Inequalities in Europe frequently get referenced, not without reason. In a continent endowed with democratic government which has over long years now, maintained respectable rates of economic growth, inequalities of all kinds have persisted and in a number of sectors actually increased. New forms of inequality have meanwhile been generated.

European governments have joined more than once to denounce inequalities with an almost unanimous voice and they commited to their curtailment. However promises made on these lines remained unfulfilled.

I believe that no one register – let me call it that – is maintained in which all the inequalities that have accumulated within the EU are recorded... within all sectors. With such a register, the scale of the problem we face would be understood much better.

True, setting out such a record could be interpreted as an exercise in pessimism, inspired by the wish to show Europe in an unfavourable light. This would not be a sensible approach though there would surely be those who would adopt and use it to attain ends that have nothing to do with the levelling of inequalities.

On the other hand, if the whole expanse of inequalities is brought under a single chapter, a better estimate could be made of the resources needed for the struggle against them to have a reasonable chance of being won.  

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NON-STORIES

The traditional media... not only in Malta... are in harsh competition with each other and with the “new” social media. Competition always existed but now it has become deadly. This is because potential readers are under fierce “attack” as a market by social media and because advertising revenues have continued to shrink.

In such a situation one understands the pressures that build up to come up with interesting stories and reports which might attract and retain readers.

As a result, non-stories are proliferating. In the social media, these get fabricated out of nothing. The traditional media find it difficult to do the same. Instead, incidents that have minimal interest are written up in ways that while not altering the facts, convert what is really innocuous into something that sounds quite suspicious...

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ANIMAL RIGHTS

The Commissioner for the rights of animals is doing the right thing when she highlights unacceptable practices in the business of selling and buying animals, and in how the ways by which people “care” for their pets contradict animal rights. Her work deserves greater support from public funds and why not? – from private sources also.

A strong awareness still needs to pick up in Malta about the suffering that animals are subjected to – in the ways by which some of them are forced to have too many young ones too early in their life – in how families consider pets as if they were disposable toys – in the ways by which animals are reared in the absence of all good care – in the mania of some citizens to keep “exotic” animals as pets, forcing them to live miserable lives...

As a community, we still need to comprehend that the world has been created for all of us, beasts and human beings together.