This is a country in tut-tutting mode! A country either on the brink of great change and going forward, or a country disintegrating because it does not really want to recognise its mistakes and move on.

There are so many examples of this, best exemplified by the swollen letter pages in many newspapers, that it is difficult to know where to start.

There was and is to my knowledge absolutely no abuse in the IVF area in Malta. But instead of being incredibly proud of the fact that we have such a good success rate, we had to endure a Children’s Commissioner who is so worried by groups of cells being frozen. Why isn’t there a national outcry over our children in care? Children who can be prevented from being adopted if parents don’t want to let them go, even if their parents have abused them. Why aren’t we stamping our feet and trying to get a fast track to heaven by complaining about why so many of these children are illiterate.

How on earth can you spend 10 or more years at school and be unable to read or write anyway, at least those who are going to participate in an EU-funded project to give them life skills, training jobs and more?

First we take children from their parents because of neglect or abuse, and then we let them down big time. It’s about time we started being morally outraged about the living, and not about a cell or two.

Still on the medical theme. How dare MAM? Now we must realise, again, that we are pretty lucky with our doctors. And I doubt any population of half a million is served by so many stars. But they do make a comfortable living. They often just do mornings in the hospital and then off they go to a very lucrative private practise. So why begrudge one man who only works for the state a decent salary? It’s just appalling behaviour from a mean-minded union. Mind you, we are a mean-minded country, so no one should be surprised

While practically the whole country agrees that the rent laws are unjust, one political party makes seriously unfounded claims, about a suddenly affordable property market if we take action against these laws. Say it often enough, and somehow people will believe two and two make five. After all, 25 per cent of our homes lie vacant and not at all affected by the rent laws. They could be sold or rented out tomorrow with no protection for tenants at all.

AD have even been trying to sell you the glory of renting instead of buying. Could AD please tell the people who only rent today, who will pay these rents when they are pensioners? How can anyone pay a commercial rent when he or she is a pensioner?

Never mind, they won’t be around when we’ll have to face that problem. Oh, and as soon as we sort out the rent laws, they want a tax on vacant property. Or have they now gone quiet about that, too?

While children and their parents have just got through another Matsec nightmare, with bizarrely poor results in some areas, despite all the cramming done for nothing, we hear about reforms to cluster schools.

All well and good but when, oh when, are we going to reduce the content in this Matsec syllabus? When, oh when, are we going to assess our children with something less guillotine-like than just exams? When are we going to prevent examiners from having their own books on the syllabus?

As tourism appears to be taking another jolt, Malta’s most enthusiastic visitors seem to be those who come to our language schools. The best hotels who offer the best service are, of course, packed to capacity but the mediocre are suffering. What action are we taking to ensure our standard of English does not decline even further, that host parents are encouraged rather than discouraged, and that our language schools offer the best training anywhere? Can’t we aspire to be jewels in any area?

The archaeological jewels of this country have all started to make sense to me in recent years. We are clearly a nation of builders and improvers. Archaeologists have always been puzzled by the sheer quantity of temples and the like in such a small island. But go anywhere in Malta. If it’s not a building site, every street has some major improvement going on. Driving through Zebbug lately, I was amazed at the amount of improvement work visibly going on in all these tiny streets. Mepa must be giving out a lot more permits than we think! It’s one of the main reasons why this island never looks clean and tidy. It is one small or big building site. We are the temple builders after all. There’s how we should be marketing ourselves abroad. Come to Malta, the building site in the Med.