Cloudy with a few sunny periods

When Joseph Muscat launched his “best times still to come” slogan it was on the back of strong criticism from the Opposition and a pressing sense of lack in various areas of social and essential services.

Rachel Borg is an independent columnist based in the tourism industry s he continues to cherry pick the topic of his Sunday radio interviews, Muscat is no closer to revealing to us what those ‘best times’ actually are and what we can expect.

As we take a look around us. the situation is in fact, rather disturbing and there is a growing realisation that there is a lack of dignity around us and falling by the day.

The situation in the housing sector grows more critical with each new arrival of foreigners to the island, to work or purchase fake residences. The balance in the rental market is completely off whack and there are increasing cases of mothers and children, also men, who are suffering for it. Some people have now been reduced to homelessness and fear the lack of dignity that comes with it. There is also a false demographic alteration with people being forced away from their home town or village and possibly their family members, to areas which conflict with their needs, such as their children’s school or their place of work.

The penetration from all over the island has also distorted the character of places which were until now, coherent and steady but are appearing unstable and unfamiliar as each new PA notice is affixed to your neighbour’s house. The claims made by the Siġġiewi Local Council against the overly extensive housing project on their adjacent land, is a case in point.

Residents of Marsa are trying to speak out now about the intolerable situation they face on a daily basis. The lack of dignity in the way some of the several hundred persons living in the Open Centre are behaving is very far from the best times for the residents who are deprived of serenity – that buzz word that Muscat was so happy with – and personal security. They lament the lack of planning and poor management of the centre with no more than a half glance from a strained neck being afforded to the problem. In the meantime, their life is on hold and disturbed regularly. Despair is setting in. Not just for the residents but also for the other persons who are forced to live out their life at the centre, in the middle of the chaos.

For the young and those with a few euros in their pocket, entertainment venues become the outlet they seek. It might consist of several beers knocking them out for the day but for others a new way of life presents itself and the opportunity for trafficking or using drugs of any sort, synthetic concoctions that destroy all around them, comes easily.

It trickles down from the socalled “Gentlemen’s Clubs” and their proprietors who lord it quite comfortably in the district, now very much bordering on becoming a seedy red-light district with a fake respectability coming from the 5-star hotels in the area. Where is the dignity in all this?

Can Dr Muscat explain to us exactly what he had in mind when he said the best times are still to come? Was it profit or scandal or the complete wipeout of dignity?

Hard to say, also, for those cancer patients who would have hoped for dignified palliative care in the new oncology hospital but who are instead in an obscure ward at Mater Dei, left to receive the most basic of care. Who is bothering about their plight?

Farmers who live in the uncertainty of having the land they farm taken away from them any day and families who saved and stayed without holidays or little luxuries in order to have a house in a decent area but who are now threatened on a daily basis by the next project under the guise of educational or national reasons.

Perhaps the ‘best times’ have another meaning altogether under Labour. In which case we would really appreciate someone coming forward and expanding on the concept which is greatly eluding us.

Whatever is in the works, it may come too late for the many who are living on the margins of society and for others who expect that respectability is something they can afford to hope for and not have it taken from them by unscrupulous scoundrels or insufficient resources as funds as directed elsewhere, abroad.

How these persons vote and for whom is irrelevant. Many people still do not make the connection between their political allegiance and the effect it can have on their life. These are like two separate strands and any anger or concern is generally directed onto the latest victim whether that is the illegal immigrant of Islamic faith, the children’s teachers, the enemy next door or the civil servant doing their job.

Labour are very good at exploiting such failure to grasp the real reason for the increasing drama around us. They take it, blend it, twist it and then re-issue it in a nice little package ready for consumption. More and more people have now become addicted to this mode of communication and cannot or do not want to distinguish between what is avoidable and what isn’t.

Loneliness is now becoming quite prevalent as people hide their problems and shame in finding themselves in the hopeless situation of having to cope in a world where everyone else seems to be doing just fine. It is not just the elderly but even youths and hard-working mothers.

A small country such as ours, should be more than able to meet the needs of the citizens and prepare for a safe and prosperous future. But we cannot even get the traffic sorted, with bus lanes appearing and disappearing like roads in a desert and vehicle fumes reaching your bedroom window.

Jobs are temporary and shortterm. People come and go and tire of being left behind. The confusion is getting to many and the stress is evident in the irrational behaviour we see happening around us.

So, frankly, some people may have progressed from a pizza on a Saturday evening to spare ribs on a Sunday and the burgers may be from New York instead of from Mosta, but beyond the glamour and the lights of a TV studio there is a different reality which is creating a serious lack of dignity on a very basic level.