If one needs an expensive car, one has to pay for it. The notion behind this simple statement is that expensive cars offer much better value, which is definitely not always the case. Even an expensive car could crash and cause higher damages because the driver may think that such a car is safer.

This is what actually happened to the financial sector two years ago. Bank managers all over the world rewarded themselves with increasing bonuses. At the end it was the normal car-driving taxpayer who had to foot the bill in the form of state subsidies for the ailing banks. If the logic behind the expensive car mentality has shown anything it is only that a whole economic and financial sector has gone bankrupt.

In the meantime whole societies suffered irreparable damage not only because money is lacking where it is most needed. Economists and GDP experts have dug deep in the backbones of societies. Time and space have been rendered synonyms for money.

In Malta we hardly notice how time and space have been eroded of their most precious value, namely to give mankind room for regeneration. Nowadays individuals doing a job are already thinking of their second job. Multi-tasking has become a buzzword. People clinging to their mobiles are only physically present but their minds and thoughts are elsewhere.

On our islands the word countryside could soon be deleted from our vocabulary and I would not be surprised if some programme presenter would have the cheek to tell us to travel abroad to enjoy a real piece of countryside, like it has already been suggested for classic cultural events. In the last 30 years we have witnessed the boom, meaning for us that single-family houses had to make room for apartment blocks and that even our skyline had to succumb and change by the day.

Acceleration is overriding what is left of our institutions, leaving them only space for rubber stamping exercises, and our politicians seem to be happy posing for photos with expensive car owners. If these car owners demand a decrease in our holidays, our government gives them thumbs up. If they demand lower electricity tariffs, ditto, while the middle class is aching under the heavy loads.

There is no sign that the expensive car drivers wish to pull the brakes. There is no sign of a moratorium whereby the percentage of what is left of our countryside is preserved, no sign of introducing the concept of allowing new developments only where the developer is ready to restore an alternative and equivalent site back to nature at his own expense.

In our country only some housewives still feel that they should not jump in the deadly machine that deprives them of their time as a real gift for their families and society as a whole. They still resist the temptation to let themselves be wedged in the narrow space of a cashier seat, sometimes even on Sundays, for a minimum wage. They know that it is futile, that their hard-earned money would be absorbed by those expensive cars that are strong with the weak and weak with the strong.

Agnes Debono

Kercem