• Given the hullaballoo that had obtained about the covering and subsequent cleaning of the beach by the Azure Window, there are several important things to keep in mind. Environmental impact assessments must be thorough and done with the input of experts from different fields. Also, there must be no conflicts of interests, as is the case because the same entity is accountable for both the protection of the environment and also for obtaining revenue through the use of some protected sites for filming or other activities.

Money

• All those who warned us about how bad “joining Europe” would be and how unfavourable it would be to have a common currency with many other countries have just earned themselves a job. They can explain exactly whether it is true or not, and why, that Greece’s exit from the eurozone would be a bad thing for the rest of us.

Makeover

• Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said recently that energy prices in Italy and in the rest of Europe are competitive but not fixed. This could, on occasion, make it cheaper, and probably more eco-friendly, to import electricity from Europe than to generate it here by using fuel oil. The mind boggles.

Misleading

• It has been a long time since anyone made a fuss about the weight that schoolchildren have to carry day in, day out, simply because they are not allowed to use one book between two children, or to work from notes, or to take only the relevant portions of files. Whereas it is true that some students overload their bags needlessly, random checks would indicate that following a timetable can also be hazardous to their health.

Medical

• A word of thanks goes to the staff on duty on May 23 at the Floriana health centre. Despite the pressure of work and the minimal amount of staff, each patient was taken care of and the nurses, in some cases, went way above and beyond their duty to calm anxious patients.

Mandates

• British MPs are up in arms against the Strasbourg ruling about prisoners’ voting rights, calling it an “infringement of Parliament’s rights”. This has happened because, in the UK, a person forfeits the right to vote as soon as s/he enters a correctional facility, rather than after one year’s imprisonment, as is the case in Malta. It would be interesting to find out whether this is a case worthy of derogation.

Marketing

• Markets are well-known for offering products that are nearing their expiry date on a “buy one, get one free” basis, such that clients are tempted to purchase them. However, research has shown that the “free” product ends up being thrown away or used after its expiry date. It is worrying that the same product is sometimes made available by weight, or by the unit, in the same shops.

Meandering

• It has been stated that the Malta-Gozo subway could take up to seven years to do and cost up to €492 million. These projections, however, could sky-rocket, given that there may be undersea terrain that has not been properly charted yet. The question begs itself: After how many years would this gargantuan project be cost-effective and self-supporting?

Might

• Whereas it is true that there are only three types of regulators for gas cylinders available, the fact remains that they are not all equally easy to install. One of them has to be pushed into place with more vertically-applied pressure than the other two. This means that some customers, especially the old and the frail, would require help in order to instal them. Should this be the case?

Marks

• An average of one person every two months dies on a building site, with many other injuries occurring. This, indeed, may be considered a low number, seeing how flagrantly health and safety regulations are flaunted, even on building sites that are connected to public projects. Inspections must be made on spec, such that workers would not be warned beforehand to wear hard hats and other equipment.

Methods

• Each “Jubilee kiosk” red phone-box sold by British Telecom will net the company £1,950 excluding VAT and delivery. While acknowledging that they are more claustrophobic, and smaller, than the local three-sided aluminium and glass versions, the fact remains that any that are left here should be in good working order. Is it too much to ask for old-time dials rather than push-buttons, too?

Mysterious

• Now that the Home Affairs Ministry has spoken in Parliament on the shooting dead of a 52-year-old man in Qormi five years ago, will the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner kindly consider publishing the findings of both the magisterial and the police inquiries into the case? Keeping them under wraps can only raise suspicions unnecessarily.

Musing

• Many a John and Mary Citizen must be struggling to determine whether it is correct for Parliament to be dedicating so many sittings – wasting so much time, many are likely to say – to debate motions of censure in the Home Affairs Minister and Malta’s Permanent Representative to the EU. Beyond the hype and rhetoric, does one really expect anything substantial to come out of these debates?

Magisterial

• Hats off to Magistrate Carol Peralta for his outburst in court last week when, on his return from a stint presiding over war crime cases in Kosovo, he soon realised that the prevailing situation was both “disgraceful” and “intolerable”. So say all of us. Probably, so too say members of the judiciary, lawyers and politicians. And, yet, the situation persists, government after government, minister after minister...