Some years ago, a supermarket with this name was set up in Malta and quickly became very popular. Then it folded and collapsed and many people got hurt. The case is still being fought about in the Courts.

Last year we had another Price Club. We normally call it a general election. What it ultimately came down to was the principle that every man (and woman) has a price and that whoever offers the highest price gets the ultimate prize: to govern the country.

Since then, in these nine months we have assisted at people cashing in the pledges they were made during the election campaign. Pledge after pledge, promise after promise.

It is no wonder that government polity may have looked skewed at times, for there was little underlying consistency. The only rule, it seemed, was what suited that particular sector of the electorate and sometimes, or rather many times, this was in conflict with what other sectors of the electorate wanted.

There are still people queuing up out there with claims, commitments and expectations. Nine months of trying to cash all those commitments have now reduced the margin to satisfy the expectations of those who so far have been left out. Soon, we will reach, if we have not already reached it, the outer limit when no more promises may be fulfilled. What happens then is all too predictable if one looks at the not so recent history of Malta, in the 1970s and the 1980s.

Simply put, when opportunities start to decrease, the pressure to become monopolistic becomes greater. Only in that way can the demands be met, or at least controlled.

The post-1980s governments understood the way to remove this was to liberalise the market. The controls over who imports television sets and computers were removed and people today are still free in a free market environment. But other things that only a government can give, jobs specifically, are still tightly controlled.

Many blame the PN government for not playing the game, for not promising and committing to people especially when the other side was doing so. However, that same PN government was not so virginal at all, for it took care of its own with jobs and packages, and some of those packages were indeed opulent.

Obviously, PL needed no lessons in pandering to its masses, who had been out of office for all those 25 years, nor to those who had been elbowed out by those who got at the trough in PN years, even though they subscribed to the same party.

We now find that, for instance, while there are huge thousands of empty buildings in Malta, more and more planning permits have been promised. And when there are surely more than enough jobs with the government, more are being added to the public purse.

Somehow, somewhere all this will lead to grief, just as we already have more cars on the streets than can circulate, more houses and apartments than are really required, etc.

The only real solution is to understand where all this is leading the country and to retract our steps to a more sustainable level. Somehow, however, we do not feel this is going to happen. Come any next election, even is inconsequential as that for the European Parliament or local elections, the Price Club will again take over.