• This iconic statue surrounded by mature palm trees of various types has hallmarked Spinola Square for generations. The refurbishment plan for the square shows an anaesthetised antiseptic treeless pavement in pink with the statue of the Sacred Heart shoved to the side and with no sign of the palm trees. Why such lack of respect to the past and to the icons that make places what they are?
Cards
• It rarely happens but when it does users of Go Mobile Easyline or mobile telephony cards who find that shops have run out of the one they use are annoyed. Why is there not one card suitable for both uses? Printing it in sets of different designs, moreover, would instantly create a demand for recycling them into collections.
Cheating?
• Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the Overseas Vote Foundation in America, insists that, whatever the outcome of an election, in the 33 states where voting may be done using the internet “...no one will be certain those votes haven’t been tampered with” for several reasons. Certainly food for thought.
Continuation
• Many television and radio stations seek to fill up air time by repeating the same loops of advertisements over and over again; sometimes even whole programmes are repeated. This gives the whole set-up a tacky look and also indicates to the buying public that either advertising agencies are not that creative or that clients care less about quality than saving money.
Conned
• An e-mail asks for people interested in working at a five-star hotel in London, with the flight tickets and accommodation being provided. Ostensibly, there are vacancies for cleaners, gardeners, stewards and drivers, bar attendants, translators, watchmen, receptionists, accountants – and more. Forgetting for a moment the atrocious spelling and the indiscriminate use of upper case for whole words, is it possible that a prestigious hotel would require all this staff at any one moment?
Corner
• One of the lower panels in the façade of the Santa Maria Antiques shop, in High Street, Ħamrun, has been kicked in. Apart from giving access to stray cats and dogs, this gap could also be widened enough for people intent on creating mischief such as theft or vandalism.
Comfort
• We are being told, again and again, that liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is not natural gas and this is supposed to explain the constant hikes in the price of gas cylinders. The public cannot understand this line of reasoning unless it comes with a basic explanation of why natural gas cannot be bottled and sold as well.
Cases
• Despite several complaints by the public, many court cases are put off when lawyers are held up in another case. Is it possible that in this computerised age nothing can be done to indicate the whereabouts of every lawyer present inside the court building so that s/he may be paged and able to assist his client(s) when called? Or is there more than meets the eye?
Complaints
• At the inception of the Arriva bus service, it was stated that drivers were required to move their vehicles right close to the pavement to make mounting and alighting easier for commuters, especially those with mobility problems. It is clear that this is not being done. In fact, a number of people have been slightly injured when they could not negotiate the bottom step properly.
Column
• Those (assuming it was more than one person) who vandalised the controversial Luqa monument probably thought they were doing the Maltese a favour. Seeing that the Luqa local council reiterated that the phallic monstrosity was foisted upon it by the central government, one wonders why it was not placed somewhere where only the latter has jurisdiction.
Cachet
• The Xara Palace Hotel in Mdina has been listed sixth in the Top Ten Castle Hotels worldwide by Fox News. This, coupled with the fact that the cost of a week-long holiday in Malta has risen the least among all other European destinations, bodes well for the coming summer months, especially if the opportunity is taken to advertise activities that interest different types of tourists.
Chant
• Kurt Calleja is continuing his Eurovision promotional tours by visiting Georgia, following his visits to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. It is high time that the detractors stop their disparaging remarks and back their representative.
Catching
• The Federation for Hunting and Conservation (FKNK) in a statement intimated that their hobbies cannot be practised at the Majjistral Park and that hunters’ hides there are being systematically destroyed. However, the Heritage Parks Foundation assure us that this is not so although the place is a Natura 2000 site. Probably, the best way to check this out is for a hunter to follow the rules and be there in the hunting season.
Criminality
• Each time a person died from a drug overdose, the police investigations lead to the agents who would have provided him/her with the illicit substances. So why is it that these criminals who prey on the lives of others are not rounded up before they can do further harm?