A penny for your thoughts: 10 wishes for the new year in Malta
All year end lists are personal. At Malta InsideOut, we’ve always celebrated word of mouth and personal insights, opinions to shake the tree of all that we love and all that we don’t.
Here is my Malta wish list for 2010 – what I’d like to see more and less of, over the next 365 days of living and working in Malta.
LESS
1. Censorship. It’s time the archaic laws are replaced. There are enough ‘tools’ and common sense that we can use to protect our children from what is unsavoury. We should respect our right as adults to experience what we want, as long as it doesn’t harm others.
2. Litterers. We are a nation brought up to believe that what is outside our door does not belong to us. The mountains of fridges, white goods and burnt mattresses in fields and at the foot of our cliffs is the legacy of much selfishness and ignorance.
3. Hunters. Perhaps it’s thanks to them that we still have our pockets of countryside. But living ‘cheek by jowl’ with all that is good and bad still means that you are still liable to being showered by shotgun pellets if you are cycling in Dingli on a Sunday morning.
4. Corruption. Our Chief Justice is in jail. Nuff said.
5. Big Brothers. Whatever shape they take – political, social, commercial, ecclesiastical. Our history is littered with colonialism, hierarchies and Mediterranean-style power systems. In the increasingly individual, connected world we live in, there is still much outside our doors which rankles of old-style nepotism and friends of friends.
MORE
1. Writers & Visual Artists. We need them for Malta InsideOut. The country needs them to shake inertia and energise literature, theatre and horizons of learning.
2. Music. In all shapes and formats. For the heart, the head, the feet and the soul. And especially under a canopy of stars.
3. Space. For walkers, for people with kids, for people with bikes. For thinkers, dreamers and doers.
4. Interdisciplinary education. We live in a multi-disciplinary world. There isn’t enough that reflects this in our education system, at present.
5. Wi-Fi. Let’s turn the islands into a place where with a hand-held device, you are never far away from the Net. We continue to believe that technology empowers individuals and helps transform our social worlds. For the better.
Happy new year to you all.
Photo: Leslie Vella