Making values just a byword

June 14, 1998 was a Sunday and it was my Sunday on at the office.

It was a fairly early end to a busy office day and as I drove past Castille at 7.30 p.m. I noticed that the two policemen on duty outside the Office of the Prime Minister were young.

Young and sharp-eyed. They motioned me to stop.

"You are not wearing your seat belt," one of them told me politely.

"Sorry," I said, putting the seat belt on. "Absent mindedness." (And it is getting worse for me - I wish my trousers' fly would zip itself automatically, for instance, it gets so cold in winter on the bike.)

One of the constables moved off. The other took out his notebook and started jotting on it.

"Your name?" he wondered.

"Are you going to fine me?" I asked. "I have just left the office at The Times, just round the corner. It has been a bit of a rough day."

"You were not wearing your seat belt," he repeated, again politely, but rather stolidly, I thought.

I started fuming. "Look," I said. "Have you ever fined the Prime Minister's driver for parking his official car on the double yellow lines, right where you are standing?" I asked. "He does it every day, for hours on end."

Alfred Sant was Prime Minister then, but every Prime Minister's driver has the privilege to do the same. And uses the privilege. Prime Ministers seem to be rather infirm, apparently unable to walk a fair distance to their car, though I clearly remember one of them running down the Castille steps to the official car every day. (They do it, of course, for security reasons, for one.)

The constable did not raise his eyes from his notebook and I repeated my complaint, somewhat aggressively.

At that the constable stood straight and motioned his colleague to come over. "Come listen to what he is saying," he told him when the colleague got near.

"Yes," I repeated, so the other would hear. "You act big and mighty with people who are not in a position of power but you are minnows with the power-wielding political minions. Why do you allow the Prime Minister's driver to park illegally every day?"

The arrival seemed to smile but said nothing. The other went back to his notebook.

"Name?" he repeated. I told him. "Date of birth?" "June 15."

"That's tomorrow," the policeman said. "Yes," I replied, "aren't I lucky to bump into you?"

"Look, man," the constable said, now somewhat testily, "you should be wearing your seat belt. Move off, don't let me see you driving without it again."

I said thank you and did not give him time for second thoughts.

Now that, to me, is tact. The policeman was young but someone had taught him common sense. Why antagonise people unnecessarily? Was it the police course that was so practical, I wonder? I was in the wrong obviously, but the constable let me off, because the morrow was my birthday.

Has anyone ever come across a local warden who is tactful? I have had four encounters with them, sent Lm10 to St Paul's Bay local council - accompanied by a letter complaining about their drainage-flooded streets - because of a parking infringement at 11 p.m. on a Christmas eve, and contested the other three, in all of which I was exonerated. (Another, involving a policeman, is up for appeal in court.)

One of the warden encounters deserves a mention. I used to drive an elderly (over 70) neighbour to the bank for her to cash her and her sister's pension cheques. I would wait for her in my car, where I was no hindrance to the busy traffic on the wide Saqqajja. A car drove past one day, stopped on the opposite lane about 10 metres away and made a signal. I thought he was telling me to move off. I did not know who it was and could not tell. I motioned back that I was waiting for someone.

The car drove off and I thought that was that. But it wasn't. Just minutes later this same car drives up behind me and stops. A warden, who had driven round the block to get back to me, got out of the car (he had not left his car seat when he motioned me just minutes earlier), and started noting details.

"Are you ticketing me?" I asked. "I told you to move off," he said. "And I signalled you I was waiting for someone," I replied. "She is over 70, and I do her a favour, because she has quite a way to walk home. Where can I wait for her, in all this traffic? You are fining me for that?"

The man just ignored me and went on with his details-taking. I contested the ticket and was let off.

If I were a pugilist, he would have ended with a red ear. But I am not, neither do I want to be. I do not like violence and I do not agree with it. But they drive you mad. They just ignore your pleas, even when founded.

So what if I was cleared when I contested the ticket? I still had to attend the local tribunal and that is not convenient at all. Even in summer at 2 p.m. they tell you to wear a tie. As if that gives dignity to their workings. When their workings are sometimes so lopsided.

It is all so unfair. Young people just starting their working or married life work hard for their money, as we all do, and no one likes John Dalli (today it is Lawrence Gonzi) dipping his hand into their pocket so rapaciously to drain their earnings for taxation. When that taxation is being squandered on, for instance, undeserved social benefits, which are lauded come election time, to win votes.

And then you are stressed further by having continually to look over your shoulder in case a warden tries to join in the plunder. For parking two inches over a yellow line, for instance. Or stopping on a pavement to let your ailing wife out of the car. Or driving down a one-way street whose no entry sign is not visible to you. And for every other flimsy pretext because, it is said, the government wants order in the streets (never mind the sickly administration of the country in, say, waste management, the roads, or the environment). This is local government?

I am told that wardens are bound to issue a minimum of 20 tickets a day. It has been denied. But who believes the denial? Forget about tact. That is the wardens' quota to earn their living. At Lm10 a ticket that is Lm200 a day. There are some tickets costing offenders Lm40 I believe. With that kind of money being raked in, how is it possible that the national debt is still rising? And that the councils want more money? Is there no end to the extravagance?

It makes you furious that you have to pay a fine without being warned that your car's rear indicator is not working. And then you have statutory bodies, such as the Malta Transport Authority, issuing untruthful statements about their ignoring their own rules and closing their eyes to abuses where the abusers perhaps have an MP to back them.

You cannot prove it. Who is going to admit it? But who else is powerful enough to browbeat a statutory "authority"? Is this what we elect these MPs for? For them to legislate and introduce rules into the statute books and then use their influence selectively to allow the abuse of those rules? They preach values but the values are only for you and me, not for them.