Over the years many people have remarked about those bygone days when poverty existed in our streets and homes. It was something you could feel, something you could see, something you could touch. We were a race burdened with people begging for alms outside while little children ran close to barefoot in the streets. Such was the disastrous situation we lived in!

Today things are different in one respect - we do not witness people begging for alms in the streets but ye gods, poverty does exist. Maybe we see no waif-like Orphan Annie in the street but I repeat, poverty does exist. Unlike the situation of many years ago, the poverty we are drowning in now is not something we can touch, see or feel but it is definitely there. I doubt whether people will contradict what I say, especially if they're on the brink of poverty themselves! The fact that the cost of living is high and we seem to be getting one bill after another in the post contribute to the poverty factor.

Never before has Malta needed a government to hear about the workers' trials and tribulations more than it does now. Never as much as it does now has Malta needed a government with its feet on the ground and its ears wide open for the poverty stricken cries of the people, those poor people who cannot make miracles and fork out more money than they earn. Never before has Malta needed a progressive party, otherwise known as the workers' or the Labour party, as now - a new government with Joseph Muscat at the helm, who has the gift not of talking but of listening.

Unfortunately the present Prime Minister has a massive flaw even larger than his other flaws put together.

He is completely stone deaf to what the people complain about or else he doesn't give a hoot. As time goes by, I am more than ever convinced that a Labour government will not have the same flaw.