Naturally, the drastic decrease in the number of births gave rise to major worries. Many of the consequences have been publicly debated with commitment and intelligence although we still lack a clear, comprehensive solution regarding how the birth rate could be eased. Even so, there has been limited discussion about one aspect.

How about the schools that were built in our towns and villages? In the past, various administrations did the right thing by constructing schools across the islands to provide free primary and secondary education at a time when children were many. Today the number of schoolchildren has shrunk.

The demand for places in government schools already had declined with the rise in popularity of Church and private schools as these became "fashionable". Today, some government schools have a wide attendance of children from the families of non-Maltese residents. However one doubts whether all state schools are being fully occupied and whether some are not being run on empty or half empty. It might be useful to have published the detailed breakdown of the state schools built over the years that are still in use and the extent to which they are being used.

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CLIMATE

For various reasons, the momentum which developed internationally to back measures intended to combat climate warming has subsided. Already, the measures that had been agreed to were grounded in compromises which scientists considered to be flawed because they were insufficiently effective.

As of now, the former scepticism about the reality of climate warming on a global scale has decreased. In fact, it can no longer be denied that there has been a marked increase in events characterised by extreme weather. They demonstrate how the problem is actual, indeed acute. It no longer makes sense to argue against this. So "sceptics" are now ignoring the problem altogether instead of denying it exists. Meanwhile, paradoxically, although there is a greater recognition of climate change as a real threat, the commitment to contain it has slowed down. New priorities have emerged which even seem to be pushing away and obscuring past agreements already reached to contain (at least partly) the rise in temperatures.

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TRUMP AND JOBS

I have been in agreement with those who considered that the impact on the US economy of President Trump's confused (there's no better word to describe them) policies would be very negative. The way by which his pronouncements injected uncertainties about the future, the tariffs he established which were bound to create scarcities and higher prices, the pushback of immigrant workers, the Iran war, among others, would surely be leaving in their wake a trail of disruption.

Actually prices did go up significantly, especially in the energy sector. But there has been a decrease in the US trade deficit for goods, as Trump wanted, although this could change overnight. US stock markets have boomed with the trades they're carrying, although a lot are contingent on the financial boom being experienced by AI firms.

Still, most surprising is what has been happening in the employment sector. Here, despite all that has been said and written against Trump's policies (with which I agree), a notable increase in jobs has been recorded. Why and how has this happened? - that's the question.