Form at the expense of substance

There was a sad irony in a news report I came across last Wednesday. A wor­ker on a construction site was killed in an accident, only days after I wrote about how, if you ran a construction site in the amateur way fireworks factories are run, you’d be shut down so fast your head would spin.

Obviously, I have no idea what the conditions of employment were at the site where the poor man lost his life – for all I know, it was an exemplary place. On the other hand, it may have been the pits. Most probably, it was somewhere in between, as always in real life and far be it for me to pass judgment without being in possession of any of the facts. At the end of the day, the only real important fact is that a man died, leaving behind friends and family. There is added poignancy in the fact that the man was an immigrant, who must have gone through many difficulties to try to start a new life.

Is it my impression only or have there been a few too many accidents at work places and public places to be able to say that the situation is acceptable? Are we within the norm or are things getting worse? I’m no statistician, by a long shot, and, as far as I’m concerned, even one death or serious accident is one too many but that’s a facile point of view. So are we within normal parameters or not?

If you take a look at our legal and administrative structures – and this applies also where human life and limb aren’t involved – you can see that we’re well within the European range of standards. All the “i”s are crossed and all the “t”s are dotted and woe betide you if some jobsworth gets his or her teeth into you and you’ve failed to abide by the letter of the law.

Now this is as it should be but I can’t help wondering if, sometimes, more importance is given to form at the expense of substance. Do inspectors or regulators or whatever they’re called really have the time to waste making sure that the tiniest of unimportant regulations is adhered to, at the expense, perhaps, of seeing the bigger picture?

Is it so all-fired important that a traffic warden (I know, they’re called local wardens or something) slaps a parking ticket on every car that has come to rest in a no-parking area, whether or not it is really obstructing the traffic? Yes, the rules are there to be obeyed and all that and, in the greater scheme of things, if I were dumb enough to make myself bait for the wannabe-cops, I deserve all I get.

And, yes, I also know that, compared to someone losing his life, perhaps because an important H&S regulation wasn’t adhered to, my parking ticket(s) pale(s) into less than insignificance but I was making a point, said point being that it’s about time the really important things were given due weight.

I didn’t read any of the comments that – no doubt – followed the story with which I started this week’s column.

I have no doubt, however, that we were regaled with everyone and his brother laying down the law about whose fault it was and how x, y or z should have been done or not done. Given that an immigrant was involved, I wouldn’t be surprised, though I would love to be, that the incipient racism that infests many facets of this country wasn’t to be seen, too.

I did, however, check out the comments that followed the story about the girl who was found naked on the Regional Road.

Many, thankfully, were sympathetic but some were downright spiteful and if the people who wrote them consider themselves to be Christians, I hope they manage to make peace with their God before they die because they’re heading south, fast.

And what is it about the people who were so insistent on getting their point of view across about a story like this? Do they really think that a young girl was running around naked on our equivalent of the M1 for fun, out of high spirits? Surely, even the least sensitive of idiots could make out that this was someone who deserved compassion, not stupid comments? It’s bad enough when everyone knows exactly what happened whenever there’s a traffic accident reported and there’s a mad scramble to get to the computer to expound on the whys and wherefores of the case.

Now, just to be provocative and a pain where I should be, am I the only one who found the statements from the Federation of Conservationist Hunters (OK, stop laughing) and that other outfit, the one that pretends to be the acceptable face of bird-killing, condemning the vandalism at Foresta 2000 to be a tad jarring, coming out as they did only after it was reported that the people concerned were hunters who had pleaded guilty?

In the interests of my public service obligation, may I recommend that if you’re a mite peckish, you check out Piccolo Calabria just before you get to Xemxija on the left? The young Italian gent who served us gave us a choice, fish or meat, and we left it up to him.

We were not disappointed and will be back.

imbocca@gmail.com

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