On the dot...

Besides the disastrous state of the roads and pavements in the vicinity of Ghar il-Lenbi Street, Sliema, the shameful state of filth and dirt reached its climax when some skips close by were removed. Consequently, the garbage usually dumped in the skips accumulated to the already existing garbage. Many complaints were lodged with the local council and with different departments.

Boxed In

How are permissions for parking bays allocated? In the eventuality that an application for one is rejected, is a resident free to use a tin of paint and create a parking space in front of his residence? This practice does not appear to be rare in this tiny island.

Name Sake

Why have all one's personal details been computerised at the Public Registry? The general idea appears to have been to issue documents at the touch of a button, with the added bonus of having perfectly legible copies pleasing to the eye. Yet when calls for applications are made by government departments and parastatal industries a copy of one's birth certificate and police conduct is still being demanded.

Sick Leaf

The triage system at the St Luke's Hospital's emergency department works well - unless there are several cases that are deemed non-urgent and pushed to the back of the queue each time someone in an ambulance, or any other specific category included in those indicated as priority cases, arrives. It would make perfect sense to delegate some of these milder cases to nursing staff versed in trauma management; all that would be required was the patient's consent.

Bird Song

The Litter Act is set to come into force, with a view to penalising even those who are caught red-handed throwing as much as a cigarette butt to the ground. Yet, how will this law affect those whose weird sense of the artistic decorates newly-paved areas with gobs of chewing gum? And what about all those people who regularly feed stray animals and pigeons? Will they be fined only if all the food is not eaten?

Car Pets

The park and drive systems being introduced for Valletta, and, for a short while, the Trade Fair grounds, is to be praised, since they lessen congestion, and, inevitably, pollution. One hopes, however, that people who decide to use their own vehicles, specifically because of having to transport bulky objects, or for family visits, will be treated leniently at law.

Stone Hinges

It is pathetic to note how foreign television stations made such a fuss of the fact that thousands of people, among whom were latter-day Druids, gathered to greet the dawn of the summer solstice at Stonehenge. With a little bit of forethought, the Malta Tourism Authority could have sent a similar clip to RAI and BBC indicating that our own monuments are much older than the aforementioned - and even older than the Pyramids, along with a short voice-over about their purpose as a celestial calendar.

Write On

Bank employees are offered rewards for suggesting exercises that improve on their establishment's services, or business efficiency. Could this incentive not be also offered to clients of the bank itself, with prizes being given out at least bi-annually to the best suggestion offered? Sometimes, it takes a pair of eyes, in front of a brain, outside a particular situation to gauge the best way to get around it.

Stamp Duty

Postage-paid envelopes are the postal equivalent of sliced bread; in a correspondence drawer or file, they are more evident than sheets of stamps, and therefore more likely to be replaced if they appear to be running out. Aerogramme sheets with different stamps on them would, in a similar manager, encourage people to write oftener to friends and relatives abroad; and, in time, they could prove to become collectors' items, if sets of them, akin to First Day Covers, were produced.

Narrow Pages

The 2005 Business Directory, even more comprehensive than the issue before it, has been published, and distributed. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to inform households of this, with the result that no old copies could be left on doorsteps for collection and recycling. This is a pity, because, unlike the larger pages of a telephone directory mistakenly withheld from collection, the pages are too small, and too glossy, to be of alternative use.

Watch Dogs

The issue raised through a judicial protest last week in connection with the offer made to visitors to the International Fair of Malta, whereby a "free air ticket" is given out with every entrance ticket, should make consumers think. Is the watchdog/regulator tasked with protecting the consumer being proactive or reactive?

Health Scare

We have recently been hearing, albeit in piecemeal fashion, a lot about the threat of an influenza pandemic hitting this world of ours. Should there not be a more structured campaign by the health authorities aimed on the one hand at not creating unnecessary panic and on the other to educate and inform?