Up to last August, I'd been wrestling with this conundrum ever since we adopted the euro: if these small denomination coins have to keep piling up before you can exchange them for anything worthwhile in Malta, how much more worthless must they be for other eurozone members?

I spent the whole of last August in Berlin, in a residential area in former East Berlin, showed how wrong I'd been all along.

At the supermarkets, these tiddlywinks of coins did have value. Enough to say that a 500gm of yoghurt cost 49 cents, and a litre of fresh milk 69 cents. 

And that is the sad story of the Maltese consumer: being short-changed in all directions. 

But the deepest cut is the price of fuel. 

We have been told over and over again by MCCAA representatives on the media, that since we are in the EU, there are no price controls. Retail outlets, from corner grocers to High Street supermarkets to auto outlets can fix their own prices. 

The MCCAA's mantra to the local beleaguered consumer has been: shop around. That's the only way to fix the pricey retailers' wagon. 

But all this free-market blarney we the consumers have been subjected to about there being no such thing as price control, took a Maltese twist when a Rabat filling station undercut the price of diesel by 2cents and within hours was forced to reverse the reduction and bring it in line with that of Enemed. 

It's almost Kafkaesque that state-owned company Enemed seems to be rigging prices against the interests of the average schmuck. 

What sort of a message this seems to send to private enterprise when dealing with its customers! 

This incident of no one being allowed to sell fuel at prices lower than those of the state-owned company reminds me of the first time I went to Germany in the dark days of the 80s. 

Being a flag-waving patriot then, I chose the national airline to take me there. A return ticket cost Lm218. 

I soon forgot my patriotism and said to myself, if I'm going to Germany why not try a German airline? 

So I went to the German airline's offices and was told that a return ticket would cost me... Lm218 (€507).

In those days, €507 was no mean sum.

When I protested, saying that that is what an Air Malta ticket cost and that I expected a fairer deal from a German airline, I was told that the German airline could not sell at prices lower than Air Malta. It had to sell at (the state-owned) Air Malta prices, or higher.

Just like fuel prices now. 

But for all the dark clouds the 80s in Malta were swathed in, at least then one knew that our lot was to put up with a command economy. 

2015 is more sinister. We're supposed to be in a free market. 

I mentioned the 80s when the Lm218 air ticket to Germany was Hobson's Choice. In the 80s we had the PL as well as the PN in government. 

One can draw one's conclusion as to which party was in office when I expected Lufthansa to be cheaper but wasn't allowed to be. 

If you happen to be as naïve as I was then, a little nudge won't be amiss: flip a coin. 

If it turns up heads, then it was the PL in office at the time. 

If its tails, then it wasn't the PN in office at the time. 

Joe Genovese

Birkirkara