The recent remark made by a top public officer about the traffic problem in Malta being something short of a figment of the man-on-the-roads' (where else?) imagination showed, perhaps unwittingly (who knows?), to what a sad level our Civil Service has descended.

If ever proof was needed that Hans Christian Andersen had more than children in mind when he wrote his tale, this remark seems to have signed, sealed and delivered it.

For Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes wasn't merely a children's tale, it was a tell-tale.

What is so depressing about this remark is that here we have a top member of the public service fawning on the Royal Household to such a ridiculous extent as to embarrass in the extreme no one other than the Emperor himself.

So much so that the Emperor himself went public in ramming down the very throat of him who uttered these words with such spontaneity.

"No, I don't have clothes," he found himself saying, in what was perhaps the most honest-to-goodness remark he's made in his 19-month reign.

Had it been a low-ranking member responsible for such an inane remark, it would have been forgotten almost as quickly as it was laughed at.

But the rot seems to run so deep that top management types seem to be constrained to utter inanities, thoroughly convinced that sycophantic, boot-licking zeal is a 24-carat credit card to green pastures.

Joe Genovese

Birkirkara