There is, I believe, a very wide constituency out there not for any grand ideal but for simply making things work as they should work (but do not).

I think that, as a nation, we have gone through the big, high-sounding ideals for which we fought in previous decades – independence, republic, freedom from foreign military presence, EU membership, euro membership, etc. – and there do not seem to be any such high-flying goals to aim for.

Instead, if we look around us, we see the cemetery of high-sounding ideals lying around, all or mostly because the actual reality did not then measure up to what was promised.

Hence the national pastime – grumbling, Maltese gemgem – and the shoddy mess we must look to people coming here for the first time, mainly because we have become used to the sight.

Except where traffic is involved.

The recent weeks, or rather since the end of summer and the resumption of schools, have seen a peak of exasperation that crosses all boundaries – age, locality, party of preference.

Traffic is not the only issue we talk about, but it has become to us what the weather is to the English. And traffic is not the only thing that is not working. But let’s take it for starters.

We have heard what must be millions of proposed solutions. However, before we get down to that, we must consider how we got here. The aim is not to point fingers or play the blame game but to understand where we went wrong.

In my opinion, we are here because we never planned the roads but allowed the roads to follow on from the pathways, the lanes, the roads of the past centuries, with very few exceptions – the Regional Road being perhaps the most significant.

I do not agree that the second point to consider is that we have allowed too many cars to flood in, or that we have allowed too many people to become drivers, although there are some who say so.

Our village roads are clearly too restricted to take today’s traffic and yet we persist in allowing them to take the full brunt of it. There have been some sporadic attempts to create bypasses around some of the towns and villages but they tend to empty their traffic onto an already congested roundabout/village centre.

Towns and villages have been allowed to spread without the provision of adequate parking with the result that you spend hours getting there and then more hours looking around for a parking space. It is only recently that offices and supermarkets have had to provide their own parking and I suspect some of the most recent permits do not insist on this.

We have allowed the urban spread to widen and widen until Malta is one big conurbation. Places such as Paceville and Sliema, even commercial centres like Mosta, Hamrun, Paola and Rabat, are completely congested.

OK, so that’s the past. Now, how can we get out of this mess?

There are many ideas but they keep getting tossed about like confetti. The national mood, I think, is not in favour of long-term plans but for the here and now. Joe Mizzi was faced with this kind of attitude on Dissett and did not like it. The Prime Minister went technological and suggested the tidal-lane traffic solution which, if anything, is still some way ahead and can only be used on one or two roads anyway.

Elsewhere, (TMBW leader) I have come up with a couple of drastic solutions of immediate effect: free public transport at peak hours and free ferries from Sliema and Cottonera. Ultimately, we will have to go the way of mass public transport, finding space to run trams just as are used in other cities.

Meanwhile, the roads have to be upgraded and underpasses must replace the particularly congested roundabouts.

Then there is public transport. Here, many people become partisan and not objective at all. As time passes, we will see how far-reaching was the Austin Gatt revolution here, away from owner buses towards a single company. Yes, Arriva had a million flaws – not that the present one is much better. On the contrary, while Arriva did not fulfil all it promised, the present system is being allowed to deteriorate. The website does not work or is out-of-date. The innovation of the bus announcing the name of the next stop is not working in the vast majority of cases. Neither is the other innovation that tells you at the bus stop when the next bus is coming. At least the bus ticketing machine is working well.

In conclusion, what is needed is a government that can fix things and get them to work as they are supposed to. The party that credibly promises that will get the ticket.

I could go on and on about other areas of national concern. Take health-care, for instance. We normally focus on time spent at the Emergency Department, the number of people in corridors and the length of waiting time for an operation, etc. But there is in place a system whereby a patient can access his/her file at the hospital through e-registration. Some have managed to do this, but many others – including me – have tried and not been successful. I am told that doctors have been asking to be given this right for years, but so far they are shut out of the system unless the patient manages to get access.

Again, e-medicine is a wonderful idea that has not lived up to its promise for a lack of proper implementation.

And the same applies to government bureaucracy in general, which was supposed to become all electronic but which, perversely, still insists on paper communications and/or on visits in person to this or that office.

It should not be like this, for the country has spent huge sums on these technological improvements and is now seeing them left by the wayside while we revert to what used to be the standard 20 or 30 years ago.

However, at the end of this rant, I have something to write about that does work and that is uplifting. It should be obligatory viewing for all Maltese (and especially for all newly-created citizens) but when I visited, I must have been the only Maltese around.

This is the revamped War Museum in the part of Fort St Elmo that has been restored (for a lot is still awaiting restoration).

It is a wonderful experience and although it does not seem to be well-advertised, I found many tourists there, seriously and carefully absorbing the explanatory panels and watching the many animated scenes that explain the Great Siege and Malta under the Brits. (I have only one complaint to make: it is not true, as one of the panels says, that Martin Luther translated the Bible into English.)

For a Maltese, seeing the sequence is a deeply-uplifting and emotional experience (as well as the newly opened St Anne’s chapel where the Knights made a last stand before they were massacred).

I remember covering the Mepa board meeting at which the restoration was explained and approved and I am happy to report that the still unfinished product (for many panels still lack proper signage) is far beyond what I had expected.

At the same time, I still cannot understand why the Heritage Malta exhibition on the Great Siege at the Palace is not adequately advertised. I hope the vast majority of the Maltese is not waiting for Heritage Malta to hold one of those free admission Sundays to flock to it.

[email protected]