, a couple of them after wrenching their eyes away from the smartphones they had been fiddling with more or less throughout.

Labour MP Deborah Schembri didn’t seem so much to care about what they endured and are enduring still. “So how do you find the Maltese?” she asked them. What an insightful question that is. She cares about how they see the Maltese more than she wants to find out what the Social Affairs Committee can do to better their situation.

Even if they think the Maltese are racist, rude and rough towards them, they would be hardly likely to say so in that formal context.

(3)        The National Statistics Office has released data which show that the government put another 2,471 people on the public payroll between September 2013 and September 2014.

All of these are full-time, regular employees, which means that they cannot ever be dislodged from the public service payroll even with a change in government.

Before being voting out of power, Joseph Muscat’s predecessor Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici put around 8,000 people on the full-time public sector payroll. We thought that was bad, but at this rate Muscat is going to outstrip him.

Prime Minister KMB was reacting in panic and in attempt at winning a fourth term in government for the Malta Labour Party. But this government is comfortably lodged in situ with a 36,000 vote and nine-seat majority, and when it put those thousands of people on the state payroll, it had been in power for just a year and a half. And of course, those new employees do not include the people who have been given jobs and sinecures that are based on renewable contracts rather than regular employment. There’s quite a big bill for their pay there, too.

(4)        The recent deaths from exposure of more African immigrants, who had been rescued by the Italian coastguard but spent 18 hours in the freezing wet on an open deck, should give pause for thought even to the most savagely inhuman far-right campaigner among us.

Not quite. “Publicise this widely so that all those thinking of doing the same will be put off,” one person wrote. This shows a consummate lack of imagination, and a complete failure to understand that people will continue to take that risk because what they are running away from is so much worse.

I compare it to the choice people face when they are on the fourth floor of a burning building. Do they jump out of the window and risk death, or do they stay inside the building and die for sure?

Now as I write this RAI news has just spoken of around 300 more people who have died in the sea after being forced into dinghies at gunpoint.

Those who do manage to survive that hellish journey and make it here are then treated like scum by people who have never left their cosy comfort zone. It’s intolerable.