From the tourism sector we are getting... if I am understanding correctly... signals that spell a cautious optimism across Europe, Malta included. This is quite encouraging as almost without our having realised what was happening, tourism has become a major economic pillar almost everywhere.
Such a development has followed from the improvement of living standards in so many developed countries by which the leisure time people dispose of has increased, while they have sufficient funds for pleasurable spending. The modernisation of most means of communication has helped to stimulate a curiosity about what is going on in foreign places even as the cost of travel has largely diminished.
Apart from war, nothing can be more deadly to tourism than a pandemic. And this has been the first time the industry had to face the challenge of getting to recover from a pandemic that attacked on all fronts and globally. We had no guarantee that recovery could be managed quickly and successfully.
Which is why the cautious optimism that is being expressed is encouraging.
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THE MALTESE PARLIAMENT
Established a hundred years ago, the Malta Parliament has on the whole been of good service to the nation. As was to be expected, the styles of how it is run and how its business is conducted have changed greatly. Since Independence, the variety and import of decisions which it needed to take have increased. Meanwhile, despite all the changes, the style of doing business remained a function of the competition between just two parties that has characterised the political scenario of the country.
As a result, so many of Parliament’s decisions can easily be foreseen. Knowing what are the wishes of the government of the day, enables one to forecast how Parliament will decide. It is when for some reason, this “rule” is flouted that Parliament then demonstrates the central role it plays in our national institutions.
Speaker Dr Anġlu Farrugia is doing well to seek to raise Parliament’s profile in the public mind. Unfortunately, even though its sittings are broadcast live, I doubt whether parliamentary business is being followed as it used to be in the past. Even the newspapers (or what remains of them) ignore almost completely what is going on in the House. It is a pity.
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DEPENDENT ON THE INTERNET
Over time, more and more aspects of human life have become dependent on the internet. It is not simply happening on a personal basis, but in the much wider sense of how society is being run... from the supply of energy and food, to the operations of all forms of transport, to the management of factories.
The danger already exists in a big way and will continue to grow: if the internet system gets paralysed, a substantial part of life as we have come to know it could be brought to an abrupt stop, to put it prudently.
It might be an accident or it could be an act of sabotage. In either case, the precautions that need to be taken cannot but be critical – they have to be best placed to pre-empt the shock of a stoppage that would have global consequences; and they need as well to maintain the machinery that would, if a disaster really occurs, be able to repair the damage and restore the system in the shortest possible time.