It is pretty clear that the amber light for low-cost airlines will filter to create a shade of green this year; just quite how green remains to be seen. In favour of this mode of travel are the millions of travellers who have been attracted by airfares that are far lower than those charged by high-fare carriers and, of course, the thousands whose livelihood is affected by their presence or their absence.

Easyjet and Ryanair have both shown a keen interest in opening their operations to include Malta, the latter airline promising to fly two million passengers to Malta within four years. This must sound like manna from heaven to the island's tourist industry, which is currently in substantial moan mode. But do we really want two million Ryanair passengers on top of what Easyjet, Air Malta, Lufthansa and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh will convey to our shores? I rather think not. Where will they sit, sleep, eat, walk and how will they be conveyed all over an island bursting at the seams with human beings?

The first three months of this year, during which the number of visitors increased and their expenditure decreased, have been described as "a washout". The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association has called an extraordinary meeting for its members in just over a week's time. It was reported last Friday that the Prime Minister will be meeting the association to present "concrete proposals". These, it is hoped, will give the industry a boost.

I must now own up to a moan of my own. The tourist arrival figures have been hovering in the region of a million for a number of years. Efforts to raise the number have not been conspicuously successful. When they do rise, hoteliers complain that the income from an increase in volume, however slight, does not display a similar propensity.

Given such a context, then, why has there been such heavy, perhaps crippling investment in new five-star hotels? The reason could not have been mere wishful thinking on the part of their owners, which would have been irresponsible, or a singular belief in the ability of the Malta Tourism Authority to justify that investment, which would have been naïve. On what basis, then, were decisions to invest millions taken? How much marketing do hoteliers carry out for themselves? And is there the slightest chance that some of our hotel rooms are overpriced, as are not a few of our restaurants?

Pundits bang on about the standard of the overall product we offer and they have a point. That product can never be good enough. Its improvement is not Government's responsibility alone, as some like to think and state. There are standards to be jacked up in across-the-board private sector services offered by hotels, restaurants, cinemas, supermarkets, by taxi-drivers and a swathe of others who contribute in one way or another to the thing we call product.

Having said which, it is blindingly obvious that the costs at MIA are far too high and militate against the industry. I imagine that among the concrete proposals the Prime Minister will unveil to members of the MHRA, one will deal with this; and with the business of low-cost airlines as long as these do not carry out their promise of bringing an additional two million white, pink, yellow, dark and black tourists. More can be less. Ideally we want less who spend more, which is not the case at the moment.

The problem will not melt away

The thaw in relations between the Education Ministry and the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) made sense. It was the only way forward. Arbitrarily severing all ties with the ministry was gauche and unproductive. And if saving face meant that Education Minister Louis Galea was asked to confirm that his appeal to school heads and assistants to report for work during the one-hour strike called by the union was not meant to undermine the teachers; right to strike (which patently it was not) Dr Galea's readiness to do so was no skin off his nose.

That having been said, the public is still left clueless on certain matters that collective should have a clue about. It knows that occasionally a student or a parent of either gender of a student decides to play rough with a member of the teaching staff. Is what it sees or reads about all there is to it or is it the tip of an iceberg?

In other words, by how much do we have to multiply the incidents that are reported to arrive at the true picture of violence offered to teachers by thug-son or thug-father or mother? Are teachers employed in a dangerous profession when at any moment when their back is turned, or not turned, they can expect to be a target for some maladjusted schoolboy?

I asked last Sunday how many such assaults had taken place in Church, independent and state schools during the first six years of the third millennium. Contrary to what we are led to believe, it cannot be many, or the figures would have been trundled out fast enough if they were on the high side.

Let's be clear on this. Even one assault per school per year should be unacceptable, but for the sake of solid information on which to base any policy that the ministry must formulate to eliminate thuggery towards teachers can we not be enlightened on this point? We ought surely to know what statistics the MUT or the education department or both passed on to the European Union when it called a survey on the problem of student behaviour in the 25 member states.

In independent schools headmasters can recommend expulsion of wayward pupils to their board of governors and wayward pupils sometimes are shown the front gate of the school. How does this work out in state schools? There can be little doubt in anybody's mind that when thing-schoolboy knocked a teacher's teeth out of their gum, he should have been expelled. Clearly, the headmaster does not have the power to do so. What remedies does he have to hand if a bad apple plonks itself in a classroom or on the playground?

I suspect he comes up against a mixture of bureaucracy, reluctance on the part of a disciplinary board to consider outright expulsion, perhaps even political shenanigans. Perhaps he may even turn a blind eye to serious misbehaviour for the odd student who minded to push the frontiers of tolerance to the brink - and then see what happens.

So, great that the thaw between the MUT and the ministry has set in (it was bound to anyway) but how about coming up with a true picture of the size of the problem that led to the freeze-up? If a problem there is, it will not melt away - and soon there will be a call for a one-day strike this time.

Poor Pope Benedict

His ways, to the mind of a columnist in The Times, "are no less mysterious" than the "ways of God". And why? You may well ask. Well, "having already opposed Turkey's entry into the EU on the premise that the Turks laid siege to Vienna, he is scheduled to visit Turkey in November of this year. I wonder why?"

I may have missed it, but I have never heard, nor read in any official or unofficial document that Pope Benedict opposes Turkey's entry to the EU on any such premise. But let us assume that he did, which I do not think he did and would be grateful to have that premise confirmed, what is there to wonder about his going to Turkey at the invitation of the Turkish government?

I think it rather praiseworthy that, the siege of Vienna apart, he should declare himself to be against Turkey joining the European Union and go to Turkey anyway. To my mind that smacks of moral courage, the mind of a man who makes a statement about a country's credentials for joining, or in this case for not joining, Europe, and who is prepared to discuss that statement further and - who knows - may be ready to change his mind if he is so persuaded.

The Pope was also accused of "clearly fomenting the Catholic equivalent of Islamic fundamentalist thinking in the west and thereby fighting fire with fire". Why? Well, apparently he has dropped the title of Patriarch of the West from his list of official titles. So? Well, again, "when one realises that the world is on the brink of a world war that has unscrupulously used ideological and religious propaganda (sic) to promote it and justify it, then, yes, one would ask what this east and west historical and religious business is all about". And because "the Vatican just sponsored a conference that aims to portray the Crusades as wars fought with the 'noble aim' of regaining the Holy Land for Christendom. There is far more to the history of the Crusades than that." Agreed, but one can reasonably hold the opinion that the aim was "noble" to start with and still concede that its execution was, in a number of cases, ignoble.

But why this intellectual masochism about the west, Christendom, the Pope, when the real and horrific news was that Mr Rahman, an Afghan Muslim who was converted to Christianity, was being threatened with death for apostasy? Why are western intellectuals the likes of Pinter, Chomsky, Pilger and our local brand not voicing their concern over an immediate issue of life and death for a man whose right to change his faith is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? It was no thanks to them that Mr Rahman got away with it. The court found a way out. Mr Rahman was short of a dozen when it came to his beliefs.

Careful with the matches

Things have started to move, albeit slowly, at the United Nations Security Council. The body has called on Iran to end uranium enrichment. Iran is hardly likely to oblige. "Threats do not work with Iran" the country's ambassador has been reported as saying, "Iran is allergic to pressure". Perhaps, but there are antidotes to allergy.

As if to highlight the Council's search for that antidote, the United States, the UK, China, France and Russia, each a permanent member of the Security Council and each empowered with a veto, sent their top representatives to Berlin for a working lunch at which Germany was also represented. I wonder if Berlin would have been chosen if Mr Schröder were still in harness. It is a measure of the change in style and content brought about by the new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, that her country now rubs shoulders with the Big Five even though the EU already has its own head of foreign policy at the table.

Not surprisingly, John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN (at least so far; Mr Bush seems to have another job waiting for him in the administration) does not see things in the same light as the Iranian ambassador. He sees no threat in the Security Council's call on Iran. He sees the Council's vote as one that "sends an unmistakeable message to Iran that its efforts to deny the obvious fact of what it is doing are not going to be sufficient". Not everything in the Security Council garden is rosy, however. The Big Five agree in principle over the need to disabuse Iran of its ambitions.

Russia and China, heavily dependent on oil from Iran and trade with that country, favour a softly, softly approach and prefer to give the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) more time to bring Iran into compliance. (True to form, China's and Russia's interest in Iranian oil, like France's and Russia's in Iraq, has not sparked off liberal apoplexy).

The EU spent three years trying, unsuccessfully, to knock sense into the Iranian government - during which time Iran did not stop its programme. The United States is adamant that it will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power. Russia and China are on board for the time being. Iran is intransigent. Its populist President finds little wrong with his declaration that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth.

Which reminds us that the Middle East currently hosts three major crises, any one of which is bad enough without the other two to add to the critical mass. We have Iran with unsettling nuclear weapons ambitions. There is Iraq displaying a staggering and perverse inability to form a government of national unity. And we are not permitted to forget for a single moment the existence of a Hamas-led Palestinian government.

We are now being asked to make a distinction between Hamas in government and Hamas in opposition - but how do you do begin to do that when neither the party nor the government has distanced itself from the proposition that there is no geographical space for Israel in the Middle East? And what does the new Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, mean when he says: "Our government will be ready for a dialogue with the Quartet - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN - to look into all ways to end the state of struggle"? What dialogue can take place when the party or the government has publicly failed to accept the Quartet's two-states solution?

In the powder keg that is the Middle East there is no room for matches.