Boxing day falling on a Sunday like it does today is not good for newspaper editorial staff. It means that they have to join other workers who are boxed in on Christmas Day. It happened to me once many years ago, when I used to edit It-Torca. No matter how much advance work we put in during the week, I had to ask one other member of the staff to report in on Christmas Day to help me finish the paper and put it to bed.

Though we did our best to retain good humour, it was not fun.

Nowadays, with services having become such a large part of economic activity, a considerable proportion of people are required to attend their place of work when the rest of us are about our leisure.

Having to do that on the most important holiday of the year cannot be more demanding.

We might bear that in mind when we are tempted to complain about some service or other during the rest of the year. The tougher aspect of being on an editorial team is that one is likely to be boxed in on New Year's Day as well.

I trust that the team at The Sunday Times and other colleagues boxed in over this period had or will have at least some quality time with their loved ones.

I am grateful that I got through this year without receiving another present like the one I got on Christmas Day of 2003. Yet I remain thankful for it.

As we began to open presents before lunch got under way, so that the grandchildren would settle down to at least a few mouthfuls, I suddenly remembered that I was to pick up one of my few remaining aunts who was to join us. I drove from Attard to Valletta in more than a bit of a rush.

Luckily the Marsa-Mriehel bypass was totally deserted. Unluckily, yet luckily too, someone felt that was a good day to put up a speed camera on that road. In due course I was advised, in the briskest of language, that the speed camera had recorded me overspeeding.

The notice spared me details of by how much. But I, of course, knew that it was by much too much. Had there been the slightest hitch in my car or on the road I would surely have missed lunch and been well and truly boxed in.

I paid up the hefty fine imposed on me and classified the lesson I received for it as very good value for money. I go along the bypass at least once each day except Sunday, not infrequently even several times. I have made sure, I am happy to say, to keep my car purring under the speed limit during 2004.

My Christmas Day experience set an alarm in my consciousness that would go off as soon as the speedometer read 40 mph.

No doubt about it, the Lm30 or so the government took off me went to a good cause - my own. I haven't been fined for overspeeding again. Not because there were no speed cameras around. Simply because I stick to what is good for me. And to not being a threat to others.

I have often wondered whether any other users at all of the Marsa-Mriehel bypass were as lucky as me in getting a timely warning which, at the price, was a bargain. The road, one of the few stretches around that is reasonably well made up, even if signs of stress are showing, and only curves slightly, invites pressure on the accelerator.

The vast majority of my fellow travellers on it respond to the invitation with gusto. As I toddle along at the maximum allowable 40 mph, practically every other car whizzes past me.

I smile tolerantly when young female drivers toot at me in small bursts, demanding impatiently that I step on it, or get out of the way. Young male drivers, I find, have a different style.

They make their car give one long, piercing hoot and whoosh by on the other side of wherever I happen to be, zigzagging between the inside and outside lanes to get to the next traffic jam as crazily fast as they can.

I do not smile at all when my steady 40 mph cruising speed is exceeded plus-plus by one or other of the several cars that carry some of the highest dignitaries in the land along that road to their offices, home or official residence. They, at least, should give an example, even if they are not spurred by a police fine as I was, to my shame as well as relief.

The Archbishop, I am glad to say, is always driven along the bypass at below the legal speed limit.

Speaking of fines, I wonder how much the government is collecting out of penalties for overspeeding. It does not take place only along some bypass or other, by silly, forgetful, aging drivers, brash young people, and others who ought to know better. It occurs in village cores, and in towns where roads that are not meant to be through roads are used as such.

I have direct experience of that in Attard. The Marsa-Mriehel bypass has not been extended to bypass as much of Balzan and Attard as can be. That was planned years ago. The draft local plan for the area suggests that the original extension should be enhanced, because of the large volume of traffic that is passing through the heart of Attard.

That necessity is for the central government to continue to ignore, notwithstanding the way residents are boxed in between pollution, speeding and considerable danger.

On its part the Attard council, dedicated and effective in other various regards, persists in doing nothing about overspeeding through inner roads where it has put up signs saying, in all seriousness, that 35 kilometres/hour (not miles) is the limit.

The council has put under camera surveillance an area around the bank branch where contraventions through short parking are inevitable, something which is within its right. But it does nothing about its duty to implement reasonable traffic calming where it is most required.

It would be unfair to box the Attard council on its own into my criticism. I refer to it because Attard is where I reside and the matters I refer to affect me personally. But my remarks fit many other areas.

Overspeeding is the pastime of far too many drivers and is a widespread practice.

Traffic control, including calming, should be the objective of central policy, even if it will still need to be implemented by local councils within their jurisdiction. It has to go beyond bus lanes and road marking with vanishing paint, and sleeping policemen that threaten to grow into hillocks.

A general rethink is a must if traffic abusers are to be boxed in. Smooth traffic and accident and abuse prevention is the professed objective of traffic control and the wardens system.

The objective is not being reached. The state of the roads, the incredible vehicle density that grows without end, the lack of self-discipline and regard for others displayed by too many drivers make the task as difficult as can be.

Yet, not even what should be possible is being attempted with enough commitment and vigour. We seem to be boxed in a situation that worsens steadily, instead of getting better.

Perhaps the New Year will bring along an awareness that we can do nothing about being boxed in by necessity, such as editorial staff and others who had to work yesterday and will also be on duty on New Year's Day, but we do not need to box ourselves in by our own actions or lack of them.

May 2005 see peace in our hearts, among us, and on Earth.

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