In one of the Budget documents that saw the light of day when ‘Peanuts’ The Hon. Prof. Edward Scicluna did his thing with the economy was a measure to promote motor biking.

From what we’ve been able to glean, if you have a B licence (the one that allows you to wreak havoc on the roads in a car, apparently) you can get your hands on a two-wheeler of the small type (125cc) and tootle merrily off on your way, paying a pittance for the privilege.

Having started my own biking career on one of the best bikes ever made, a Honda C70, I’m second to none in my enthusiasm for small bikes and for biking in general. When I took my test, it consisted of taking off in the general direction pointed out by the examining maġġur and not falling off. This got me my licence, meaning I was about as qualified to drive a bike as I was to pilot a 747.

That was some 40 years ago, however, and things have changed, traffic is more deadly and the idea today is that you get lessons and basically learn how not to kill yourself or an innocent bystander (the latter being more important) before being let loose on the roads.

Not so from now on, apparently: if you can drive a car, you’re deemed to be able to get on a bike. In fact, according to the Government’s Propaganda Bullishness Service (PBS, or TVM, to you) all you need is a sense of balance and the bike will do the rest.

If that is the attitude being taken, then forgive me but it needs revisiting, very quickly. It is, in fact, a different type of bull.

There are plenty of 125cc bikes that can propel you into a wall, into a jerk on four wheels pulling in front of you or into a pushchair shoved into the road in the time-honoured fashion, and unless you know what you’re doing (and even if you do, sometimes) you’re going to either come off and do yourself a nasty injury or you’re going to slaughter the infant in the buggy.

With all of this in mind, you also have to ask what position insurers are going to take. It’s difficult enough to get bike insurance as it is, if we’re going to have a slew of unskilled newbies charging around, I hope it’s not going to be reflected in our premiums.

It’s difficult enough to get bike insurance as it is, if we’re going to have a slew of unskilled newbies charging around, I hope it’s not going to be reflected in our premiums

What we have to recall, it need hardly be said, is that something had to be done to throw Joe ‘There’s oil, somewhere’ the Hon. Mizzi’s a lifebelt to stop him from drowning in the maelstrom of his incompetence. You might be forgiven for thinking that the word in the Ministry of Finance was “this is something, let’s do it” and no one bothered thinking the thing through.

Par for the course with this bunch, I suppose.

What really needs to be thought through, though (cool run of words, that) is this tunnel to Gozo idea.

I’m on record as recommending that people should be careful what they wish for, on both sides of the channel. Commuting from Gozo is a bind, no mistake, and I don’t blame regular travellers wanting to shave as much time off their journey as possible. Those of us who head north tend to do so because we want to, not because we have to, and many of us find the ferry ride is part of the experience.

Not so Gozitans who work in Malta. They have a cogent argument to make and believe me, they make it well. On the other hand, does the convenience of being able to get to Valletta, say, in an hour rather than two or three outweigh the downside?

For a start, shaving an hour (unscientifically, average 35 minutes waiting time for ferry, plus 25 minutes crossing) off the journey sounds great (and it is) but then again, traffic is what it is and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better, so it’s only a relative time-saving.

You also have to look at what I, an apostate in matters economic, call the macro-economic aspect. Put differently, do the interests of commuters, cogent as they are, outweigh those of the region as a whole?

Would the loss of Gozo’s ‘regional status’ be compensated for by turning the commute into a two-hour one, rather than a three-hour one? Would Gozo still need, for instance, its own hospital, an MCAST campus, its own branch of the ITS? Would special funding initiatives still be needed, when Gozo becomes just another bit of northern Malta?

What will happen to the buoyant property market around the University, when all the Gozitan students can head back to home and hearth when they’re done with lectures for the day? For that matter, what will happen to the property market in Gozo itself, when having a second home there will be the equivalent of having a second home in Mellieħa?

Being inventive types, the Gozitans will no doubt start proposing arguments on the lines those in the south (tas-Sawt in the vernacular) already propose, which will take us down the pretty ludicrous path of a country some twenty kilometres long having both its north and its south shoving a begging bowl under our noses.

Stereo moaning, you could say.

There are other arguments that need to be considered, not least of which the one that goes: “Now that I can drive up to Gozo for a meal, will I bother or will I stay further south and not fight the traffic?” Or the one that goes: “I go to Gozo because it’s different, there’s a limit to how much fun can be had driving for 15 minutes in a tunnel.”

I don’t have an answer to these questions, and to the many others I haven’t even thought of: all I know is that every time I try to ask them, I get shouted down, as I was on Tuesday (albeit very politely) by the very vocal and coherent pro-tunnel lobby. These are the people who know what they want and why they want it, and you can’t blame them for being insistent.

After all, once the tunnel is in place, our dearly beloved politicians won’t have any reason to make nice to the Gozitans every time an election rolls around, so they need to make their hay while the sun is still shining on them. Post-tunnel opening, there will be very little sun to be seen, literally or figuratively.

We didn’t go to Gozo last weekend (how’s that for a segue?) as we had a wedding to attend, so we did the tourist-at-home bit again, this time concentrating on Valletta and the Great Siege Exhibition at the Palace. Interesting enough, though there wasn’t the ‘wow factor’ that should characterise such things in the 21st century.

We had a good lunch at the King’s Own Band Club on Republic Street, which is ideally placed for people watching. We were spared the irony of a European Union flag hanging proudly from the Labour Party Club just opposite.

Maybe someone suggested they remove it before some wag like me suggests that they stop trying to ignore their own very recent history.