It is often said that we need to get our tourist sector focussed on the development of quality tourism. We all agree with this target, we all want it.

But yet, many questions that need to be asked remain without an answer; at times, we don't even ask them. What makes a quality tourist, who's he/she? A tourist who spends more... much more.. on average than his/her predecessors? A tourist who's mostly culture-oriented? who books accomodation in five star hotels? who comes for diving holidays? for fine dining? And in this, how would, let us say, tourists qualify who come to Malta for mega-concerts?

Meanwhile, what is being done to provide the attractions quality tourists are looking for? Is it the enormous hotels concentrated in the Paceville area? The creation of new cultural and entertainment events?... And how is all this being affected by traffic congestion, ongoing abusive construction, crowding in the streets and the indiscipline in how public spaces get to be managed?

All such questions deserve a reply. Which is rarely given. Or when it is, one has to doubt its coherence. And perhaps other more pertinent questions also need to be tabled. As they're not put forward, they surely won't get a reply.

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VON DER LEYEN

Some have been exaggerating when they presented as a huge victory the fact that the European Parliament voted recently against the motion of no confidence in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Right from the start, it was obvious the motion would not be approved. But when one looks closely at the outcome in figures, the result is hardly impressive.

There were 360 nays, 175 for, 18 abstained. In all, 553 voted, or 78.6 percent of the total EP members. Quite a number of those who did not turn up to vote were present in the EP building as they did take part in other votes.

Still 65 per cent of all those present in the EP voted against the motion, or just over 50 per cent of the whole Parliament. It is difficult to see how this can be considered a satisfactory result, when von der Leyen supposedly had the support of all the "pro"-European forces in the EP! The signals regarding how relations between the Commission and the Parliament will be developing in coming months are not auspicious.

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ORGANIZATIONAL SPLINTERING

An aspect I don't much appreciate in how the government's organizational system has developed over the last decades, is the way by which fundamental management structures from top to bottom... from ministries to leading corporations... have been vertically divided from each other. Organizational structures have become too splintered. To use a somewhat overdrawn comparison, it's like as if in a kitchen, to cut up and cook a T-bone steak, one needed four cooks, six assistant cooks and a dozen head assistants.

The same syndrome gets reproduced in leading institutions, apart from ministries: the police corps, the educational establishment... although construction and the environment have been the sectors most affected. Is all this multiplication of organizational silos doing any good?