Paceville in summer has become Malta's "Babylon": A bazaar by day and a "den of iniquity" at night. At Paceville's daytime bazaar, young women parade in revealing and, sometimes, indecent clothing, and young men roam the streets in swimsuits. African immigrants sell African hairstyles to German and Scandinavian blondes. Pedlars with foreign accents sell trinkets and henna tattoos. Souvenir shops sell sex novelties. Liquour shops and bars are all over the place. A general atmosphere of sleaze permeates the whole area.

Whenever I walk through Paceville, I look in disbelief at this Maltese Babylon in the year 2008. I cannot quite accept how Malta has changed for the worse since the days of my boyhood in the late 1940s and the 1950s, when tourism and language schools in Malta didn't exist; and since the days of my youth in the 1960s, when a better class of tourists than nowadays led to the establishment of the first night-clubs and restaurants in Malta, and tourism was not the rampant mass tourism of today that has led to Malta's degradation.

Malta's language schools are partly to blame for the deterioration of the quality of life in Malta because of the overwhelming number of foreign students they bring, and because of the problems that arise when you have a large influx of foreign visitors concentrated in one small area like Sliema-St Julians-Paceville.

The residents of Paceville can describe better than I can what goes on at Paceville at night when throngs of foreign students roam the streets.

I'll just mention briefly the problems that I encounter during the summer months because of the overwhelming influx of foreign students: Catching a Sliema bus and travelling on it can be an ordeal - if not downright impossible; and wherever I go to the St Julians-Paceville area, I encounter crowds and queues, and waiting and inconvenience. Paceville in summer is a veritable Babel by day and a Babylon at night!