Consumers have right on their side. They paid for their air tickets, the flights never materialised and still they have not yet gotten back the money they paid. A European regulation stipulates that when this occurs, the airline should refund all paid monies.

This just did not happen.The claim was made, in Malta too, that frustrated passengers could receive instead vouchers with which to fly in future as compensation for their lost trips.European regulations did not envisage this way out. Even so, many consumers have been kept waiting for their vouchers.

The truth of course is that airlines have been so badly squeezed by the corona virus crisis that most are still standing only because governments lent them sturdy financial crutches. Both airlines and governments are finding it difficult to give consumers their money back as then, the airlines’ financial woes would just escalate.

The fact remains that consumers have paid for a service which they did not get.

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CONFIDENCE AND PRUDENCE

As the lockdown measures imposed on the country to control the corona virus pandemic are withdrawn further, confidence in the notion that the worst is over naturally gets reinforced.

However, we have to keep in mind the advantages which we benefitted from. As a small island, we could cut ourselves off from the movement of people that proceeded in larger countries having land frontiers.  Which is why it is a pity that prudent practices are apparently being abandoned too fast.

The big test will come when our frontiers are opened, with the opening of the airport for flights to all destinations. If a sense of prudence is no longer at play and we import an infection or two, the story could start all over again.

Nobody wants this to happen. It makes sense therefore to sustain confidence but without meanwhile giving anything up on prudence.

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DIGITAL QUERIES

All the time, we get told about the importance that the digital sector will increasingly assume in our lives. The EU has made digitalisation a leading factor in its activities for the coming years, to the extent that it has ranked it alongside the priority it wants to give to measures that combat climate change.

Along with others, I too have accepted that the digital economy is of vital importance and that we need to promote it strongly and incessantly.

Yet, a friend of mine had two questions for me about all this which frankly floored me. Both had some connection with educational goals. They were:

--Given digital developments, will it not be totally unnecessary for kids to learn handwriting, since in their lifetime they will be using keyboards to write their stuff with?

--Similarly, how about the teaching of arithmetic?... In the past it used to be done with lots of repetitive exercises: will it be completely sidelined since children will have, as the most natural thing in the world, digital gadgets which will add and multiply for them all that they need to add and multiply?