The finance minister is a good chap, a thoroughly decent and honest fellow who has given a good account of himself on the way he manages his brutal portfolio; on that, people of goodwill agree. Sadly, even good, decent, honest chaps do silly things at times. In the case of the private jet and the Arsenal supporter, Tonio Fenech did just that.

The story is now well-known. The minister is a keen Arsenal fan; nothing wrong with that and he is not alone; a friend of mine even owns a seat in that team's football ground. When the Gunners were playing in Spain in the Champions League last April, Fenech was invited to watch the game, tickets courtesy of Joe Gasan and a free flight on George Fenech's private jet.

If he reads this column, Fenech would have known that if he needed advice on whether he was doing right or wrong he should have sought it from the patron saint of politicians. Thomas More would have been straightforward enough. It profits you not a bit to risk an excellent reputation for serious gain, but for the pleasure of watching Arsenal for 90 minutes.

Fenech was quite right to imply in The Times, last Tuesday, that a politician does not have to climb into a private jet to be corrupted; a drive along the coast road can achieve the same result as easily; so could a nod and a wink at a dinner party. But by not thinking through the perceptions, or misperceptions, that could be created, he opened himself to the discomfort of a couple of political air-pockets. I am morally convinced that the minister is not for corrupting; what is irksome was his failure to predict, if I may change metaphors, that the story, once broken, would make waves of sorts. In the event, very little has been made of an attempt to blackmail him.

His avoidable error was, surprisingly for a man who has demonstrated a good sense of judgment in most everything he does, precisely a lapse in this department. He should have seen beyond those 90 minutes, however exciting they promised to be, to the outcome that those with axes to grind, or without for that matter, would - er, grind. So, a warning this time to stick to the political league, which has spectators enough of its own, for which he was signed on, to which he is making a good contribution in difficult times. Arsenal? Watch them on TV; much safer.

As for businessmen - can't they mind and get on with their own business and stop flashing their private jets, or whatever, in the direction of people best left unattracted? Few comments, if any, have been made about these flashers. As for the finance minister, innocent of everything except naïveté, eyes on the job and bring your better judgment to bear on Budget 2010.

2010 promises much

Not least a radical reform in the public transport system. By the end of that year the face-lift provided by this reform ought to bring smiles back to those long-suffering users who have had to make do with a system that had a quaintness of the wrong sort about it - inefficient, user-unfriendly, time-consuming and a mobile pollutant of the first disorder.

Routes and availability will be increasing substantially; the introduction of town-to-town, village-to-village travel will make the life immeasurably more pleasant; and there will be direct trips from the airport to various hotel sites. The size of transport will vary, smaller buses for routes that pass through villages. Bus stops will display arrival times and the route a particular bus stopping at any of them will be taking. And one must hope, no, insist, that the reform will demand from all the human resources involved a sense of discipline to make the system work as near to clock-work fashion as is humanly possible. There will also be more Park and Ride locations and bus terminals.

2010 will see the start of the Piano project (that sliding roof, please), the President's Palace in Valletta upgraded, the aesthetically controversial but much improved St George's Square functioning, a new and exciting Parliament building near City Gate and the removal of the horror that passes off as an entrance.

2010 will see the Smart City project taking shape, blowing away our pessimists' delight in surrounding it with pessimism and, as exciting as that project, the whole of the Grand Harbour will continue to be regenerated so that by the year 2012 it will start to resemble a giant and magnificent Waterfront like no other in the world. I boast not.

2010 will see Malta taking on a larger role in the Euro-Arab dialogue now that the Joint Office of the European Commission and Arab League has been established on our island. This initiative is good not only in the sense that the EU and the Arab League may discover or create areas of agreement against an international backdrop that must include Israel.

It will also provide points of contact for increased trade, commerce and investment. We provide this forum with a Euro-Mediterranean profile that could be inestimable when Finnish minds may find difficulty in meeting Arab ones. And where better than within this group can there be face-to-face discussions on the thorny matter of illegal immigration?

There is a fly in the ointment and if it could speak it would splutter the word, beware. There are predictions that gold may rise to as much as $3,000 an ounce. When investors see a safe harbour in gold, and money is being printed at a rate that defies economic wisdom, you can bet your last weakening dollar that big trouble is looming ahead.

On Archbishop Chaput's archconservatism

In one of the selections compiled in last Sunday's 'Quotes and News' Religion page, I was much struck by its heading 'Archbishop attacks Cardinal'. With what, I wondered? The Archbishop in question is Charles Chaput, of Denver; the Cardinal, Georges Cottier, OP.

I have a copy of the latter's speech - politics, morality and original sin - and of Archbishop Denver's response to the Cardinal. I have read and re-read it; nothing in it that could, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be seen as a slight, let alone an 'attack' on the Cardinal.

Nor, to the best of my knowledge did the Archbishop 'attack' Catholics who were Obama supporters; criticised, perhaps; urged them to think about how they voted, even more likely, but attacked? And if US Ambassador Douglas Kmiec was "repeatedly in the firing line of Chaput", I am once more unaware of this; criticised for trying to be all things to voters and to Obama, perhaps; nothing more.

But the most regrettable remark in that compilation was the pejorative description of Chaput as an "arch-conservative". It does not fit the man whose book, Render Unto Caesar, our politicians and opinion-formers may care to order, even read. So let us take a closer look at what the man from Denver had to say.

He asserts from the start that, "One of the strengths of the Church is her global perspective" and remarks that the Cardinal's essay on Obama "made a valuable contribution to Catholic discussion of the man. World opinion about America's leaders is not only appropriate; it should be welcomed", but, he adds, "the world does not live and vote in the United States. Americans do" and "the pastoral realities of any country are best known by the local bishops who shepherd their people... on the subject of America's leaders, the thoughts of an American bishop may have some value. They may augment the Cardinal's good views by offering a different perspective". This sounds wonderfully courteous to me and not a mite archconservative.

As to Obama's appearance at Notre Dame, "this had nothing to do with whether he is a good man or a bad man. He has many good and moral political instincts... These things matter. But un-fortunately so does this: the President's views on vital bioethical issues, including but not limited to abortion, differ sharply from Catholic teaching". He may have some sympathy for Catholic social teaching but "there is no 'social justice' if the youngest and weakest among us can be legally killed". Archcon-servative? Matter of fact.

Chaput criticised Notre Dame, a Catholic University, for making Obama the centrepiece of its graduation events and for granting him an honorary doctorate of laws when well before Obama had ever even been heard of by the outside world, America's bishops "urged Catholic institutions to refrain from honouring public officials who disagreed with Church teaching on grave matters". Archconservatism? Common sense.

At no point did the Archbishop allow his fears to rule his mind or overrule his charity, but he worried that, "too often in recent American experience, pluralism and doubt have become alibis for Catholic moral and political lethargy". Archconservatism? Truth.

I am still searching for the Archbishop's 'attack' on the Cardinal. Instead, I keep coming across references to the Cardinal's 'generous spirit', the Cardinal's 'good views', his 'valuable contribution to Catholic discussion of the new American President'. The point the Archbishop strove to make - and made - was that Cardinal Cottier's "articulate essay undervalue(d) the gravity of what happened in Notre Dame"; it did.