On the Dot...

The Malta Tourism Authority has decided to suspend tours to the magnificent Fort St Elmo due to "safety concerns relating to parts of the fort's structure". Will the MTA now explain what it exactly means and why and how some parts have become unsafe?

Lessons Learnt

The scholastic year at the Sixth Form has started in earnest. Unfortunately, the number of students is enough to make timetables embrace a wider time frame than obtains in this type of tertiary education when other institutions offer it. For days when students are primed to listen to lectures that turn out to be a no-show because a lecturer is absent, the day is lost, for free periods are the order of the day in the absence of substitute teachers from an on-call group.

Bitter Medicine

A 70-year old lady who lives literally only a stone's throw away from hospital qualifies for free medication. She is, however, made to go to the Floriana health centre to have her prescription honoured, because, as they told her, "that is the way things are done", and that if she were given the concession she was asking, everyone else would want it too.

Pill Popping

Meanwhile, the mother of a man with disability is being put through a lot of unnecessary expense and tension in order to obtain (free) medication for her son. She spends hours every month, traipsing from her hometown to Rabat for her prescription, then to Mosta to pick up some of the medication and then on to St Luke's Hospital's dispensary for the rest of the medication.

Buried Treasure

The workers in charge of carrying out burials at the Sta Maria Addolorata cemetery really ought to be more careful in their behaviour in front of grieving relatives. Their casual attitude leaves much to be desired. They lower coffins gruffly, often without removing all the stone slabs from atop the grave, for ease of operation, and are uncouth in the language they use.

Scrap Heap

Another broken down car is the latest in a stream of vehicles left cannibalised in Triq il-Palazz l-Ahmar, corner with Triq il-Batterija, in Sta Venera. Parts of it go missing as the days pass; it is now balancing on stones. One wonders what purpose - if any - the vehicles found in this particular area serve.

Mini Markets

School bus and mini-van drivers really ought to be more courteous towards the owners of houses in front of which they park their vehicles. It is not the first time that junk food wrappings and soft drinks bottles were left on porch sills, or inside front gardens. Besides, the time these vans park in front of houses with music blaring from car radios coincides exactly with afternoon naps.

No Limits?

It would be rather difficult to put a finger on what, exactly, certain outlets are supposed to be selling. Confectioneries sell groceries; butchers sell herbs and spices; grocers sell meat products and vegetables, while bazaars sell paracetamol, to name but a few anomalies. But one of the weirdest combinations ever must be the newfangled alcohol mixes in bottles, sold alongside detergents and foodstuffs from several flea market stalls all over the island.

Nightlong floodlighting

All church floodlighting, powered up by Enemalta and paid for by taxpayer money is supposed to be switched off at midnight. Unfortunately, however, only in very few localities does this actually happen!

Free in and out

Anybody wanting to enter the desalination plant at Pembroke, through the main entrance, is free to do so all the time, and without fear of being interrupted. For most of the time, during daylight, the gate is wide open and unattended.