Thank God for small mercies and the 5+5 meeting. They have tarmacked the Buskett Road and are repainting all the road markings along the Rabat Road, which had faded completely. It is many, many moons since those road markings were painted.

What a pity the visiting dignitaries are not being taken along the wide Labour Avenue in Rabat, on their way out of Buskett. They would have driven past houses on one side and attractive fields on the other to join the recently done up, but cracking, Mtarfa by-pass..

But Labour Avenue is in an execrable condition, Austin Gatt never drives that way apparently, and in spite of clamour for a coat of tarmac, it has never been applied.

It is all classic PN – veneer for the foreigners, and stark, unadorned reality for the tax-paying natives.

■ C. Galea

Rabat