I sometimes wonder whether inflation is really so bad and whether the handouts that governments all over the world are competing with each other to pay out and increase their national debt is real or a chimera.

How can hundreds of thousands of football fans travel at such high costs to Qatar when things are economically disastrous as indicated in the press? What is wrong here?

We have people dying daily in Ukraine, we are sending billions to support them and food and energy prices are rising through the ceiling.  Yet, people with low incomes still find the cash for two to three holidays a year to seek the sun or to join a high seas cruise in the mega sized liners that are destroying Venice, Dubrovnik, Valletta and Barcelona.  And, yet, many are travelling to Qatar and TV screens glow with daily direct World Cup transmissions.

What is usually an event to be enjoyed and to encourage, as it brings countries and peoples together in peaceful antagonism on the sports field, has been marred from the outset. Alleged corruption in the choice of the host country and the utter disregard of workers’ rights and the human trafficking of slave labour from poorer countries to build the arenas cannot be ignored.

Human rights for women and the criminalisation of homosexuality in Qatar is another stain on this World Cup. Are supporters allowed to sunbathe in their bikinis and are persons of the same sex allowed to share hotel rooms?

Are journalists allowed to investigate the over 6,000 deaths on the worksites during the building of hotels and stadia to host these games in the wrong season of the year and where football is a minor sport when compared to camel racing with underage riders or falconry?

So many workers brought over from poorer countries had their passports confiscated and their safety was completely uninteresting to the construction companies competing to build these stadia and make a good profit. Most of the under cost-of-living wages were partly offset to pay for the permits and travel costs leaving only minimum sums that these workers could send help home to their families.

The glitzy advertising one sees in the press and on TV about the success story of the gulf states as they build platforms for the digital age in the desert with their oil-based revenues should not blind us nor should the national frenzy of sport fanaticism cover up the terrible irregularities surrounding this event.

Human rights for women and the criminalisation of homosexuality in Qatar is another stain on this World Cup- John Vassallo

Some national teams and their players would wish to use the event to protest about these issues but FIFA is pressing very hard in an autocratic way to forbid them from doing so. The Danish team was not allowed to play in football gear that carried a protest and the English team planning to wear armbands extolling free love also met the same fate.

Does not this picture of the construction frenzy and the greed of the investors based on slave labour remind any of you of what has been happening here in Malta these last 10 years? We did not need a World Cup to get going. Our policy to create a platform for investors in the digital age resembles the policy of Qatar very much.

The methods we have used are very similar to theirs with the only difference that they did not have a limited space that was already built up with cultural edifices. They had a desert that was pristine and endless cash reserves. But we had in common a number of oligarchs without any respect for human dignity or cultural heritage.

The number of deaths and injuries on worksites in Malta, the living conditions of the imported labour whose passports are taken away on arrival, poor wages and a lack of safety on worksites are a blot. Not to mention living conditions in Marsa or in the St Paul’s Bay ghettoes we have created for them.

The only difference with Qatar is that our women have slightly better rights and a bit more respect than theirs, even though wife battering and violence against women seems to proliferate here, and homosexuality is not only allowed but made to be a virtue even higher than that of heterosexual family relationships.

We will soon be as far away from the simple and traditional Maltese way of life that most of us wish we had not lost on the altar of Mammon.

As for the protection of our cultural heritage and pandering to lobbyists,  whether on hunting and trapping or on ODZ construction or high-rise monsters, the less said the better.

John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.