The mayor of Lija was right to stand down from his position as Chair of the College of Councillors.

After all, a busy professional has enough on his plate, especially when shouldering the onerous responsibilities of mayor of a large metropolis, and there's only so far that one can stretch one's self before something has to give.

In fact, so busy is the young man that he hasn't, as far as I know, had the time to visit my particular neck of the woods and see for himself how much extra parking we have around here, in order that he can put up some street furniture or re-design the pavements to make the area prettier. Of course, prettifying the area will have to come after the couple of hundred metres of roadworks are killed off, as so far, they seem to have taken more time than Japan took to rebuild after the tsunami.

I'm almost wondering whether the pressures on the dear chap's time haven't been such as to prevent him even taking a quick peek at the map to remind him that there is a bit of Lija out where the Three Villages conflate. Perhaps he's under the impression that this is, say, a hamlet of Balzan and he shouldn't worry himself about it or about answering emails about parking problems and such.

Or even about finding a slot in his busy diary to have a chat with denizens of the area who crave an audience.

My only regret is that by resigning, and thus giving aid and succour, imagined or not, to his political foes, he has effectively stopped me from having a good old moan about his Council, because if I did, it would be spun by Labour and its hangers-on as an act of revenge against someone who had jumped ship.

Nothing could be further from my mind: had I succumbed to the temptation to have a moan, it would have been simply because I thought it was justified. As it is, I'll just have to suffer in silence, wondering to myself whether next time round, the Mayor won't be too busy to bother asking me to vote.