The local councils were set up as an institution in the early 1990s and were even inserted in the Constitution soon afterwards.

They have had their ups and downs and took some time to be accepted by both sides of politics.

At one point, some of them risked going bankrupt because of some ego-sustaining spending sprees.

Now however they, or some of them at least, are again in bad light. Each council has its own story to tell and one should not generalise but if I can find a common theme this regards planning permissions and the use of public spaces.

We have recently had a spate of cases where the council, unilaterally and many times without any consultation, took it upon itself to broaden the pavements and to narrow the roads down to a single lane on either side.

Some pavements have been so widened that, in the words of a wit, you could land a helicopter on them.

No reason, as far as I can see, was given for this sudden burst of activity, and, as I said, no consultation was held. But I have a shrewd suspicion you can find a bar in the vicinity. And so the reason for the pavement widening becomes clear – this preludes a tables-and-chairs application.

Along with other countries surrounding us, even in countries far colder than ours, we have switched over to the outside bar syndrome, regardless of the toxic fumes we would be ingesting along with the snack.

We have recently had the case of Mosta, a textbook case if you ask me, of bad communication, which soon became a national scandal because of the wholesale butchering of old and established trees. I don’t know if the tables and chairs had anything to do but anyone can see that the other side of the street is full of restaurants which all seem to be doing a roaring trade.

Before that, almost a trailblazer one could say, there was the Paola main square with a final outcome that does not seem to have pleased many.

And of course one must not forget Valletta where the council, on its own admission, was one of the prime proponents of the tables and chairs revolution together with music that so infuriated the residents forced to listen to the music until the early hours of the night.

I have seen a video, shot, I would think, on Notte Bianca and you can see people finding difficulty in navigating around chairs. And rather than promoting themselves on the strength of their cuisine or their serene environment, most seemed to think they could pack them in by announcing a Happy Hour of cheap drinks. It was Bugibba or Paceville come to Valletta or Strada Stretta back again.

And what about the other capital city, Victoria Gozo? The lovely square in front of San Gorg has become so full of tables and chairs that not even an ambulance can get through and in case of a funeral the relatives have to negotiate with half a dozen authorities just to get the hearse inside the square and the body inside the church.

There may be other examples that I have not mentioned. It is clear that many local councils have been taken over by business interests and, in our case, a restaurant owner is big business in the locality. Starved of government funding, any extra source is welcome, especially in those localities that do not know how to handle applications for EU funding.

Is this why local councils were set up? From what I can see, most seem to consider the light supervision of rubbish collection, the issuing of crane permits and the like to sum up their duties. There used to be some initiatives with regards to education but this seems to have petered off given the draconian central supervision of schools by the Education Department.

Likewise, the local councils seem to have lost any power they should have had with regards to law and order issues because the local police get their orders from the Police Headquarters. And there are no municipal police.

So our elected local councillors get to wear their official medals after they accept to see their real power whittled down to nothing. Keep this in mind when they start coming round to canvas for votes.

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