Every year, I suppose, most of us come to the conclusion that it has been quite a year. 2006, which ends on the stroke of today's midnight, is no exception. That is not quite true. For the Department of Health that deals with requests for the issue or renewal of a control card for narcotics and psychotropic drugs, the year ended at noon last Friday. Those who needed a narcotic or psychotropic drug and, therefore, the 'white card', discovered that somebody had taken the quaint decision that the eve of the eve of New Year's Eve was early closing time for the department. The sign on the door stating that working hours were between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. was false.
Perhaps the working hours for Friday had been broadcast repeatedly to narcotics users; perhaps there were advertisements taken out in newspapers to warn the psychotropic drug user that he had better look to his psycho before noon on Friday; perhaps it was assumed by our health providers that the n & p brigade should have made its own deductions on the matter. The Department of Health certainly did. It was enough, I tell you, to make one turn to illicit drugs.
Abroad we witnessed the slow collapse of British prime minister Tony Blair. The man took Britain by storm in 1996, brought New Labour to term, sparkled along as no prime minister had done in the UK for decades (Mrs Thatcher did not so much sparkle as dominate with a passionless passion) but, by 2006 he had lost it.
The war against Iraq did not help him, nor did the British media's accusation, false to my mind, that the man was and remains Mr Bush's poodle. The falsity rests on a fact the accusers ignore, namely, that Mr Blair believed with heart, mind and soul, as did so many when the going was good, that going to war against Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do. That Mr Bush praised Mr Blair in words but did not help in deed, is another matter.
(Saddam Hussein was hanged yesterday. Before he was, he had written a letter to the nation in which, among other things, he informed those who troubled to read it: "Many of you have known the writer of this letter to be faithful, honest, caring for others, wise, of sound judgment, just, decisive, careful with the wealth of the people and of the state". This is not how impartial historians will describe him. They will remember that his war against Iran cost the nation for which he cared so much, a million lives, £50 billion in debt and a reconstruction bill nearly three times that amount. They will remember how he treated the Kurds, the Marsh Arabs in the south, any opponent who crossed him - instant execution. The hundreds of thousands whose lives he was responsible for extinguishing).
Anti-Americanism, normally the plaything of France, the country that had sold Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor - it was taken out by the Israelis in a pre-emptive strike - (and recently of Germany when Mr Schroeder was still chancellor and swung the German electorate behind him when he sensed an anti-Iraq war posture chimed in with the thinking of groups whose support he had lost during his chancellorship. Those were the days when he and Mr Chirac could hardly wait to throw themselves into each other's arms when they met), found its way into Britain.
This anti-American posse was helped along by institutions like the BBC where sneers directed at the United States were in constant supply editorially and from the corporation's newscasters and reporters - Matt Frei comes effortlessly to mind; there were, are, a dozen others.
The simple, and therefore horrendous fact for Mr Blair is that his vision is no longer Britain's. Dimmed already, it was rendered even more myopic by the cash-for-honours scandal, not to mention the absurd Mr Prescott, among others, and what Matthew d'Ancona recently referred to as 'the perceived spivishness of (Blair's) regime'. As for Britain's vision, at this moment in time it is difficult to see one. The Conservative party, which Mr Blair had successfully driven into the wilderness, is slowly emerging, blinking into the political sunlight but we must wait and see whether Mr Cameron's "call me Dave" and "have-you-hugged-a-hood" approach will win the Conservative leader the next elections.
In Malta a number of government decisions that were greeted, initially, by outbursts of indignation - the Park and Ride thing, for example - was hailed by the same people as a stroke of genius when it started to operate. Shopkeepers in Valletta who thought it would put people off from coming into town discovered otherwise. Had the wailers got their way...
A few of its achievements - bringing the deficit under control - were applauded by those who had been insisting for years that to do so was a priority, and derided by those who had been insisting for years that to do so was a priority. The same will happen when the Marsascala recycling plant comes on line. A self-deluding minority will have to admit that the new plant is a tremendous improvement on the original one.
One near achievement remains, worryingly, just that: the SmartCity project, which will bring employment and wealth to the island, is still on the drawing boards, unless agreement to go ahead was reached yesterday.
The financial sector was buoyant throughout, despite Cassandraesque predictions that the country's finances were in the fertiliser business.
Bad throughout the year was the exhaust emissions business. The problem is not so much the visible fumes, for which there is much evidence, but car owners who decided that fuel was too expensive by half. So they mix it with additives that are emitting invisible pollutants into the air.
Of mild interest only, at least in my book, was the suggestion that businessman, philanthropist and medical doctor Josie Muscat may re-enter politics, which I understood him to say, needs reinventing. Some were asking whether he would strike out on his own, form a new party, join Alternattiva or even John Dalli in a bid to redraw the political landscape.
Abroad again, we saw the President of the United States come under increasing pressure over Iraq. The optimism of 2003 gave way to political cynicism and the extraordinary sights and sounds of an America going through the always clumsy process of simultaneously wishing to win the war and back-tracking its way out of it. The Democrats, who regained control of both Houses last month, have been indulging in this dance with perplexing ease.
The process culminated in the fascinating Baker-Hamilton report about which, Mr Bush remarked, there were some interesting things that needed to be studied, even as he determined what to do next with a war where an essential element had been absent from the plans drawn up for that war: the conduct of its aftermath. Baker was all things to Bush, Blair, pro- and anti-war contingents and, more ominously, players in the Middle East.
What will happen is that Mr Bush will shore up the American presence in a bid to halt, or diminish substantially, the escalation of violence that has taken place - Iraqi against Iraqi, mainly - and in the hope that the fractious coalition in the Iraqi government will come to its senses and get down to the business of creating a civil society on what was hoped would be the ashes of the dictatorship that preceded the war. You would think this ought not to be a difficult process; sadly, it has turned out to be a hell of a nut to crack.
Baker-Hamilton seem to think that the US needs to engage in a dialogue with Iran and Syria, whose proxy, the Hizbollah started the war in Lebanon earlier this year. Do you recall the chilling remark of Hizbollah's leader after the carnage that ensued, specifically, that he would never have authorised the capture of two Israeli soldiers had he known Israel's reaction would be what it was?
Iran remains unswervingly committed to the elimination of the State of Israel, rigidly determined to ignore the UN demand that it stops its nuclear enrichment programme and seen by its neighbours as a country with hegemonic intentions - as Iraq was in 1991. It has disregarded the mild sanctions imposed by the United Nations a fortnight ago. Unless Iran is disabused of its notions to go nuclear, watch Saudi Arabia join the nuclear fray and - why not? - the Gulf states. It will then be a matter of time before the entire region self-destructs.
A Hamas government in Palestine that has declared the same hostility to the existence of Israel as has Iran, adds further broken lights to the already kaleidoscopic situation in the region. There, Palestinian has tuned on Palestinian and to the north of Israel, Hizbollah is demanding, for no reason except that the government is pro-Western, the resignation of the government.
Many assume that an answer to the Israeli-Palestinian question is the key to peace. That assumption is only correct if another acknowledgment is made, namely, that only a quarter of the conflicts that have broken out in the Middle East since the end of World War II have involved Israel. There are other factors at work. 2007 promises to be a terrible year.
Which brings us, not seamlessly I agree, to Russia; better still the New Russia, for there is little doubt that the country, which was enmeshed in a form of internal semi-combustibility after Gorbachev and during the Yeltsin years, has recovered. Under Vladimir Putin the country has become more assertive and the name of the game, energy supplies and when to cut them, has now become an adult form of snakes and ladders. Last year it was Ukraine that had its supplies turned off by Russia and, as a consequence, heating in Europe. 2006 is ending on a repeat of that game.
Currently in the firing line of a Russia that has made Europe worryingly dependent on gas pipelines from Russian supply resources, is Belarus, once a favoured son, now a rebel, Russia says, without a cause. Problem is that the rebel is sitting on pipelines that supply Europe with a fifth of its gas requirements. Whatever Belarus decides, the deadline given by Russia for Belarus to accept a rise in gas costs from $47 to $110 ended this morning at eight o'clock local time. Belarus is the snake down which Europe may tumble if Russia holds to its threat to turn off gas supplies that reach Europe through that country.
Future historians will look back on the second half of the 20th century as the period when European and American statesmen failed to see the significance of energy dependence on the Middle East, first, and now Russia. It followed from that collapse in thought that the West, which has tucked so many technological triumphs under its belt, did not deem it a strategic necessity to discover ways and means of becoming less dependent on regions that could one day turn on it - and in all likelihood will.
It is true, of course, that the Middle East and Russia depend for much of their income on western purchases of black gold, but eastwards look! China et al are creating a demand that may yet outstrip the West's. Put into this scenario the likes of Hugo Chavez and well, not quite tremble, but recognise that it must give us pause. Oil-guzzling America and Europe had better put on their thinking caps and come up with a revolutionary provider of energy which will be to the third millennium what the wheel was to the fourth millennium BC and ever since. Lateral thinkers, step forward.
It may be the case that in international affairs 2006 will end not a moment too soon for tens of thousands in Darfur and for everybody in Somalia, to take but two examples out of a dozen that may be quoted. Tragically, this unhappy legacy will be claimed tomorrow by 2007.
How lucky we are in Malta, where for all the moaning that goes on, so few are deprived of food and shelter. This has its dangers, of course, for there is also no doubt that quite a few among us live in conditions that cry out for improvement, conditions the majority of us never get to see. As there are children and adults who are handicapped, emotionally or physically. But here again, without meaning to sound the least bit complacent, society as a whole recognises this fact of life; and society in part, through various organisations, is doing its bit to help.
There is much for which we should be thankful. We are blessed with a climate that knows no extreme; cursed by humidity I hear some growl, which is quite true. No child need be uneducated; no child is exploited by employers, even if legal or illegal immigrants are. The economic and cultural outlook of this tiny island may fairly be regarded with optimism, even if we ought to be prouder than we are of our artists and musicians, singers and dancers, of our heritage in so many guises.
We still have some way to go before our work ethic is up to scratch, before those who provide services provide them at a far less atrocious price. What a doctor charges for his medical advice or diagnosis is a pittance compared with what we fork out for a simple piece of plumbing or electrical work. And the construction industry has yet to put its act together.
Otherwise, we are by and large a marvellous race. Having said that, it is by no means all good with us, but it is certainly not all as bad as some, from the excitable green brigade to the road user to sundry other quangos, some of which should know better, would have it. One cannot leave aside the central challenge for Dr Gonzi in 2007; his strategy for leading his party to victory at the elections, in the spring of 2008.
Happy New Year!