Being my last piece for 2017, I would like to share some of the most salient extracts from the articles I wrote for TMI during this year:

As people go about wishing each other well for the 'forthcoming' Year and some even going as far as quoting Scripture, there are those amongst us who will not be looking at 2017 with too much gusto.  I don't intend messing up people's moods but let's face it, some have been dealt a bad hand. 

17 people who will not be looking forward to '17 (4/1/2017)

I find it increasingly disturbing reading one story after another of motorcyclists who have died on our roads or were seriously injured.  I am not in a position to point fingers but motorbikes involved in such accidents are high powered sport or dual bikes.  I recommend that we develop a circuit where these enthusiasts can drive their bikes to their heart's content and are removed immediately from our streets.  Only low-powered standard bikes should be allowed on our roads. 

Moral Compass (11/1/2017)

When are we going to have a plan on how to sort out our messy pavements a fundamental pillar in accessing our communities.

Captured my attention (22/2/2017)

Last Saturday I interviewed HE the President of Malta Marie Louise Coleiro Preca during my radio show on Radju Malta, Ghandi xi Nghid.  The President has consistently and steadily grown incrementally into this role. Initially I thought she wouldn't manage to ride over her past political roles but I was wrong.  She is managing to use the Presidency to leave a positive impact on the community.  Even though she might come across as impetuous it is very clear that she thinks things through.  When it comes to civil rights she is as consistent and persistent as they come and would leave no stone unturned to make sure she achieves her aims. 

On the agenda (1/3/2017)

I want politics and politicians I so esteem to become the voice of those people who struggle day-in and day-out to make sense of a life that has in many ways been taken away from them; children who are abused, minorities who are short-changed, women experiencing domestic violence, people in precarious jobs, lack of education, physical pain, relationships that have gone bad, to name just a few. 

But do you realise what a privilege you are endowed with? 

Your words, your actions, can make a difference to these people - listen to your strengths. 

An open letter to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition (15/3/2017)

The smells, the sounds are like chalk and cheese but equally fascinating.

The lack of architecture linearity and uniformity are simply striking, make perfect sense and are a pleasure to look at, contrary to the concrete jungle we now call houses in most of our towns (and unfortunately villages as well) that are starting to look like 'Khrushchyovka styled-buildings'.  You might not find one facade like another, that's true, and yet somehow they create a harmony and a feeling like music annotations on a stave, as you go about walking through streets and allies.  Another facet of village landscape are the oodles of niches and religious symbols that lie everywhere.  If this indulgence thingy worked and had I to pop in some cents in the insert lying in front of every niche' I come across, I would possibly be guaranteed a place in Heaven some 20 years before my expiration.  Then again, the intensity of the socio-religious symbolisms is nothing short of striking.  They provide character, decorate the streets and might be for some or many a reminder that good has to be done.

Perspectives from a village (19/4/2017)

And whilst we are mentioning failures.  These last weeks we have seen a number of repots in the media about episodes that sound more like suicide than accidents to me.  When people in their 20's or 30's or whatever age have lost hope, have a dark veil that takes over completely, it is indeed the end of the road not for them but for us.  We have failed. We are the losers.

Grining to a halt (3/5/2017)

What I like about this school is its intensity. 

Once again, I'm sure this spirit is present in many other schools.  The way the activities are developed come from the bottom-up.  It is the students' in their conversation with their educators and leaders that surface the needs, the desires, the curiosities that they want to augment and expand.  Then, it becomes the ardours task of the Head of School with her Team to convert and translate these ideas and concerns into an objective.

Believe, aspire, succeed (17/5/2017)

For these last four years I have repeatedly drawn the attention to how our political debate has floundered and lost all sense of decency and equilibrium, how our political class has degenerated and sank to the lowest possible level, how our democracy is slowly being pulled apart (because, democracy is not shatterproof as some would think).   I have repeatedly called for garbed and noble dialectic rather than a plethora of the 'us' and 'them' game. 

The worse thing about all of this is that we are starting to believe that this is an acceptable way of doing politics.  This whole mess drove us into a Bermuda triangle missing out on values, ethical behaviour and principled discourses.  The irony of all of this is that these 70 odd (apologies for the pun) MPs' behaviour is anomalous and incongruous to the way politics should be designed.  Let it be known that our Republic is faltering, our institutions are wobbling, our social fabric is in dire straits - no, things are not honourable at all. 

It's complicated (31/5/2017)

The finery of our Faculty is that it allows us to link up, to share, to immerse ourselves in the narratives of pain, of those who lie at the bottom of the heap.

This is a Faculty that converges the noblest of disciplines: from psychology to criminology, from gerontology to youth and community studies, from migration studies to disability, gender and queer studies, from social policy and social work to counselling and family studies.

Social Wellbeing is a right - A view from a Faculty (14/6/2017)

However, undoubtedly, the festa remains one of the most significant and noteworthy communitarian events in our Country for an array of reasons being religious or other. The interesting, complex and intertwining dynamics embedded in the festa, namely, cult, culture, spirituality, art and identity are fabulous.

What the festa does is create an encounter and an opportunity to engage and to get people to come together, where they can speak, argue, laugh, celebrate, contemplate and (possibly) pray. It's essentially a 'community' experience in the full sense of the word.

When the Saints go marching (21/6/2017)

The fact that Dr Delia is the new PN leader is a relatively novel reality.  Having a leader of one of the largest political parties in Malta who has never had a formal role in the PN is indeed interesting and one needs to see how this will impact on the political continuum.  It might bring in some unexpected contributors to the fold.

Taking stock of the political narrative surrounding the PN (20/9/2017)

I really am lost for words.

What happened on Monday afternoon is not only an act of aggression but also an attack on all of us who try to articulate ideas, chase stories, ask questions, try to understand social truths.  All of this is not just about Daphne's assassination, this is about a State that has failed to protect us, it is about the Institutions that have been weakened by a dialectic of hostility.

Lost for words (16/10/2017)

Thankfully most of you would not have witnessed the obnoxious and insufferable Ward 10.

Ward 10 is the infamous Ward that 'used' to exist in Mt Carmel Hospital.  Even the thought gives me the jitters.  This is the Ward that used to host drug addicts, hardened criminals and the castoffs that required psychiatric treatment.  The stench and sight of this Ward was cruel.  There was a corridor on both sides of the Ward to ensure the Police Officers and the orderlies could monitor what was happening. Privacy, zero.  At certain points the patients would get so aggressive that they needed to have a beam forced against the door to secure the entry point.  Most of the staff and nurses were miserable and dejected.  Once I witnessed with my own eyes methadone that was covered with ants (probably attracted to the saccharinity).  All the nurse did was brush off the insects with a spoon and still administer this same methadone to the patients waiting at the door.  I remember leaving the Ward with tears in my eyes, angry at myself, feeling so ineffective and powerless.  

Ward 10 (27/11/2017)

However, these 'ideologies' in our local political scenario have practically disappeared (conveniently) in thin air.  Everything about politics has turned stealth.  Politicians are as anonymous and faceless as they come.  They are ostracised if they position themselves on an issue whether moral or not, expected to obey the party Whip like 'naghag ta' Bendu'.   Are positioned in the highest places of the Party hierarchy if they wear the eyeshades and smile like muttonheads.  The moment a group of politicians or even one representative pronounces him/herself not in sync with the Leader, 'miskin hu jew hi' - all hell will break loose.  Politics nowadays, more than ever, has taken a turn downward I'm sorry to say.

Where have the social values gone? (6/12/2017)

A good politician is one who is not afraid to take out-of-favour decisions.  Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has done this on a number of occasions in the areas of civil and human rights.  In the case of Vote 16, after spearheading the changes necessary in the law that governs the Local Government back in 2013, young people from the age of 16 could now start voting in these elections.

Why not? (13/12/2017