It's that Manwel Dimech bridge again - every motorist's worst nightmare. You must have heard the song about the bridge over troubled waters; well ours is the troubled bridge over the valley. From what I understand the original bridge designs have been misplaced so when it came to demolishing it there was no knowledge what material was used to construct it with. Recently, when asked about the delay in reconstructing the bridge, our Prime Minister's reply was that the original concrete used was so strong that the contractors found it extremely difficult to demolish. If this is so then perhaps we needn't have gone to all that trouble to destroy and rebuild it. Has all this effort seen people's good money go down the drain? Did it need to be broken up in the first place?

I have asked the following question in this column three times, without Jesmond Mugliett, the minister responsible for the project, ever bothering to answer it. Let me repeat it - for what it's worth.

The Manwel Dimech bridge was supposed to have been completed by last September at a cost of Lm6 million - 75 per cent of which were to be funds donated for the project by the European Union.

Now that a new date has been announced what is the new cost going to be? And will the EU still be giving us 75 per cent of this new estimate?

Finally will someone please get it right? One person in authority says it will be ready by next March while another source says May 2008 will be the date when the project will be completed. March or May? Yes and pigs can fly!

On November 13, a Charles Camilleri from Paola sent a letter to the editor on the subject of visiting cruise liners. Only, as the proverb goes, he seems to have rushed in where angels fear to tread. As Achille Staiano of MSC Cruises and I explained during the press conference on board the MSC Musica, MSC Cruises will be sending two ships to Malta during the 2008 season making 63 back-to-back calls in all. However, this is just a drop in the ocean as MSC have another four liners bypassing Malta - as I had predicted in 2003 - and sailing directly to Tunisia. So in all this North African country will be hosting six MSC ships weekly (making 192 back-to-back calls) while Malta only receives two.

There is no rebuttal to my prediction sir, these are the hard facts. I wish it were otherwise but unfortunately it is not.

With reference to the comments made by the Minister for Tourism and Culture (and I would like to thank him and the Minister for Competitiveness for the kind and encouraging words they expressed in my regard) about making it difficult to accommodate all these visiting cruise liners in our harbour, I am sure he was referring to ships that arrive on Friday which sometimes number seven or eight. However, there are days in the week when only one or two liners enter our harbour.

A final small comment Mr Camilleri, if I may. I never stated in my "prediction" that cruise liners would bypass Malta and proceed to Morocco - it was Tunisia - and how right I was.

Who said that nowadays taxes are almost non-existent? A friend of mine recently had his driving licence renewed for a further 10 years. Apart from the charge of Lm22, he found he had to pay a further Lm2.50 as an administration fee. Is this fair? Who pockets it?

I smell panic in the air and it's coming from the blue corner. Ever since the Leader of the Opposition addressed Parliament in his reply to the budget and announced Labour's four proposals for when returned to power there has been a deluge of letters and statements, in all sections of the PN-backed media, shooting down these proposals. Even during a Bondiplus programme we had the presenter urging the social partners to comment, and apart from the GWU, all were against these proposals. So what's new? Is it not strange that Mr Bondì didn't find the time to interview the man in the street and ask for his comments about Dr Sant's initiative? Talk about bias - and this on the station of the nation for which you and I pay at least Lm15 a year in licence fees.

Mr Bondì estimated that the Opposition's four proposals would cost our country Lm115 million a year. He said he based this preposterous figure on government sources, among others. Did he bother to ask the Opposition what they thought it would cost? Of course not. And this is called impartiality? Since then, the Parliamentary Secretary has distanced himself from this absurd figure, the Labour Party has significantly downsized this estimate to Lm15 million a year and an eminent economist, Edward Scicluna, who was a guest on my Bla Agenda TV talk show last week, also failed to agree with Mr Bondi's calculation.

Strangely enough the only person who seems to agree with this figure is our Prime Minister who, when addressing the party faithful last Sunday, repeated the astronomical figure of Lm115 million. Could he have been Mr Bondi's original source? He is after all, also the Minister of Finance.

norman.hamilton@hotmail.com