In all honesty, the last thing I can do is preach about what you should do in these times of political and social barrenness. I can’t preach because my generation has screwed up: totally screwed up.

We’ve screwed up the environment. We’ve screwed up the quality of life. We’ve screwed up our national reputation. We’ve also screwed up in respect of most of the institutions that should be there to safeguard our liberties and our democratic future.

We have turned the political field into a winner-takes-all one. We have eroded the atmosphere for free and unencumbered debate. We have totally corrupted the airwaves with propaganda, spin or inane talk.

That is not your doing. It is all due to the excesses, the idiocy and the wanton disregard for effective checks and balances on the part of the governing body since independence.

None of this is your fault. The need for everyone to lead a good – or a grand – life, come what may, is not your doing.

That we, people of my age or thereabouts, have done all this is a complete and utter shame.

We had in our hands a gem called Malta. It was rather tired, maybe slightly unpolished, but instead of polishing it we did our best to ruin it, or nearly ruin it. At the rate we are going, we are surely going to be gem-less and stuck with a quality of life that is sub-standard.

We have failed you, we have failed Malta and, ultimately, we are failing the ones to come – the future youth of our country.

I believe you are still in a position to do something to improve matters. Not because we deserve it – we created this mess so why don’t we solve it? I know we won’t. We will sit back, bicker and make it worse. We, the old guard, will go on harping about how good these times are, how splendid our life is, how amazing that we have foreigners queuing up to come and live here – or to come and buy our passports.

We will go on ruining the environment, ruining our way of life and our quality of life. And you can stop this. You should do it for yourselves and for the children growing up now or yet to be born.

Life should not be about the ‘now’ and only that. It is good as a marketing slogan, or as a political mantra. We cared about the now and to hell with what we did to the future.

So I beg you – yes beg you – not to persist in our ways. Change what there is. Take a good look around you and move into action.

You can’t look up to many of our generation as true believers in what is good for the country. Some might have been good in an economic sense, or a political sense, or even in a social sense. But overall the old ones have failed, so find your inspiration elsewhere.

It is not easy to start a new path. Greta Thunberg, a mere child, did it. You have energy on your side, but not time: time is running out. And not just for our generation but for all of us in the world.

Even if the world wakes up and starts doing something real and dramatic about the global situation, we still need you to move quickly to save the little that can be saved in Malta.

I cannot tell you what to do or how to do it: whether to join forces in a party and change that party, or start a movement – a real movement – of young people who are hell-bent on undoing what we have done so badly.

Although my generation might not be around to see you accomplish this goal, you will be able to pat yourselves on the back and say that, notwithstanding what those idiots who came before did, you have stopped the rot and a new phase of well-being has emerged.

All dreams start somewhere. They often sound insane but if you care enough then, for your own sake, dream: whether that dream is large or small – just dream. There is always a dream before an achievement.