This, we can now say, is the summer that was. The summer of 2010.
Summers in a place like Malta are mostly the same, in our case punctuated by the village festas, the heat, the tourists.
Yet summer after summer, and year after year, there is always a something that is not like the ones preceding it. We may think that we as a country, we as a people, never move, remain the same, but in fact, like glaciers, we would be moving, slowly, imperceptibly, but moving.
Two issues have come to the fore this summer with a force they never had in the past: the divorce issue and the cost of living.
People are very wrong when they claim that the divorce issue is a trumped-up one, the result of a media conspiracy or an elite pushing where the country does not want to go.
Unfortunately, there are neither reliable statistics nor reliable figures to document the progressive breakdown of family life. We know more or less what is causing this – the influence of other countries, the different lifestyles our young people are living, and the divorcist mentality that is prevalent among those people who are still getting married in church. We know, mostly from personal or family contacts how many families of the people around us or related to us are breaking down. But we do not have the figures to back up our perceptions.
We can all see the mess getting bigger and bigger, reaching even those families who one would have thought were solid. We have more or less adjusted to the new, reconstituted families created as a result of other families’ break-ups, as one can see from the many obituary notices that now mention partners as much as they mention wives and husbands.
So when the issue was brought to the fore, we did have one of those big national debates on the airwaves and the media and also the new media (blogs, comment spaces, and so on). All that could have been said was said, and more and more. At the end of summer, we find we are here – we have discussed the issue to death but are no nearer to a common understanding than we were at the beginning of summer.
The second issue was as near to home as the first. It is a fact felt by all – that it has become much harder to cope with the cost of living than it was before. Mainly we blame the cost of energy and mostly we blame the government. In this case, the government has well and truly lost the plot and has failed, is still failing, to show it was right in the decisions it took and indeed that it has the well-being of the Maltese families at heart.
We have suffered from, nay, are still suffering from, the creation of a new agency to send us the electricity bills and all its birth pangs and teething problems. We have suffered, are suffering, because of the higher price of oil and for the fact we are now paying that price as it is on the world market. And we now find we are also paying for Enemalta’s past investments that have not yet been paid, as well as for its future ones as well.
We are late in developing alternative energy sources and, as for the new power station extension, which has become a sore point for most Maltese both on account of the manner of its choice and also on account of the technology to be used.
We may have come through the worst recession in recent history with far less damage than other countries. We may have seen a huge surge in tourist figures due to the expansion of low cost airline routes. We may have one of the lowest unemployment figures in the entire EU. But the average Maltese is still not satisfied and grumbling about the government has reached an all-time high.
We may still be eating out on many days of the week, and the availability of low cost prices, which make going to Rome cheaper than staying one night in a Gozo farmhouse, has enabled more Maltese than ever to go abroad for more than one holiday a year. But we still grumble.
Our growth rate has been stagnant for years, our employment figures, especially that of women, is among the lowest in the EU, our minimum wage has been kept as low as that of the Germans (though theirs is of course far higher) and our over-16s still tend to drop out of school (although MCAST has greatly improved matters).
Apart from the negligible number of people who are unemployed, and the greater number of people not looking for work, there are areas that have problems – mostly the construction industry and in particular some very big and famous names that reportedly are under great stress. And there are issues in the financial services sector that demand strong-handed correction and action.
People still get negligible service from government departments and now some private providers seem eager to emulate government agencies in this. There are now more and more authorities than there ever were and when they are not in conflict with one another (what’s new, we used to have Bishop-Grand Master-Inquisitor feuds) they tend to clobber the average citizen down. And, of course, we have the ubiquitous wardens.
And yet the roads are still as bad as they always were and the way people drive is actually getting progressively worse, though the bad roads are not all to blame.
It would be a case of more of the same Maltese gemgem were it not for the fact that the naysayers seem to be holding an impressive advantage and they seem to have won game, set and all. People grumble, so what’s new, so they stop grumbling as nothing seems to matter.
Nevertheless, were it not that this has been a summer of funerals – from State to para-State, now to next week’s expected massive outburst of emotion at the mass funeral of the Gharb explosion victims – this has been a fun summer, a summer of festivals, from the MTV one to the Joseph Calleja postponed one to the coming festivals.
At the end of the holiday season, as families prepare for the new school year, as the days and nights grow colder and as the political season resumes (not that it ever stops), we realise it was a summer when much was achieved, but when also much that could be achieved was left undone.
Correction
I said last week that the President of the Italian Senate is the third person of importance in Italy. Wrong: he is the second person in importance. Although, as a comment that was sent to me said: in actual fact in Berlusconi’s Italy the President of the Senate is ‘just a muppet without any real power or backing’.
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