If I’m understanding the available data correctly, the local production of pigmeat and chicken is facing problems. While output from the slaugherhouse is declining in volume, meat prices to producers are in decline. Which points to a sales problem. Effectively the average weight of slaughtered heads has increased – which indicates that producers are having to feed their herd for a longer period in the absence of sales.

On the other hand, importation volumes of the same products has not slowed down. Rather it’s the contrary that has happened.

Similar problems of losses and reductions in sales have affected many European countries. It’s all linked to the loss of  markets in Russia, when the latter prohibited food imports from the European Union, by way of retaliation for the sanctions the Union had imposed against it.

The current situation in the meat production sector here is not unplugged from the situation in Europe. There is a case to closely monitor the problems, with a readiness to take action in order to safeguard the sector according to needs and circumstances – if that is, we still agree that continued meat production on the island by Maltese enterprises is desireable. 

***

A strange request?

Before resigning as Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras made a strange request. To monitor the implementation of the third financial “bailout” plan for Greece, he asked that the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Stability Mechanism be joined by somebody else – the European Parliament.

His proposal pleased leaders of the EP’s political groupings. In their view, it would enhance the Parliament’s role.

However the loan to Greece has not been authorized by the Parliament. The overview it could bring to the bailout will hardly be more effective than a quiz about ongoing developments, conducted post hoc, and quite some time after matters will have come to a head.

***

Linguistic disputes

If my good friend Frans Sammut were still alive, he surely would have relished this summer’s controversy regarding Maltese expression and writing.

On the one hand we had linguistic academics who have established criteria regarding how to evaluate language development. For this reason, they believe they should have supreme jurisdiction over how the language is understood and written.

By contrast, most others who use the Maltese language in written form or otherwise seem to have coalesced. They argue that their views should be given as much weight as anybody else’s, since they are at the rockface, working with the language in a practical manner for practical reasons. They include among others, some who want older rules of ortography and expression to be retained, so that the Maltese language remains anchored to stable structures; as well as others who feel frustration at what they consider to be inconsistencies favoured by the academics in the use and transcription of foreign loan words into Maltese.

What is remarkable about the controversy is that the two sides seem not to agree about what should have been the crux of the argument, namely the aims of any exercise designed to oversee the Maltese language. I wonder how Frans would have positioned this challenge, given the vital way by which he always responded whenever acute controversies arose about the Maltese language