Overpopulated and frustrated
It’s not every day that we get to be first at something but it’s happened yet again. This time, we won the award for the most densely populated country in Europe. It wasn’t a narrow win either.
Not only did we top the chart with 1,677 individuals per square kilometre, but we surpassed the Netherlands which placed second with a mere 525 people per square kilometre.
Someone even took the time to do a dot diagram to show what the number of individuals of each country look like next to each other and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much anxiety in my life. Whereas the dots of other countries all looked relatively well spaced out, our dots were intermeshed and interwoven into each other with no room left between one dot and another.
It sadly represented how I have come to feel in my own country – like there’s nowhere left to breathe and no reprieve.
Is it any wonder everyone seems to now have the temperament of a wild bull that has just come across some bright red sheets?
It’s not just the sheer number of people either. It’s the infrastructure and the way things continue to be managed or, well, mismanaged. It’s almost as if our institutions haven’t yet cottoned on to the fact that Malta is no longer a sleepy island in the Mediterranean hosting a few thousand people.
This week, for example, roadworks were carried out on Regional Road (yes, again) and it would seem that the concrete didn’t dry in time for rush hour. And since, in Malta, if one main road is closed, the entire country suffers, hundreds of commuters ended up arriving bitterly and angrily late to work.
Thankfully, a minister attempted to apologise this time and we did not have a public official say “traffic was a perception” (as you can see, I still haven’t let that 2014 statement go).
The fact remains though that no apology can make up for lost time or the effects on mental health these microaggressions keep causing. Day after day the country continues not to serve us in hundreds of little ways and that chips away at even the happiest of chappies.
So, what is the plan here? Our country is statistically overpopulated, our accommodation is overpriced and mostly uninhabited despite us always taking up more space for cursed flats, our food prices remain sky high (people can’t even afford to feed their pets anymore and sanctuaries are struggling), our jobs rigid, our environment spoilt, and then, to top it all, you can’t even get to work on time to earn some of the lowest wages in Europe.
It’s a farce and instead of us making plans to somehow make things better, every day there’s some report or other about the prime minister having words with his predecessor. We were always a petty, greedy people, but we truly give a new meaning to the old adage of cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don’t know what it’s going to take to bring about change but I do know the price we are going to pay if we don’t.
“Is it any wonder everyone seems to now have the temperament of a wild bull that has just come across some bright red sheets?