I.M. Beck - quote unquote

The title of this segment side references a 30-something or more year-old Yes song, which a denizen of the street of which I intend to write will recognise. The double negative with which I ended the title (or ended the title with, just to annoy the people for whom proper grammar is of paramount importance) is intended to emphasise that the "you" to whom I am addressing this tirade should feel disgraced.

The said "you" is the person responsible to ensure that Luqa Briffa Street in Gzira (at the upper end of that fair borough) does not resemble a particularly arduous tank-testing facility. I had occasion to drive down this street last Saturday and, verily, it was a disgrace, a total and utter disgrace.

As far as I know, the street is not a thoroughfare of national importance and, as such, it is the responsibility of the local council. My impression was strengthened when, on Sunday, I spotted an epistle in one of the English language papers from the mayor of Gzira wherein the dear fellow made any number of excuses for the state of affairs in Luqa Briffa Street.

I have to say I was unimpressed by His Worship the Mayor's excuses. It may be that the council has meagre funds, it may be that road repairs have been put on hold because of CHOGM and it may be that Gzira's oil exploration project has priority on the council's attention's (yes, I am being facetious, Gzira local council doesn't have an oil exploration project - it's concentrating on going to the moon, which is why Luqa Briffa Street has been left in the disgusting state in which it has been neglected) but no excuse is sufficient to excuse the council its neglect of its duty to its citizens, that of providing the most basic of amenities, a way to get in and out of their homes without risking the integrity of their cars or their legs.

The appalling state of this particular street takes it out of the usual arena of assigning priorities and making do with the funds you have. When you have a road that is this bad, you drop everything and you fix it and that's all there is to it.

So please, Mr Mayor, no more letters, no more excuses, no more avoiding your council's responsibilities: fix the road and fix it now.

And while on the subject of streets and roads, could whoever is responsible please remove the sign that says "Hospital" on the roads around the new hospital? It's not a hospital yet and won't be within the next couple of days and, in the meantime, some unsuspecting tourist with chest pains might find himself heading urgently towards the non-existent Casualty Department that he might - reasonably enough - think is lurking somewhere on the building site.

I don't imagine the Gzira mayor can answer for this one, although the site is not a million miles from his bailiwick.

They run and run

Some stories run and run and run and then they run for some more. It used to be said of the Nationalists in government that they kept blaming the weird and wonderful policies of Dom Mintoff and Dr KMB's 1970s and 1980s forays into managing the country even when the effects of those particularly strange policies had long since evaporated, but Doctor Alfred Sant and his merry men seem to be hell-bent on emulating them.

The latest of these stories, which I spied trotting along with vim and vigour on the plane from Brussels last Wednesday, was the one about that unfortunate girl who fell to her death on New Year's morning.

Doctor Alfred Sant is now being echoed by Dr Adrian Vassallo in harping on and on about this tragedy. Let me not be misunderstood, it was a tragedy, a real tragedy, every parent's nightmare come true, and far be it from me to make light of it in any way.

But not making light of something does not mean I can't ask people to shut up about it, now. It was an avoidable tragedy, of course it was.

Plenty could have been done, with the benefit of hindsight, to avoid the accident, but is droning on and on about having an inquiry, to look into how the party was organised and how many people were at the venue (to mention but a few of the particularly irrelevant issues that Doctor Alfred Sant mentioned) going to solve anything?

I don't think so - yes, have an inquiry, but let it be into relevant issues of public safety and venue management. Even if there were more people inside the MCC than there should have been, this wasn't a cause of the accident, amateur though I may be in the science of investigation and even less relevant, while we're about it, is the scoop that In-Nazzjon made some time ago when they discovered that, when Labour were in government, a big party had been held at the same place.

Get used to it

Another story which seems to have developed even more legs is the one about smoking in public places.

Now everyone knows that, in my real life, I am a lobbyist for the tobacco industry and I've said my piece about the subject more often than was strictly necessary, at least according to my many detractors.

The point about this sector of my weekly rant, however, is not to rake over old coals (or glowing fag-ends). It is to invite the people who are whining about the subject to get used to it and move on with their lives.

Smokers who are feeling hard done by, then, will just have to get used to the fact that the health control freaks have had their way and there's no way they're going to smoke legally inside anymore and there's an end to it. Do you really think that by writing to the paper to grumble about being made to feel like a pariah is going to change the mind of our exalted Minister of Health and his acolytes?

Grow up - there's more of a chance that George W. Bush will admit that the second Iraq war was a mistake.

And then, while we're on the subject, could I please address the other lot, the ones who are whining and whinging and moaning and bleating because in some places smoking is going on inside as if the law had never been passed? That's what you get when you feel all triumphant when your idiosyncrasies and obsessions get pandered to by a minister who just loves getting awards from health-freaks from over the seas. When the law that pandered to your sad obsessions is proved to be even slightly unworkable, you start to feel all let down and disappointed and you bash off yet another rant to the papers, generally in duplicate.

That's not to say that it's a good idea for the law to be broken, of course, and I don't like the idea of laws being broken any more than you do, but, hey, this is the real world and you know what brought this about don't you?

Yep, that's it, an unreasonable law brought in too fast and against the will of quite a few people, who now think that they can get away with it.

Sad, but there you are. Now get used to it and move on.

Late but finally

Mr Noel (and there was I thinking it was Mario) Calleja, an entrepreneur, seems to think that my piece last week wherein I augured that his artistic ventures in the future would be just that and not merely populistic (does that word exist? I'm sure he'll tell me) was somehow in defence of "my beloved National Orchestra" and this because in my real life I perform some services for them. Precisely what this and Mr Calleja's manner of supporting his own interest in the National Orchestra in the past has to do with my point, which related exclusively to my earnest hope that he will eschew the temptation to make pots of money by playing to the galleries at the expense of providing some meritorious fare (rather than doing both, which is possible) remains beyond me.

Sadly, the dear fellow's justification of the Lloyd Webber/Cameron Mackintosh way of doing things by pointing out that many, many thousands of people enjoy their stuff does not in and of itself convince me. Many people enjoy tejatrin and locally-produced television programming: does that mean they are art? Still, one lives in hope.

It's not tejatrin but it's theatre. Dr Arnold Cassola, a stalwart of the Greens and a hero of theirs' to boot, has chosen to up his political sticks and go for election to the Italian Parliament, which if nothing else will provide him with some innocent fun for many years to come, since the popular perception is that the Italians seem to have elections every couple of months. Isn't it wonderful how, being European and Green, one's principles can turn out to be so ubiquitous? And how convenient, too.

Repletion

This week's end-bit about congenial places for nourishment has a foreign air about it. I was in Brussels accompanying the Missus who, with some colleagues of an artistic bent, were exhibiting some of their rather fine work at the European Parliament on an initiative of MEP David Casa's, so we took the chance to have a couple of pretty good meals.

One was at Chez Vincent, a place that was packed solid on Monday night but still managed to fit 12 of us in off the street. A superb meal was had by all. Another was at a place the name of which, being in some peculiar foreign tongue, escaped me, but it was in the Sainte Kathryne area, where you are guaranteed excellent fish.

The guarantee held, too.

We had a meal in a place in Malta, too, on Saturday, but we'll let a veil be drawn over it: the company was good, the service was OK and the meal was on the pleasant side of edible, but the overall experience was not worth telling you about.