A number of uncertainties are enveloping economies at present but the suspicion is that the major uncertaint will after all end up being inflation. Frankly it is dicey whether much trust should be placed in the forecasts being made about it.
Inexplicably, they are still featuring quite precise scenarios regarding the extent to which prices will be rising and when they should be sliding back down. Now one understands that forecasts are based on statistical calculations carried out by sophisticated computers working out of well established econometric models.
But the forecasts that were being made about price stagnation by the European Central Bank and the IMF as recently as 2020 or 2021 were also derived in the same manner. Today other authoritative sources are claiming that fiscal brakes should have been applied in Europe and elsewhere as of the beginning of last year. That this was not then done, accounts for how inflation was triggered, they tell us. Indeed, good to know!
Really and truly, everything will depend on how events pan out. Just the occurence of one or two unexpected incidents would be enough... or even if an event does not develop exactly the way it was expected to... and then, a belated recognition that the forecast had failed would inevitably have to follow.
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TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS
Rightly there has been mounting disquiet about the increase to an unacceptable level of traffic accidents. Deaths, injuries, cars wrecked and pulped.
No doubt indiscipline, excessive speed, drug and alcohol abuse, the new highways which encourage drivers with limited experience to go for a speed which they then fail to control, and other reasons account for this disaster.
However it is surprising that one reason does not get mentioned – namely the state of pavements. Too often, they are too narrow, badly maintained, uneven or dug up. Pedestrians, not least older people, prefer not to walk on them as at least on the street they can go their way without risking a fall. Meanwhile, up and down the street, cars are being driven some less than carefully.
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DOGMAS
Much has been said and written about Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. His personal qualities were with reason, praised by all. His political endeavours were either ignored or criticised, not to say rubbished. What is curious is that all those who registered criticism or worse started out from his/her own description and dogmas to present what KMB’s political aims (and outcomes) were and should have been. They stayed mostly on the outward appearance of events, one that has been highly retouched by the interpretations given to the pre-1987 situation by the party which won the 1987 elections.
I have no doubt that future historians will be greatly redimensioning the insipid analyses we have been reading about KMB’s record. They will be giving importance to the significant structural changes he pushed forward, among which in the educational system, in the role of the Catholic church in Maltese society, in the management of the Labour Party, in the constitution, in the economy by way of transformations he began to promote at a time of huge difficulties all over the international economic environment, and in relations with the European Union.
Of all the speeches made about KMB’s political role, that of deputy prime minister Fearne was the only one which sought to provide a fair and factual assessment.