This year if I'm keeping a correct tally, the Malta Parliament has had the shortest summer holidays in recent years, almost as short as those of the European Parliament. Which signals that there was and still is much valid work proceeding in Parliament. People don't keep up with it. Little information about it is highlighted in the broadcasting media, the newspapers and websites.

It is true that all parliamentary meetings are broadcast on TV and streamed on the internet. But only people who are really interested in Parliamentary work get to follow them - a tiny minority.

The truth is that much of what goes through Parliament is not controversial. About it, the two sides there are in agreement. In many cases, this is not some passive agreement by which laws are adopted on the nod, but a constructive one, with members proposing improvements to texts which are debated and often agreed. Discussions of this nature arouse little interest and hardly get noted or reported. Perhaps Parliament itself, as a body, should generate more public relations initiatives about its work. That's what other Parliaments do.

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TRAFFIC CODE

In all that's being said about the required reforms, all valid, by which traffic problems could be brought under control and cleared, the rules of the Highway Code which govern road traffic rarely get mentioned. Now these rules were designed a long time ago and likely reflect too much days when traffic was much less congested, less variegated and much slower. Today, congestion by itself has injected urgencies into driving which create situations of quasi-crisis on roads that soon spin out of control.

Moreover, vehicles in today's streets have not only increased in number and power, but the proportion between the different types of vehicle in motion has changed. There are many more motor cycles, bicycles and scooters. Where they drive through and how they do it, how they interface with passers-by and how they park are all scenarios that probably cannot always be well regulated by the measures that were applied in the past.

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AMERICA IN CRISIS?

For most of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, political turmoil in the US was massive. It gave rise to enormous civic disquiet. Huge controversies arose over the civil and human rights of black people, the protests of young people in the Universities and above all the Vietnam war. Among others, the two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King were assassinated and an assassination attempt left Alalbama governor Wallace paralysed for life. The feel of social and political crisis overall in the country was palpable.

Why is it then that today, although the significant tensions that have become widespread in the US do not seem as powerful as those of 50/60 years ago, one still gets the feeling that the country is experiencing a greater identity crisis which is approaching levels that could provoke fundamental civil discord? Has it been due to the social media which have poured fuel on the fire? Or was it the stance that President Trump has adopted?