• Committees of and reports by experts have become a dime a dozen. Last year, it was stated that not imposing a ban on dangerous chemical mixtures was tantamount to inviting a tragedy within two years. The second calamity has now occurred, bang on time as it were, to doubly prove the conclusions.
Backdate
• Incidentally, according to the factory’s 2003 planning permit, the factory could only open for three hours in the morning on Sundays, between 7am and 10am. No doubt, these conditions or ones similar to them apply to other pyrotechnics factories. Do beat policemen ever go to check whether anyone is on the premises when they are supposed to be closed?
Breakers
• More evidence of a laissez-faire method of governance is evident in the talk about erecting crash barriers in Tal-Barrani Road. How many more needless deaths will occur before this suggestion is actually actuated?
Bother
• Each time there is a death in prison, some sections of the media do not hesitate to go to press with innuendo. The intention behind certain comments is clear; to instil doubt in the minds of the public.
Backdrop
• There had been talk about using trained canine drug searchers for impromptu inspections of correctional facility cells. It had been assumed that they would also be allowed to sniff food, clothes and other gifts taken to prisoners by relatives. Had anything come of this?
Business
• Many shops turn customers away when there is a power failure. Their reason is that should VAT inspectors turn up when they have not given clients a fiscal receipt, they would have had to pay a fine. It would be interesting for the public to know what is really supposed to happen at times like these.
Bias
• There were no Number 71 buses departing for Żurrieq at the Valletta terminus on Friday, November 2, between 2.40pm. and 3.30p.m. This resulted in tired, frustrated commuters arriving very late at their destination.
Buses
• The Diego 1295 Bus Stop at Ħamrun lists 10 buses as stopping there. However, on Saturday, November 3, not even one passed, for any of the indicated directions, for at least 40 minutes. There was a time when officers used to be posted in different places to check on incidents like this; does this no longer happen?
Bypassed
• Many of the clocks on bus stops do not work. One is tempted to believe that this happens so that people cannot watch the minute hand marking their minutes of misery. These days, many people, even those who do not habitually wear watches, tell the time by their mobile devices; but this is not the point at all.
Brainwash
• A spam mail currently doing the rounds mentions an unspecified bank account, with only the last digit being given, as having been “cancelled”, and a paltry amount being given as what will remain in the account. Clients are told to query this at an e-mail address “as soon as possible since funds are depleted before working hours”. This is intended to panic people into trying to cancel the transaction by logging in to a bogus site.
Beta
• Maltapost plc. had already begun a system whereby one could have personalised products ordered. It would be a selling point were they to offer an additional option, where one could make use of free postage design software online. This would allow people to draft their own stamps, for local or foreign postage use, or even for philately collection reasons.
Bad
• Hundreds of heavy plant and large vehicles use the Marsa Industrial Estate road each day. However, traffic in all the lanes has to come to an abrupt halt whenever someone decides to use the zebra crossing in the ex-Marsa Shipbuilding area. It would be reasonable and sensible to do a feasibility study about a fly-over at this point, since the vision of cars in one or two of the lanes is often impeded, and some only stop within inches of pedestrians when this happens, or their brakes fail to hold immediately.
Befuddled
• Vodafone is well proud of its scoop in managing to bring Lewis Hamilton over to Malta. They ought to be less proud, however, of the glaring typo in their posters advertising the event: the proof-reader did not realise that it’s is a contraction of it is; he thought it was a possessive pronoun.
Barking
• What is the law, exactly, with regard to noise emanating from households in the ordinary course of the day? Dogs barking, radios and television blaring, children playing noisily, and even the occasional bout of wood-working, are all annoyances to the people in whose households they do not occur. However, upon complaining, one is told that it is the decibel value, rather than the duration, which is classified as “pollution”.
Boring
• The time has come to stop celebrating different “days” in school, such that children without a mother or father, in the way the words are typically understood, do not feel singled out by a teacher who points out that they can make out their design “for the person who fulfils the role of a father/mother in their lives”. Why not cards that say, quite simply, “thank you for your love”, and that may be addressed to someone of either gender?