Tributes to the dead

In her novel Middlemarch, George Eliot observes that ordinary and unassuming people have a lasting influence on us. (I recall the deceased Jesuits who helped to mould my character as a student at St Aloysius’ College in the 1950s.)

She concludes her novel by declaring of the protagonist Dorothea that “the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”.

At the conclusion of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, the narrator visits an old graveyard where the novel’s protagonists were buried at the end of their turbulent lives: “I lingered round them [headstones] under that benign sky... I listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

John Guillaumier – St Julian’s

Cycling priorities

Paying cyclists should be a no-brainer. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Kristian Zarb Adami’s letter ‘Would you pedal for a payback?’ (November 5) hits the nail somewhat squarely on the head. After all, if we are going to pay someone not to drive (when they probably still want to), paying someone (who wants) to cycle seems a no-brainer.

Even more so at the rate suggested, as it is both cheap and self-sustaining. This is because the EU and ECF agree that the health benefits of cycling, to the state, work out at €1/kilometre travelled.

Even with Malta’s tiny current cycling population of roughly 3,500 commuting cyclists, multiplied by two trips, that is, there and back, and the average commute of 5.2kms, this totals to some €36,000 a day saved. 

On the safety side, some measures could be even simpler. Revising the highway code benefits everyone, including drivers. A 1.5m passing law is already in the theory test. A revision of the hierarchy of road users and presumed liability would also favour pedestrians (more so) encouraging walking too.

Contraflows could go a long way towards avoiding bigger junctions or arterial roads, due to one-way feeder networks dumping riders onto the latter. After all, most secondary roads are high-speed one-way overflows for already over-burdened arterial roads.

To paraphrase the prime minister, we should no longer punish, burden and disincentivise those cycling by forcing them to make longer detours on secondary roads, especially if encouraging them is far less painful than bribing drivers to surrender their licences.

Jim Wightman – St Julian’s