Reality vs fantasy

“I want to make your flesh creep,”declares the Fat Boy in Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers.

Have we reached global boiling? Photo:Shutterstock.com

Doubtless with a similar aim in mind, UN chief Antonio Guterres solemnly warns humanity that “the era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived” (July 28).

Different substances have very different boiling points: nitrogen, for example, at -196˚C, mercury at 357˚C, iron at 2,750˚C. But the boiling point most people are familiar with every day is that of water, at 100˚C. By any scientific measurement, the highest temperature yet recorded on earth comes nowhere near that figure.

Surely, the facts are worrying enough without people like Guterres so irresponsibly straying into the realms of fantasy!

Alan Cooke – Sliema

The mess that we’re in

Dennis Zammit Cutajar’s article makes compelling reading (July 31).

It lists the qualities and virtues that need to be taught and followed so that a community could function in a way that it contributes to the well-being and further education of its children and to prepare them for what life will throw at them as they grow up from childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood. 

They will then be able to pass on what they’ve learned to the next generation.  This will hopefully lead to a high standard of ‘honesty’, ‘integrity’ and ‘leadership’ among those governing and making important decisions affecting day-to-day life in the community and the state.

You have then, on the same page, another article by Albert Buttigieg headed ‘The government’s decadence’. 

In common with what I read elsewhere, and as evidenced by what looks to be happening on a regular basis, Buttigieg lists the ‘sleaze and corruption’, ‘abuse of power’ and the ‘arrogance’ of those responsible for governance and for our children’s education. These are the role models our children look up to.

Keeping it short, I was always taught that one teaches by example. 

Thank God, I left Malta 53 years ago (and I gather a lot of youngsters are following suit).  Nothing’s changed since then, so I shan’t be holding my breath.

Indeed, if anything, things appear by far to be worse than ever before because sleaze and corruption seems to be practised without fear of repercussions.

I hasten to add, who knows, a different incumbent party to the present one may prove to be just as disappointing; so truth be said. I do not suck up to or trust any politician or political party, if anything the opposite. I’ll simply keep observing from a distance.

Paul Brincau – Uxbridge UK