Did we think this through?

The recent change in transport minister raised speculation on whether a U turn on scooters was imminent.

While I personally don’t think, for political reasons, this is the case, there were other linked issues that also need clarification. After all, this was another classic knee jerk reaction.

Will the new minister follow through on the promised cycling strategy?

Will the new minister follow through on the promised cycling strategy, third time lucky, and will the national bike share scheme be launched in time to act as an implied alternative to foot scooters? Will contraflows be in place on March 1 to avoid riders going wrong way? Will drivers keep left to prompt riders to overtake stuck traffic on the right-hand side?

With the shift to private scooters, will secure public cycle racks be available in areas where employers do not allow efootscooters to be stored in their premises? This is not an area we have sparkled in, under recent or previous ministers.

Beware the Ides of March.

JIM WIGHTMAN – St Julian’s

The calamitous 21st century

In the Foreword of her book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978), Barbara W. Tuchman wrote: “The genesis of this book was a desire to find out what were the effects on society of the most lethal disaster of recorded history - that is to say, of the Black Death of 1348-50, which killed an estimated one third of the population living between India and Iceland.

“Although my initial question has escaped an answer, the interest of the period itself - a violent, tormented, bewildered, suffering and disintegrating age, a time, as many thought of Satan triumphant – was compelling, and, as it seemed to me, consoling in a period of similar disarray.”

The disarray in global affairs has grown much worse since the late 1970s. The 1980s witnessed the rise of Al-Qaeda and the new millennium was ushered with the catastrophe of 9/11.

Not even 25 years have passed since then and the world has been reeling from one calamity to the next: from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the global Covid-19 pandemic, the current wars in Ukraine and Gaza a well as military coups in Myanmar, Sudan, Niger and other states in Africa and dictatorships in Russia, Belarus and Venezuela.

Crises on all fronts loom over the planet and the planet itself is under threat. Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon warned delegates at the World Climate Conference in 2009: “Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss.”

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres declared: “Our world is in big trouble. Divides are growing deeper. Inequalities are growing wider... We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction.”

In his book The Lessons of History (1968), Will Durant observed: “If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword.

“If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.”

JOHN GUILLAUMIER – St Julian’s