Reports about what took place in the first half of the nineties when the hospital now called Mater Dei started being built, feel like a throwback similar to the situation described by Marcel Proust in his very long novel "Remembrance of Things Past".
My colleagues and I spent a long time warning that huge improprieties were then being committed at the hospital construction site. We presented proofs. I remember one: Glenn Bedingfield and Felix Agius succeeded in filming a bowser full of concrete leaving a certain place, doing a small tour of the island and ending up at the site.
All those who had something to do with the hospital, both foreigners or Maltese, realized it provided them with very good pickings. The rest, distracted by the feel good that the Fenech Adami administrations specialised in, preferred to look elsewhere.
Between 1996 and 1998, we discovered that the agreements that had been signed tied the hands of the government of the day completely. We at least tried to draw up a new project for a general hospital so that some benefit would still be derived from the wasted funds.
About this too the PN were not happy to let well alone. Back in government after 1998, they dismantled the system we had set up to monitor and audit the construction work going on at Tal-Qroqq and they downscaled the hospital by about one hundred beds.
Yet today, some people still feel surprise at how things developed.
Mater Dei really and truly offers a Proustian narrative – now just a remembrance of things past, I hope.
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SMEs
Up to quite recently, many Europeans were feeling uncomfortable about the negotations that are taking place between the US and the EU to conclude a deal on free trade and on investments. The claim was that the agreement would largely service the interests of big multinational companies. These would benefit once European markets come under their control to a greater extent than they already do.
Someone must have understood what was going on and decided on the best response to counter this claim. At present, when people who are taking part in the negotiations speak out in public, they make it a point to underline once or twice that when the agreement is concluded, it will be of great help to SMEs.
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Lupin
Arsene Lupin is better known today as a funny character in a children's TV cartoon show. But he started life as a gentleman burglar in a series of rocambolesque novels penned by Maurice Leblanc. They were very popular in France a century ago.
I've discovered they are still effective to clear the monotony of airplane travel, which has become a frequent experience for me.
"813" is a Lupin novel I've just finished though I'm not quite sure what it was exactly about. It consisted mostly of a confused sequence of the dramatic climaxes that Lelblanc delights in. Whenever he feels like it, he produces a sensational twist in the plot, and then starts thinking about how he's going to explain what led to it. His explanations are rarely convincing. But when the choice is between Lupin and monotony, you don't mind reading on.