Measures have been announced to help reduce the volume of car traffic on our roads. The question arises: how successful are they being? Likely, there is need for an objective review of their effectiveness.
Now, the measures being proposed and implemented are certainly praiseworthy. As with free public transport on buses or on the ferry systems around Grand Harbour. Usage has greatly increased. Clearly, they have been a popular success. The question still remains whether such measures have contributed to a reduction of traffic volumes. For it appears that they have not, since traffic has continued to rise, not decline.
How could it be otherwise since on a yearly basis, the number of cars on the road continues to increase significantly? A problem in all this is that if traffic is really to be brought down, drastic measures - such as taxes, quotas... - would need to be introduced, something which our democracy is unable to handle. As car numbers continue to grow, so will traffic.
***
BEYOND MALTA
For years, I've been noting it. Foreign diplomats used to mention it, with an understandable discretion. The Maltese hardly follow what goes on outside their shores, or if they do, hardly care about what's going on.
Now, I doubt whether it's always been like that. In other days, long ago, I remember that Mintoff and even Fenech Adami would in their speeches, discuss what was happening abroad and tie it to how our future could develop. Not any more.
Supposedly, having joined the EU, we should have become more sensitive to how foreign affairs were shaping up. It doesn't seem as if this has happened. It's more like the Maltese people have shrunk into a shell and it's proving to be most difficult to entice them away from it. They want to go on living in it the life they always led.
***
INSTEAD OF INVESTMENT
Year in year out, the claim would be made in European institutions, from the European Parliament to the European Council. European rules that are set to align the budgets of member states as closely as possible to the same targets and outcomes, make no distinction between recurrent expenditures and investment outlays.
There would be governments soon to face elections which must decide about budget cuts: Whether these should be done by slashing recurrent commitments from which wages are paid to existing job holders, or for new employment to be financed; or whether cuts should come from the list of investments that were due to be implemented.
All... from right to left to the extremes of both ... end up preferring to cut investments. In a democracy, votes are supreme. So one finds that everywhere, the infrastructures which need to remain vital by investment have been reined back. This is what stands out in various countries from Germany to the UK and the US, among the big players, to the small ones, among which Malta.
Then one notes as well that the same thing seems to happen in authoritarian or even dictatorial countries. Investment expenditure required for the infrastructure must always give way to recurrent expenditure, targeted to let people be happy living their everyday lives.