Revolving doors  is an issue that frequently comes to the boil. As a practice, it allows people appointed to a high government (or private) position to immediately, once they leave it, assume another role with another company that had previously been under their purview. While doing so, they carry with them information and contacts accrued during the time spent in their former assignment. With them on board, the entity to which they migrate can get quite a boost. The same applies to those holding a leading political position.

In Malta, we took a long while to recognize the problem. I well remember the long arguments I exchanged with the then minister for communications to try and get him to ensure that in the new regulatory authority he wanted to launch, a revolving door option was excluded for its top management. He could not understand or agree with the reason for this.

Since then, attitudes have changed, but not all that much. I agree that the small size of this country does not allow the flexibility others enjoy when they introduce rules that limit greatly the loose migration from public to private. I still believe we should have and should follow such rules.

***

ABANDONED ANIMALS

It’s no excuse at all to claim that in other  European countries, the same thing is happening: there too, since the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted, the number has increased greatly of animals abandoned after being bred and having lived as part of the life of (human) families. Animal sanctuaries are full and cannot keep up with the needs for shelter by animals who surely are meanwhile experiencing huge sadness and fear.

What is happening can be explained in just one way. It could hardly be said that in general, people are cruel. Still, the view prevails that animals do not lead a life which resembles that of humans, and so they cannot feel sadness, happiness and pain as we do. Instead we consider them like they were chattels, hardly more useful -- perhaps less -- than a table, or chairs. 

***

THE PARLIAMENT’S BUDGET

Even within the European Parliament there is grumbling about next year’s budget being prospected for the Parliament. The proposal is for a big increase in expenditures for the recruitment of new “assistants” by political groups. It seems that this was part of an agreement by which a new secretary general of the Parliament is going to be appointed.

Apparently within the Council of Ministers, the EP budget was heavily criticised. In the Parliament itself, I heard some say that the increases were not justified and would only serve to butter up some internal cliques, in a scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours exercise between the political groupings. It hardly makes sense for the Parliament on the one hand to preach to member states and the European Commission about how they could best run their budgets, while it makes itself open to charges of waste and cronyism in the management of its own finances.