It seems that everywhere you turn in Malta, you have to shield your ears from the deafening noise that comes with our culture.

Aside from the babble of tens of hundreds of voices, all wishing to get their point across through sheer volume, rather than rhyme and reason, we are faced with bells, cars, stereos, construction equipment, petards, fish mongers, gas trucks… the list goes on and on.

What one cannot understand, however, is the absolute flagrant law-breaking behaviour of noise polluters which goes completely unnoticed and unhindered by the forces of law and order. We are not talking about loud stereos being played at roof barbecues; there are a whole host of instances where people simply make a racket and are allowed to get away with it.

A perfect example of this is the boy racers who kit out hatchback cars with huge exhaust pipes which are specifically designed to create as much noise as possible. Why do the police and the wardens not stop them in the street and slap them with a fine there and then?

Why are street hawkers not regulated? Why should the gas man or the fishmonger blare horns at 6am to alert traders that he has arrived, and in the process wake up a whole street?

Why did it have to take multiple court cases for a resident of Cottonera to be given compensation for years and years of disturbed sleep as a result of tolling bells? Why are we rude, inconsiderate and noisy?

At least, with petards, the issue is at least being discussed, but there is a long way to go before the noise comes down to anything approaching acceptable levels. This newspaper had published an article some months back where the astonishing noise levels of Malta were revealed after scientific studies. The results were quite startling.

While Malta is a Mediterranean country, where colour and flair go together hand in hand as part of everyday life, we simply cannot be so noisy. The only way to bring down the decibel levels is to punish those who do go over and beyond what is normal. Perhaps instead of watching for petty offences on the roads, wardens should focus more on the blaring stereos and huge tailpipes in cars. You can certainly say that the silence is deafening.