Planning for new tourists

As we prepare for another touristic year and an increase in motoring fines, it might be an idea to stop and take stock of how those fines might be seen from a tourist’s or visitor’s point of view.

Nobody likes having e-scooters littering kerbsides but few councils seem to have reserved parking spaces for them, meaning the problem cannot be expected to just go away. Neither can users find local council maps or a national one.

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

This is not a new problem. Decades ago, cyclists asked for bicycle parking racks and contraflows. Largely ignored, its long-term lack of provision following the introduction of this new form of transport is now biting us in the proverbial butt.

As most users will be foreign, it makes sense to have clear signage and marked areas that help non-English or Maltese speakers to find the right places to leave their hired scooters and get around, legally. Surely, nobody can have a problem with this?

Clearly, we also need some kind of publicity campaign, again in foreign languages, making it clear that Malta is one of the few backward EU states that does not have any contraflows or the bidirectional laws that other EU states and cities often have. However, Malta does have an inordinate number of one-way streets solely to provide parking.

Many of our tourists’ home cities will have contraflows in much less dense one-way street networks. The least we can do is to remind them in their own language, otherwise, we are just planning to fail. Again.

Jim Wightman – St Julian’s

Construction seven days a week

This beautiful Sunday morning, I was storing some stuff in our washroom at the back of our apartment when I happened to see a face staring at me from the other side of the wall, obviously working from a scaffolding.

And I asked myself what is he doing there on a Sunday? And my quick response to that was ‘because his contractor told him to’, you dolt!

In a radius of 100 metres, we have three full construction sites.

So that’s what we have arrived at. Construction is happening seven days a week. And they blame mental health on everything else, except that we commoners – who are immune from greed – cannot avoid being bombarded by noise, dust, shouting and everything else the construction industry, with the blessing of our ‘always-with-the-people’ government, is up to.

Yeah, where are the people so close to our government and what are they going to do about it?

I hope it’s not grin and bear it. I hope we, the people, realise we cannot suck and whistle forever. There has to be an end to all this madness, no pun intended there.

Victor Formosa – Mosta

Partially responsible

I would like to point out that Malta’s continuous anti-Israel, antisemitic votes in the UN only serve to empower terrorism and terrorists like Hamas.  Because of their years of antisemitism and anti-Israel votes, I hold Malta at least partially responsible for the attack at a Jerusalem synagogue.

Dennis VanDeRiet – Lakehead, California

Conscience

A Chinese proverb states that ‘Who sacrifices the conscience burns the picture to obtain the ashes’. MPs please note before you vote on the proposed ‘amendment’.

Carmel Sciberras – Naxxar