For the upcoming budget, in between the lines or openly, a big challenge is looming. While it is in the overall interest of the government – as is natural – now to make sure that the measures it adopts translate into an improvement of citizens’ living conditions, there is also an ongoing need to keep current public expenditures under control.

This can be done by restraining or removing “extra” or “superfluous” expenses. It is a difficult and unpleasant assignment, including as it does exercises by which sources of waste are uncovered, inefficiencies revealed and deficiencies in work organization smoothed out.

If the challenge is met, few will notice. There will be no applause, even less glory. In the shortrun, the whole effort will seem to have had minimal impact on the political and economic life of the country.

However if the challenge is side stepped, the risk will be that the Labour government post the next election will have to pay a big political and economic price. Economic growth rates are bound to slow down at one time or other. When this happens, government current expenses that are out of control will swiftly pile enormous pressures on public management.

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Gozo farming

In Gozo, land that is being actively farmed has decreased greatly in recent years. It still has not been built up (at least as of now) and is being left unutilised.

Meanwhile there are young people, some them graduates of the agricultural school, who would like to start work as full time farmers. Other farmers wish to increase the land where they could plant vineyards and raise crops.

Why is it that fertile land is allowed to lie idle? What can be done to make it productive again?

The way by which we dispose of land has always been a matter that easily becomes controversial in this country. And not just when building permits come up for discussion. However it seems to me that it is in the national interest and that of Gozitans to ensure that when fertile land is really available for farming, it is taken up.

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Balzac

“Lost Illusions” is a long and powerful novel; I had intended to read it since when I realised that it immediately precedes another long novel in The Human Comedy, “A Harlot’s Progress” (as titled in English translation). This I read long years ago. Although I have forgotten many of its details, I do remember it had impressed me enormously. So now did “Lost Illusions”, featuring characters and themes that were carried over into its sequel.

Balzac takes us to the French provinces as well as to the Paris of the eighteen thirties, the latter bubbling with the life of a dynamic metropolis. He creates memorable characters with descriptions that focus sharply on how their ambitions, calculations and illusions are shaped by the social environment from which they issue. He does so without using his characters to project some “message”.

Indeed I doubt whether he was at all interested in transmitting messages – unless perhaps it was that with his writings he wanted to show life as it is.

Today his life project as a writer still seems monumental in scope and rightly so.