I am faced with a binary choice.

Here is the Finance Minister inviting everyone to submit new ideas for his 2015 Budget. Concurrently, we have Fitch’s assessment of his economic governance: a knockout argument advising the Maltese people to rejoice but, at the same time, to keep mum on any further suggestions because these would hardly improve our economic performance.

Never one to give up so readily, here is my entreaty to the minister: try to redistribute a bigger portion of the increment from the continuing economic growth to alleviate poverty, possibly the country’s darkest spot on its otherwise white character screen.