On the Dot

• The part of Tigné Street, Sliema, in the area of the newly-built Fort Cambridge apartments, has become a very busy place since the opening of The Point. However, it has been neglected completely. There is a stench in the air and it is infested with rats. The Sliema local council has been receiving reports about it for at least a year and, yet, nothing has been done about it. Regular street cleaning has not happened for ages.

Desperate

• Some of the inmates at Corradino Correctional Facility need looking after, specifically those who have nowhere to go to once they have served their time. Several NGOs do their level best to help them but it is on a voluntary basis. There could be persons who are only sure they will have a meal and a bed if they are “inside”.

Dustbins

• It is obvious that, in bring-in sites, the bin that holds paper will be filled up more quickly and more often than those for plastic, metal and glass. That is why, probably, one regularly sees bags of newspapers and torn-up cardboard boxes on the ground beside the skips. People who would have journeyed to the bin toting heavy bags are not likely to take them home again. The solution could be to have more bins for paper.

Decisions

• The bins at the Santa Maria Addolorata cemetery are gradually being replaced. Someone had the bright idea to use fuel tanks, again. This is a practical idea because it involves recycling and providing a large volume of space. However, for want of a little attention, the whole scheme looks careless. The tanks have been sliced in half and simply plonked down in situ, with the wording still visible. A lick of paint would have made a world of difference – and probably delayed rusting, too.

Decorations

• A large private yacht has been berthed at Tigné seafront for quite some time now. Floating markers were placed in an area that was previously used for bathing. Gossip has it that these were put there to indicate the perimeter of a new mini yacht marina and to discourage swimming in the area. These rumours must be scotched or confirmed and residents deserve to be given an explanation.

Driven

• The persons compiling the new Arriva bus schedule have completely forgotten about the original plan to include the present Birkirkara bus terminus as a primary junction. It is being taken for granted that all Birkirkara residents have quick and easy access, on foot, to either the Birkirkara bypass or the road leading to Rabat.

This is not so for those who live in Naxxar Road, Mannarino Road, Fleur-de-Lys Road and the Old Church areas. To date, these residents are being catered for by route buses 71, 73, 40, 45, 49, 55, 157, 159 and 810. It is not physically possible for only one or two buses to cover all these routes.

Directions

• On May 23, the driver of the 6 p.m. bus from Żurrieq to Valletta gave out blank ticket-sized chits of paper in lieu of tickets to all passengers, who numbered at least 30. He did not use the ticketing machine at all but handed out the empty chits directly from a stack he kept near the coin box on his right. Even if there were a technical problem with the machine, he should still have given out the standard printed ATP bus tickets. As he did, none of the fares he received are accounted for.

Dual

• Some households do not generate enough recyclable rubbish for all the green or grey bags to be utilised by the time the next batch is delivered. However, as yet, it is illegal to use these bags to dispose of ordinary household rubbish in the skips or to use them for the daily collections. If permission were granted for them to be used in this way, surely in the long run, since they are larger than household bags, less plastic all around would be utilised?

Deciphering

• Every so often the Akkademja tal-Malti comes up with a list of decisions that pertain to the use of Maltese words and loanwords. The press, however, continues to confound the issue by using such words as tojs “because ġugarelli is old-fashioned and long”. As a result, children and foreigners wanting to learn Maltese are being given garbled messages. Why not issue guidelines every month, rather than a long, overwhelming list at long intervals?

Dedications

• It seems that Malta has become one big building site. Yet, that is no excuse for leaving the small things slip. It is not enough to be at the office early enough to hoist the flag. All flags must be clean, if not ironed. It is quite off-putting to see dingy whites and off-colour reds in the national flag as well as faded company logos on flags that have seen better days.