Today, social challenges and problems seem to become real and need to be taken into account only if they can be assessed and measured "mathematically" - meaning that the scale and extent of any social issue, no matter what it is, can be quantified. First and foremost, in financial terms but as well, in how it has developed, its impact and how people have reacted and coped with it.
Of course, it makes sense for people to try and assess the circumstances that they face in a well thought out and orderly manner, as can be done with numerical data. Yet, it too can be scrambled and even manipulated if the ideas on which it is are based happen for some reason or other, to be misguided.
So, the query remains valid: How true is it that all the life challenges which people have to deal with, as individuals and as members of society, can be evaluated in this manner? If this is not the case, then the danger could be that we fail to notice or that we ignore "immaterial" cultural and social challenges, because they arise mostly from beliefs and sentiments which are difficult to quantify. A friend of mine, a mathematician, assures me that the "mathematical" yardstick is always a possible and reliable tool.
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SUBSIDIES
No matter what neo-liberals might say, subsidies remain a useful tool in the development of a modern economy, even as it touts the virtues of the free market. The first huge spurt of growth registered by the American economy happened too after the ownership of extensive tracts of land, along the rail tracks they would be laying out to the West, was vested in railway companies.
In Malta, subsidies have been and still are a controversial subject, although in one way or another, there always was a popular majority in their favour. As of now, energy subsidies still stand out and give rise to disputes.
What's rather strange then is that the subsidies which are still being given to airlines for them to bring more tourists to Malta attract little debate.
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THE CIVIL SERVICE
Since Independence, enormous economic and social changes have occurred. It was to be expected that the civil service, as the state apparatus tasked with managing them, would also have to change. The administration of government activity could not be compartimentalised into separate units any longer. Development projects started to be launched and they overlapped across different sectors, impinging on the competences of the different sectors of the public administration. In addition, there was the emergence of diplomatic activity with state and international entities outside the islands.
Corporations and state companies were set up. Agencies to regulate different economic sectors. Authorities. Councils, local councils, consultancies. Persons of trust increased in number. Public works and services, including in maintenance, were farmed out by contract, with outside firms in charge, using their own contracted workers.
Meanwhile now, the consttution still discusses the civil service in the language of the 1960's. It would be a good idea were the position of public administration as the leading state corps to be updated and clarified. It won't be an easy task.