Every time one reads or observes what gets reported and written about the official visits of a head of state or government in another country, one could ask: Whose ideas and perspectives is this visit highlighting? The visitor’s? The host’s? Both?
Ideally, it would be the latter: but how often does this happen?
Naturally the question arises even in the context of the trip that Pope Francis has just made to Malta. I have every respect for this Pope and hope that he ended up fully satisfied with his visit. However I do not understand very well what could have been exactly his take on it, unless it was to show solidarity with immigrants and refugees entering Europe. It is a noble aim about which in point of fact, a unanimous agreement does not exist in Malta.
From the Maltese side, politicians have always been interested in getting photographed with the Pope. If he did not happen to have visited, they would go to visit him. But I wonder whether this is still being given much weight in today’s circumstances as a tool by which to make voters warm to you. Perhaps it still works among the elderly...
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TIME LOST
A foreign friend living in Malta once told me: Where I come from, when you need to carry out some repair or other task at home – like for furniture or some new water and electricity installation – workers would call once or twice, repeatedly, to assess what needs to be done, carry out measurements and calculate how things should be done. Literally you get fed up with how long they take to study the project. However, once they move to carry out the job, everything is in place right from the start. They generally finish what they have to do in quick time and rarely need to come back to make adjustments to what they have installed.
By contrast here in Malta, though the start of works also takes time, when workers arrive to do the job, they start from scratch. That makes for more than one false start – as with impracticable arrangements to solve problems and other snafus. Complications multiply. Once the job is done, some part of it will then need redoing for some reason or other.
I cannot say whether what my friend said about how things are done in his country is true or not. That in Malta things are done very much like he said is a fact. Ant not just for “small” domestic projects.
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NEW ROADS
Is it just a mistaken impression of mine, or is it the case that the frequency of fatal road accidents has increased? For some time during the pandemic, traffic was stilled. Then when it took off again, drivers found waiting new arteries that opened up in spectacular fashion out of areas which previously would be tightly jammed with cars in queues.
Did this encourage the temptation to go fast? Frequently now in these new, superb roads that feel like they’re a highway, you meet cars speeding along as if they were competing in a Grand Prix. The problem is that most Maltese drivers, myself included, have an insufficient experience in what one needs to do to control a car that it is being driven at very high speeds and then meets some unexpected sudden blockage.