On the Dot...

HSBC's and Bank of Valletta's new ATMs are not so user friendly after all, at least to clients who have both a current and a savings account. At one stage or another of clients seeking a service from the new ATMs they are asked to refer to not a "savings" or "current" account, but to the 10-or-so digit number of the account. Are people expected to memorise those numbers too?

Lost for Words

For residents of Sta Venera, reporting lost items is easier said than done. On going to their local police station - a stone's throw away from the offices of the local council - they are told that they have to go to the Hamrun police station, so that the details may be set down in the moody, old, DOS-mode computer there. The several citizens who walk in and out of the station with complaints and queries interrupt the process. Could not this antediluvian system be brought up to date by including all police stations on a network?

Paint Your Wagon

The greening of Malta appears to have been a mixed blessing; in the summer months, certain plants of those chosen to beautify the environment need near-constant monitoring and watering. One notes that sometimes, the latter is done during peak sunshine hours. And in some places, the roads are being made wet, creating a danger to motorcyclists.

Stone Hinges

A good part of the landfills problem, engineered or otherwise, centres around building debris and stones from buildings that have been torn down. If the state were to offer incentives and subsidies for the use of these stones, surely some people would be falling over their own feet in order to obtain a few truckloads of these "second-hand" stones for use in buildings.

Bath Salts

The area known as Il-Banjijiet in Marsamxett, Valletta, has been allowed to fall into a shambles. Bathers have to watch out for the precariously balanced stones, bits of broken bottles, and other debris that have been accumulating for years now, and indeed, it is not the first time that accidents happened.

Speed Freaks

Another area that is totally unsafe for those willing to enjoy a hassle-free time of relaxation is Wied il-Buni in Birzebbugia. Young men, eager to show off their prowess as trick cyclists, belt around pedestrians at high speed, never stopping to think of the danger they are creating to young and old alike.

Cats' Cradle

Someone has decided that the front porch of Casa Mijrod, in A. Cuschieri Street, Birkirkara, belongs to the community as a whole. Food for the ever-burgeoning stray cat colony is regularly placed there; what falls from overturned boxes, or remains uneaten, is hardly ever removed.

Gardener's Lore

The Botanic Gardens scheme at Argotti in Floriana has, so to speak, taken root. However, there is a crying need for volunteers to help with the day-to-day work that needs doing. Perhaps, besides volunteers who would treat the place as their dream garden, some schools would care to undertake projects associated with the place, and include hands-on experience while they are at it.

Lift Off

The idea is being mooted that cable cars would take cruise liner passengers from the harbour/port areas to the Valletta central areas. Whatever happened to the plan that was supposed to resurrect the lift system? This proposition is undoubtedly more pleasing to the eye, less hazardous, and more practical.

Power Failure

For the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the basilica dedicated to her in Valletta, all the stops were pulled out. This included the firing of petards at 11.30 p.m. and at midnight, between July 14-15. If a permit was issued for this, shame on whoever put his signature to it. If this was done without the necessary legal permission, one wonders whether any steps have been taken about it.

View Ruined

The residents of St Paul's Bay are "profoundly grateful" to the omniscient MEPA for having so efficiently managed to ruin the beautiful view which they enjoyed up to a short time ago of Selmun Palace Fort, by granting the developer of the building site close to the Capuchin Fathers' Convent permission to build up to a level that simply covered the view of the fort from the other side of St Paul's Bay.

Results Quirks

How can a student who, over the whole of his university course, including in the final examinations, constantly obtains B and C grades, end up with a second class lower degree, while a student in his same course who never got any As and had more Cs than he, end up with a second class upper degree? There is, no doubt, some possible answer, but the fact is that not all students in all faculties are aware of the mechanics of how these possibilities can actually become realities.

Relegation

Like the poor souls in purgatory the residents of Triq it-Tonn in St Paul's Bay continue to plead to either their local council or the Ministry of Transport to surface their perilous and lunar-holed road, even if not necessarily to tarmac it. They feel it is most unfair that, after the contractors who built blocks of flats there were allowed to get away with not returning the road to a usable state, they should be singled out for continued relegation to such deplorable conditions.