Nothing exercises me quite so much as the sight of people breaking the law or disobeying rules, particularly on a day when I happen to be obeying them. But I’ll come clean: there are days when I too am guilty. Which is why my reaction always surprises me.

Yes, through my own most grievous fault, I have used a mobile phone and texted while stuck in traffic (albeit monosyllabically). I’ve jumped traffic lights (on the verge of turning red); and I’ve parked on a double yellow line and too close to a bus-stop…

I’ve even done the unthinkable – the one thing that drives me to distraction when I’m on the receiving end: used an outer lane to overtake a long queue of traffic and ‘cut in’ at the end of it. Regular commuters to Sliema, St Julian’s and San Ġwann will know exactly which intersection, traffic light and carriageway I’m talking about. It’s the largely traffic-free lane intended for cars going to Ta’ Ġiorni – I too have been one of those drivers who raced along it and then cheekily turned right for Sliema.

I suppose this makes me a hypocrite. Or am I just human? I think most of us are capable of some sort of moral disengagement once in a while. We justify our wrongdoings and convince ourselves that certain circumstances are extenuating.

But there are rules … and rules. So I’d like to think that I’d draw the line at putting someone’s life at risk by never speeding or driving under the influence.

Likewise, I’d never dream of littering or throwing so much as a cigarette butt out of a car window. I observe garbage collection times scrupulously and am very conscientious about many unrelated matters – paying bills and billable hours, for instance. I would not feel comfortable receiving remuneration for work I hadn’t done or hours not put in. Such abuses are unforgivable in my book.

But back to driving. I don’t think I’ve ever parked in a ‘disabled’ bay. But would I if I were desperate? Maybe for a minute. Conscience, you see, would prevail, and once parked, I’d entertain some serious second thoughts. Then I’d get back behind the wheel and go off in search of some other spot.

Speaking of ‘spots’ (she said, casually), we were recently subjected to a tit-for-tat ‘blog-spat’ when doubts were raised as to whether Labour MP Luciano Busuttil’s wife – Dorothy Busuttil Fitzpatrick – should continue to be allowed her ‘spot’ with a blue badge.

I don’t think I’ve ever parked in a ‘disabled’ bay. But would I if I were desperate? Maybe for a minute

Different newspapers have reported the story differently. The Malta Independent turned the matter into a fait accompli, noting that the National Commission for People with Disabilities (KNPD) had ordered a two-day inquiry and pronounced that Fitzpatrick no longer had any right to her badge. Malta Today denied the claim, quoting KNPD chairman Oliver Scicluna’s insistence that no such inquiry had taken place.

We were also told that Fitzpatrick had been given a blue badge in 2013 because she was medically entitled to one. Its renewal in 2015 was procedurally correct, pursuant to a doctor’s examination.

Fitzpatrick has reacted to the claims in a ‘so-shoot-me’ fashion by insisting that, yes, she is a legitimate blue-badge holder who also happens to wear high heels. Does the one exclude the other, I wonder?

What I do know is that if you are fit and perfectly able to walk, play sports and walk in high heels, you should give up your spot gracefully, or at the very least not wangle another extension, particularly when your husband happens to be a chauffeur-driven Member of Parliament riding the gravy train.

In the grand manner of Malta’s bi-partisan politics, we have since been regaled with pictures of vehicles belonging to Nationalist MPs (or their wives) also parked in ‘disabled’ slots – the insinuation being that if we’re going to take people to task, let’s hear it for both sides.

Nationalist MP Claudio Grech was quick to volunteer a right of reply, insisting that the vehicle in question belonged to his wife, who was doing the afternoon school-run.

His argument seems to rest on the idea that all parking laws are suspended in the school car park for the convenience of parents. Is that so? Is there a public notice to that effect displayed at the school? And what happens if a disabled parent needs to park?

If no such suspension exists, then Grech’s defence rests on the ‘My wife was only parking for a few minutes and doing no harm’ excuse. Which, while perhaps true, is also wholly specious – and equally unworthy of a person in public life.

And although the latter could perhaps pass as an innocuous one-off, both scenarios are exactly the sort of thing that blunt enforcement and make life in general so selfish and chaotic in Malta. Likewise, the constant PN/PL bickering. Two wrongs certainly don’t make a right: they make you both wrong and the sum-total of wrong that much greater.

These parking mini-dramas raise so many larger issues – far too many to deal with here, and not just political. Of course, there aren’t enough parking spaces to go round on our small, overpopulated and environmentally challenged archipelago. Consequently, a culture has developed of (a) entitlement, (b) disregard for the law, and (c) lack of enforcement. In addition, there isn’t a ‘park and walk’ culture here. It’s either bang outside the building or, better still, inside it.

And it seems our MPs and their wives are a shining example of what not to do. But those still-gleaming green and cream buses now beckon, as does a future of yet greener and more radical public transport, cycling and walking.

Driven back to the present, nothing has changed – not fundamentally anyway. A short while ago it was blue badges, now it’s red lights in Germany. So how about ‘green’ after all?

michelaspiteri@gmail.com