The French were on these islands for only two years, but their legacy lives on, daily. They can’t have had much time to write or rewrite local laws, but they introduced two that appear to have been written in Maltese stone.

One was a stupid law of inheritance, which serves no purpose today other than to cause disputes inside otherwise happy families.

The other was to institute the system whereby magistrates, not the police, conduct criminal inquiries.

I am surprised that property owners (or potential heirs) have not lobbied the government to change Malta’s laws of inheritance – if only because I hear grumbles almost every day. I am also surprised that no politician has suggested a rewrite of them.

Also, every day, I read that “a magisterial inquiry has been launched” into some often apparently routine incident.

Would the time of a magistrate not serve us better if it were spent in court? There is an ever-increasing pile of cases back at the office, while the magistrate may be plodding around ‘investigating’ a road traffic accident.

Now, I am fully aware that our police force does not have much of a record for ‘investigating’ anything.

But if its officers were actually trained in investigation (perhaps some of them being sent abroad to learn how other forces manage without magistrates), if they were provided with many facilities that they don’t currently have, if officers at sergeant and inspector rank could be torn away from watching the fantasies of CSI and NCIS on television and taught how to investigate, report on and maybe even to solve crimes themselves...

Wouldn’t we have a better police service? And a better court service?

Both laws seem, to me, equally weird and unnecessarily complicated.

Malta is constantly proclaiming its independence. Some people appear to be still squirming under vague memories of historic ‘colonialism’.

Why is it still persisting in accepting and maintaining the redundant customs and practices of its occupiers from the 1790s?