In its current campaign against the use of plastic, the government has slapped eco-tax on gun-shot cartridges. The tax on the type of cartridge used in shooting-ranges is lower than that on the type of cartridge typically used by bird-shooters. The Malta Shooting Federation – which is the lobby group of those who use shooting-ranges – has protested, saying that even this lower tax of two cents per cartridge will raise the expenses of each of its active members by at least Lm50 a month.

No doubt, their wives would rather spend that money on paraffin. The upset has been such that the tax on these cartridges may actually be removed. The story was confined to a very small space in just one newspaper, but its implications are wide. The question must be asked: what gives clay-pigeon shooters special status? Almost everything made of plastic is now being subjected to some kind of eco-tax, and cartridges are made of plastic.

The other day I called to speak to somebody at a beauty salon and she told me that she was busy adjusting prices to take the eco-tax into account. My supplier of refillable water containers sent me a text message after reading my column last Thursday – in which I wrote that six-packs of water should be taxed to direct people towards the home delivery service for refillable containers – to tell me that his company is eco-taxed when it buys new supplies of those containers.

That is how widespread the eco-tax on plastic is. But those who shoot plattini believe that somehow they are entitled to special status, for something that is not even a need but a caprice, and that their gun-shot cartridges should not be taxed. What is more, word from the inside indicates that the government shows signs of giving in on this one, making a special exception and lifting the tax.

Of course, when one makes such special exemptions, one must have the grounds to do so. There is to be no eco-tax on the plastics used in agriculture, and the case made here is that agriculture needs all the support it can get. I am sitting here trying to imagine what grounds for a special exemption there could possibly be with clay-pigeon shooting. The fact that it is a sport, perhaps? Ah, then we are in the dangerous territory of sophistry, and of slippery argumentation as to whether bird-shooting is not also a sport, as the bird-shooters claim it is.

So the bird-shooters would be forgiven for concluding that sport has nothing to do with it, or that a division has been drawn between ‘sports of which we approve’ and ‘sports of which we disapprove’. That does not ring true, either, because plenty of other sports use plastic and have not received any special exemption from eco-tax. It just looks as though another bunch of men with guns has made a scene and the government is thinking of ways to keep them happy.

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And once again, the powers-that-be have missed the point. It is not the plastic in gun-shot cartridges that causes the most environmental damage. It is the lead inside those cartridges. The harm they cause – quite apart from the birds, that is – is so great that they should be taxed even more heavily than they are, and that includes the cartridges used for clay-pigeon shooting. The lead ends up in the ground, which it poisons. It seeps into the ground-water, which it poisons even further. The lead in the ground gets into our fruit and vegetables. We eat it.

There is already enough lead in the air, put there by the tens of thousands of vehicles that do not use lead-free fuel. We also have to contend with the lead that has found its way into the soil and water from the millions and millions of gun-shot cartridges that have been used over the years. Each one of those cartridges contained lead; all of that lead is now in the soil of our fields and valleys.

Almost all, that is – a minuscule percentage of it found its way into birds, though even that minuscule percentage would have been returned to the soil in some way, especially if the birds were not retrieved. Any eco-tax on cartridges should be for the lead they contain, and not for the plastic that contains the lead, because it is the lead that causes most damage, and that damage is irreparable.

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It has become the custom even here for those in search of romance to advertise their desires in the small advertisements section of the newspapers. One such woman – at least, I assume it was a woman – spent a bit more money and took out a larger advertisement which she headed MISCELLANEOUS. ‘Lonely heart seeks companion, preferably the Christopher Lambert type – contact *******@hotmail.com’.

Christopher Lambert is the French actor who played Tarzan in the early 1980s film Greystoke. He had our pulses racing. Aged 17, I must have seen that film three times. All the girls had fantasies about him at a time when the other popular male icons were hardly paragons of manliness: Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, Boy George (for heaven’s sake) and Mark Almond of – what was it? - Tears for Fears? Depeche Mode?

I would rather not remember, but they all wore plenty of make-up, put hairspray in their blow-dried hair, and dressed in frills and sashes. They looked as though they would prefer a close encounter with Tarzan than with Jayne. But Christopher Lambert got stuck with the label of Tarzan and never made another hit movie, as far as I can recall, and this is possibly how our lonely hearts lady still thinks of him.

The problem is that a Christopher Lambert look-alike would, 23 years or so down the line, be a man in his mid-50s with disappearing hair and skin that cannot bear scrutiny, and of prosperous dimensions. And of course, if she really means Christopher Lambert as he was when he starred in Greystoke, then I have to ask: does she really think that someone so marvellous would be languishing alone in his loin-cloth, reduced to replying to lonely hearts advertisements on the island of Malta?

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The word ‘partner’ has killed off those lovely old staples, ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’, and the one used by those who prefer the stability it conveys, ‘companion’. Now ‘partner’ is slowly strangling the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. Those who are married but who feel perhaps that ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ sound stuffy and old-fashioned are referring to their spouse as their ‘partner’. To add to the confusion, ‘partner’ is also used by people in homosexual relationships.

Words are there to convey meaning, and to tell you what you need to know. If I refer to my husband, people know that I am married and that my spouse is a man, something not to be dismissed given that gay marriages are now permitted in some societies. If I refer to my partner, people know that I am in a relationship, and that the relationship is not marital. It does not tell them, though, whether the relationship is homosexual or heterosexual.

‘Partner’ is not a substitute word for ‘spouse’ – it means something else entirely, and it should never be used to describe a marital relationship. If you call your husband or wife your ‘partner’, the assumption is that you are not married. Yet so many younger couples are now doing this; it is quite ridiculous. It leads me to ask: are they ashamed of being married?

I am one of those people who would never use the word ‘partner’ even if I were in a non-marital relationship of 10 years’ standing. I loathe it. It reduces what should be an emotional union into a purely functional one. Where I come from, a ‘partner’ is somebody who shares your business interests, not someone who shares your life and your bed.

Plenty of people still use the word in the correct context. This, together with the fact that many marriages are failing and new loves are being marked down as ‘partners’ among the older crowd, gives rise to some hilarious situations. The safe world in which one could assume much simply through spoken words is long gone, and we are often left to flounder. Recently I met a man about whom I knew nothing, in a work-related context. As we talked through a project, he made repeated reference to his partner. The context of these mentions did not allow me to discern whether the partner was (1) a man, (2) a woman, (3) a business partner, (4) a bed partner, or (5) any combination of the foregoing.

Throughout the conversation, my mind clicked through possible clues. The clues were insufficient. By the time he referred to his partner by name – a man’s name – my mind was whirring and grinding and processing the available data. To ask a question, however subtle, would have risked potential deep offence on all counts. Because of current usage, the word ‘partner’, instead of giving me the information I needed, only served to confuse me.

I did not know whether he had a business partner, a wife, a girlfriend, or even, by the end of the conversation, whether he was gay. As it turned out, he was the old-fashioned type, and had used the word precisely as I would: the other man was not his gay lover, but a business partner, a fact that was made abundantly clear when he later spoke about his ‘wife’.