There is even going to be a debate in Parliament about it.

It might surprise people to learn that, within living memory, Gozo had a very healthy creative economy of its own: high value added knitwear and weaving.

I don’t know why this industry was destroyed but I suspect a mixture of ignorance, jealousy, apathy and complacency.

A sample of this was when a local man went to a very expensive prestigious department store in New York and saw our woven products selling there. He came back to Gozo and told my workers I was getting very rich. He had obviously never heard of freight charges, Customs duty, agent’s fees and the store mark-up. We were getting about a fifth of the price that he saw but we were still doing alright.

Apathy and complacency set in when the multinationals arrived. The faceless owners of these factories had no loyalty to Gozo and their anonymous products did nothing to enhance its reputation. They soon moved on to countries where labour costs were cheaper.

Since Malta has now woken up to the creative economy, would it be possible to revive some of the earlier ventures, at least in spirit? It is worrying that, although there seems to be an urge to create jobs, the Gozitans seem to be fixated on museums. Why is this?

I will soon have to leave the island and it was suggested that I could leave my looms to a museum. Wouldn’t it be smarter and more productive to start weaving again?

If people wanted to be really modern, they could trade in the old looms for computerised ones and greatly increase the range of products available. The same applies to knitting machines; there must be hundreds of those lying around rusting.