On Wednesday, almost but not quite too late for my neo-Beck column, Joseph Muscat paraded himself triumphantly before the massed ranks of the media to announce that an agreement had been reached with the European Commission that allows his passport flogging scheme to be tagged "as approved by the European Commission".

Yes, fine, it's better than it was, and it's illuminating that in his eagerness to get Henley & What'em'called's show properly on the road, the PM is not embarrassed to look indecisive, vacillating and singularly incompetent.

But quite apart from the fact that something pretty rotten has been given a gloss that makes it look better, akin to a raddled hooker having a facelift, the principle is the same: citizenship, not residency, is being sold, with the added tweak that the buyer has to spend some undefined time in Malta.   The PM was not clear at all as to how much time was needed to press the right buttons and nor was he clear as to how the Schengen Rules are going to be applied in the context of monitoring the sojourns here of the relevant people.

One of Muscat's points, in fact, was that while there's nothing in the law that stipulates the length of stay, equally there's nothing in the law that prevents a prospective purchaser  from spending all his time here.   This, with all due respect, is a statement of the bleeding obvious, there was never any issue with prospective purchasers spending all the time they want to here, the point is that as far as Muscat was able to tell us, they don't really need to, even now.

Theoretically, Mr Who Is He, that well known bloated plutocrat, can fly in on Henley & Whoever's privately laid on jet, trot down to the relevant department, get an ID-Card with an "A" on the end of the number (do they still stick that letter on?) sign a lease on a little pad somewhere and be back at the airport before the jet has had time to cool down its engines.

I suppose the European Commission thinks that this would not be on, and it is to be hoped that there won't be this sort of scam taking place with official blessing, but before things are made clearer and tighter, we're going to have to be forgiven for remaining sceptical.

What is going to be interesting is the race to the bottom that this scheme is going to start.  What's to stop some other interested country from setting its price lower and getting Henley & Thingy to market the scheme with an even better mark-up for them?  Even with all the bells and whistles that have been tacked on?   

And what is going to repair the harm done to our reputation by Muscat's original scheme, the one that was dumped on far and wide, even on BBC Radio Three on the very morning after he told us that he was all pally-pally again with the Commission?

Thanks, PM, you've really done us proud.

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