It seems like there are two perfectly legitimate dates at which spring is reckoned to start: the 21st of March, as I was always taught; and the first day of the same month. There are good reasons to account for such a state of affairs. The same occurs when autumn comes: as children we were taught it began on the 21 September.

But for children in Belgium and beyond up north, for sure as far as Moscow, summer ends on the first day of that month, when they return to school. The first time I witnessed this happen, I believed it was an injustice. Children were being robbed of three weeks of summer holidays.

The fact that seasons do not begin and end on one fixed and agreed date feeds into the spreading belief that around the Mediterranean, there are now only two seasons: an amputated sort of winter and a kind of really prolonged summer that has annexed autumn and spring. The ongoing panic about the effects of climate warming on a global scale runs in parallel with the “confusion” about how seasons have been changing.

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PROTESTS

Clearly, in a democracy the right to organize public protests against the government’s policies should be respected and guaranteed. What is less clear is whether governments do change their position as a result of street protests.

Over the years I took part and even organised quite a number. Among which those held to protest against: the sacking of government employees; the Chambrai deal; the San Raffaele hospital; the introduction of VAT; the release of a drug merchant; slackness in the war against drugs; the manner by which a man held in prison was left to die; corruption; how negotiations for Malta to join the EU were being run; the sale of Mid-Med Bank to HSBC; several corruption scandals; a disgraceful land “deal”  at Mistra Bay...

Though these protests did help to mobilise public concern about the issues involved (since they were indeed very serious issues) I doubt whether they served to impact significantly government decisions. No doubt, many of today’s protesters disagreed with the protests of those times. We shall see how far they can go with theirs.

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SANCTIONS

Apart from supplying arms to the Ukraine to help with its defence efforts. the Europeans have put in place a range of economic, financial and social sanctions against Russia and its citizens. They could hardly have done otherwise, if they wished to give effect to their condemnation of Russia’s actions short of going to war with that country.

But how effective have sanctions been? For instance it had been expected that a year down the road, the Russian economy would have declined by some 15 percent. Effectively it decreased by less than 4 percent according to the International Monetary Fund.

A point made during a French TV show puts the problem in sharper focus.  When applying the sanctions, France halted its imports of oil from Russian refineries. Instead it is buying supplies of refined oil from India, which has no oil resources. The importation of crude oil from Russia by India has grown significantly. Meanwhile in world markets, oil prices (for crude and refined) have also risen a great deal.