The report published recently by the association of restaurants, the ACE, surveying what diners out in Maltese restaurants think about the service they get was very interesting. Most of all in the divide it registered between Maltese and foreign tourists as clients. If I understood correctly, the latter found prices in Malta were quite reasonable while Maltese clients found them too high. But then on average, in restaurants, Maltese spend much more on average than tourists do. It wasn't sufficiently clear whether the measure of what was expensive or cheap included in it the price of wines and other drinks.
This survey report should serve to encourage greater reflection about a crucial sector for it helps to stamp a particular identity on the Maltese brand among tourists, and among the Maltese as well, why not? Still we need more information about the structures through which restaurant food is sold. For instance, since the days of Covid and up to now, there has been a substantial surge in the volume of restaurant food that's delivered to homes by courier. And it's not just pizza type food but also more sophisticated menus.
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REGARDING GAZA
Shortly after the atrocious and condemnable attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens of October 2023, when the Israeli reaction was still being organised, an ex-general of the Israeli Army who was lobbying in Brussels for Israel, explained to me what the Israeli goals would be. (For a number of years he held a leading position in Israel's Gaza command.) Apart from destroying Hamas, Israel would become the Sparta of the West in the Middle East, a military nation that would defend the democracies against Arab terrorists and their allies, chief of whom Iran.
If Israel is truly converting itself into a Sparta, it's doing so by crushing and killing innocent, famished people without any mercy. What's happening in Gaza is genocide and Europe should be ashamed of itself for keeping silent. So should this country be, for we have been hesitating to do what the Spanish socialist government has done and recognize the state of Palestine.
About this, beyond all partisan considerations, I agree hundred per cent with what PN MP Mario de Marco wrote last week in a local daily.
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FESTA ECONOMICS
The summer "religious" festas are still popular. Up to a few years ago, they were riding a wave of great enthusiasm in these islands. But am I alone in suspecting that the enthusiasm has dimmed?
Not necessarily with regard to the "major" festas - more, up to now, regarding the "smaller" ones. For instance, one gets to hear about a lack of success in the collection of financial contributions by households for the festa. So, activities needed to be scaled down. Or how certain band clubs had problems to marshall enough band musicians among those who were "their" own as well as those they could hire. It's the same for some fireworks spectacles. And all this in the absence of any downturn in economic growth.
Responsible for such developments might be the never ending processes of social change and the phenomenal speed with which people alter their behaviour. At present, one hears more often grumbling about the confusion that festas bring to traffic flows than rhapsodies about how this or that festa was such good fun.