It is so good of Martin Scicluna to let your readers know how he will be spending the festive season in the depths of Wiltshire with his family. It is also so good that he is spending it in a country which has a culture of independent overview of government, thereby keeping tabs on the government of the day; this on behalf of the people that elected it. One never knows, some of it may rub on Scicluna.

It would have been much more informative had Scicluna informed readers exactly when and why the application from the American University of Malta (AUM) to be recognised as a university metamorphosed into an application for a higher educational institution.

Or better still, whether there ever was such an application by the AUM in the first place. Now that would certainly have been useful to your readers to know. They would then be in a position to know whether and for how long they were taken for a ride by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his government.