They control the skyline, from well above the rooftops. At Valletta or Sliema up to Mellieħa and beyond. They stand in all sizes, all huge. After private cars, they have become the mechanical artefact that clogs most the island’s streets. Their number is expected to increase, certainly not decline.
One imagines that in the last two years, the importation of these engines has hugely increased although it does not seem that detailed statistics are available about this. Even less about whether such importation is in new or second hand machinery.
Up to not so long ago, one would have simply assumed that imported engines are used items. Today, working approaches are changing so fast, even in terms of how smes plan their financial outgo, that one can no longer assume there is still a preference for “cheap”, used plant.
It is clear that the ongoing activity is powered by the continually rising rental prices, as well as the expectation that the demand for property will stay firm in the coming two to three years. The performance of sectors like internet gaming and financial services justifies such expectation. Yet, we have no indication regarding how fragile the future expansion of these two sectors could turn out to be.
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Polish dilemma
There are people, including myself, for whom the current controversy between Poland and the European Union (or Commission) creates a dilemma, even a moral one. One can hardly agree with measures like those which the Polish government wishes to introduce, intended to stifle the independence of the judiciary. (However one can understand how the political and social conditions in any given country might have led to such independence being merely of a formal nature, as in reality the judiciary has ended up dominated by elites that pull in the direction of just one party.)
On the other hand, I deeply dislike being drawn into European manoeuvres that seek to pronounce judgement on the sovereign actions of this or that country, whether it is a member of the Union or not. No matter what is said in public, many of these manoeuvres are inspired by occult political calculations.
In the same way that I disliked how the European Parliament sought to intrude in the Maltese political scene, I can hardly appreciate similar manoeuvres that are carried out regarding other Union member states.
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Relativism
Media inputs have again surfaced to warn about the need not to let values that we believe in and treasure be undermined by the corrosive acid of relativism. Changes in marriage law to allow for same sex marriage, changes to be proposed to the IVF law are being portrayed as another shove towards a situation in which the value of human life loses its absolute qualities and becomes “relativised”.
As if this has not always been the case.
Capital punishment used to be the painless norm up to some decades ago, including in the Papal states; when St Thomas of Aquinas was at his peak, the abortion of a foetus having less than three to four months, was considered a venial sin; massacres of heretics like the Cathars were considered a holy mission.