Is beggars belief that the stupidest mistakes in the public service are made in the Education Department. One wonders whether the Minster for Education knows that during the Matsec ‘O’ Level examination sessions currently underway, students were kept from drinking despite the ban being lifted, on May 7; this in a room with closed windows, on a very hot day. This is obscene.

Heaps

In some cases, there was no indication of student numbers on classroom doors for the first few days of examinations. The consequence was that some children reached their desks after starting time; for some reason the children were only allowed to look for their places a very few minutes before. This made some of them panic.

Hyperlinks

Some students were actually seen using calculators during a Mathematics examination, when this is expressly forbidden. Is it possible that none of the invigilators had read the conditions that are supposed to obtain during an examination, before the sessions?

Hullaballoo

It is beyond the pale that examinations could not start because there were not enough invigilators and the police had to be called in to calm the situation before a solution was found, with the resultant long loss of time and hassle for the already excited students.

Honed

It is unfair that an invigilator, possibly feeling sorry for a student, actually explained a question that the latter could not understand. This distracted the others, as did the long chat an invigilator had with some of the students who had finished their Social Studies Matsec exam. This was frustrating and unfair.

Help

Since not everyone wears watches these days, one cannot understand how no wall clocks were available for students to gauge their own progress during examinations.

Hindrance

It is already bad enough that there is a conspicuous lack of shelter from the elements, a great inconvenience to commuters waiting for the bus to Valletta at Tal-Qroqq 2 Bus Stop. Worse are the two wide pits at the place where people have to wait standing up. This is too much of a danger not to call for immediate and urgent action from the competent authorities.

Hello

“Hi hippy, Can’t remember your LinkedIn password? No problem – it happens. Please use this link to reset your password within the next 1 day: Click here, Then sign in to LinkedIn with your new password and the email address where you received this message. Thanks for using LinkedIn!” When an ungrammatical message like this is sent to people who do not even have a LinkedIn Account, one wonder why spammers do not even do their basic homework first.

Honey

Some foreign schools are making it a point to disallow the taking of birthday cakes to school, in a bid to decrease the amount of sugars and fats ingested by students. In the future the ban will also include a veto on all manner of sugar-, salt-, and fat-laden foods that are sold in fund-raising activities. This is food for thought.

Harassment?

The helicopter in the film Blue Thunder, according to the reaction of a Member of Parliament, was but an advanced version of the drone that was being used to espy violators of hunting and trapping regulations. One wonders, however, whether the Germany-based Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) had any legal right to use the apparatus in the first place. One notes that there could also have been infringements of the Data Protection Act and the Broadcasting Law, since footage was being taken with a view to its compilation into a film.

Hits

Meanwhile, BirdLife insists that between April 12 and 30, it recorded more than 730 illegal acts, and has received 14 protected birds shot during the spring hunting season that closed on Monday. It had been stated that 50 police officers would control hunting activities; these were probably a tight fit in the four vehicles that were on patrol at any given time. It would seem that some people equate derogation with an open season.

Hair-raising

On Sunday, May 6, a good part of High Street in Ħamrun and others close by were closed to traffic, even when the street was plainly still empty of any activity. This resulted in drivers going around the town, trying to cross to Marsa, Birkirkara and Qormi. But the icing on the cake was the Arriva bus which was directed to turn sharply into Annunciation Avenue – and promptly got stuck for a long interval.

Hung

The Sliema local council indicated that it was a matter for the attention of the police. Yet three calls made in the course of eight hours to the Sliema police station to have wrongly parked cars on double yellow lines made to move, resulted in no action at all. The owners of the cars left them there, making life difficult for everyone else but themselves. Yellow lines are there for a valid reason; perhaps someone in authority will clarify why parking is condoned in clear no-parking spaces and no action whatsoever is taken by wardens or police when this is pointed out.

Hurt

Despite it having been pointed out several times in this column, the broken plastic drain-hole cover at the pavement edge of Pjazza Kappillan Muscat in Ħamrun has not been replaced. Consequently, another elderly person has tripped and fallen. This time, the injuries sustained were slight; for the next victim, it could be a broken hip-bone.