On a recent visit to my village of Nadur, I was surprised to see this hole (picture) in the middle of the street leading to the Pjazzetta Arcipriet Dun Martin from the main road next to the Youngsters Football Club.

When I asked several people who live across this deliberately huge man-made crater in the middle of the street, they started shouting out loud, saying this hole is perfect evidence of the bad things that happen in this country.

Instead of this just recently dug huge hole there used to be an old house of historical value with an artesian well about 140 metres deep, called Spiera ta’ Censu. Plans to demolish the house were refused five years ago, I was told. In spite of this the old house was destroyed and the land excessively excavated.

Forty-five years ago the Nadur Youngsters Football Club, situated next to the hole, had lost one third of its land to widen the street. The people I was talking to asked me whether Maltese law is only for ordinary citizens.

Or in other words, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, 2002 aptly explains this sentence as, “A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. The sentence is a comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens but give power and privileges to a small elite”.

David Camilleri

New York City