Listening to Alfred Sant trying to explain how he is going to refund the VAT on education, I had a sense of déja-vu. I recalled the last time that Dr Sant tried, against the very wishes of the experts in his own party, to impose his very own idea of what VAT should be. I remembered the mess he left the country in, verging on bankruptcy. I remembered that, just as he is doing now, he did not explain anything and then lumped on all of us an unwieldy, untenable and unworkable system that nobody understood. I would like to ask Dr Sant whether he even cares about the bureaucratic nightmare that he'll create with hundreds of thousands of soiled receipts arriving at the VAT Department? Has he even thought how many VAT employees will be required to manage this and the cost this involves? Has it occurred to him that this will expose the whole VAT system to abuse?

VAT works all over the world and trying to come up with novel ways of leaving this out, and refunding that, just because it might sound politically expedient shows the amateurish way that the Labour Party is trying to formulate the fiscal policy of this country.